The International Piano Festival continues to introduce St Petersburg audiences to new names in the art of the piano. On 25 and 27 December, the Concert Hall of the Mariinsky Theatre will host debuts by young pianists – students of Sergei Babayan from the Juilliard School and the Cleveland Institute of Music (USA): Do-Hyun Kim, Ruoyu Huang, Sara Daneshpour, Ming Xie and Tomer Gewirtzman.
On 25 December (20.00) the pianists will be performing solos. The concert programme includes works by Frédéric Chopin, Sergei Prokofiev, Jean-Philippe Rameau, Pierre Boulez, Johann Sebastian Bach, Gérard Pesson, Maurice Ravel, Felix Mendelssohn, John Corigliano, Nikolai Medtner and Alexander Scriabin. On 27 December (19.00) each of the five young musicians will perform a major piano opus accompanied by the Mariinsky Orchestra. These will include Nikolai Medtner's Piano Concerto No 2, Белы Бартока's Piano Concerto No 2, Sergei Prokofiev's Piano Concert Nos 2 and 3 and Sergei Rachmaninoff's Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini. Zaurbek Gugkaev will be conducting.
Twenty-two year-old Korean pianist Do-Hyun Kim graduated from the Cleveland Institute of Music (class of Sergei Babayan), to which he transferred from the University of Seoul in 2013. In South Korea, Do-Hyun Kim has won several prestigious music competitions including the Korean National Frédéric Chopin Piano Competition. Since the autumn of 2017 he has trained under Sergei Babayan for a master's degree at the Juilliard School. Significant engagements for the 2017-18 season include an appearance at the XXV Music Festival in Verbier.
The young Chinese pianist and composer Ruoyu Huang has attained a bachelor's deree from the Curtis Institute of Music and a master's degree from the Juilliard School. Over the years his teachers have included Yin Chengzong, Seymour Lipkin, Robert McDonald and Yoheved Kaplinsky. Currently the pianist is continuing his studies under Sergei Babayan. In 2013 Ruoyu Huang won the Frédéric Chopin Prize at the Cleveland International Piano Competition. Has appeared with such ensembles as the Chinese National Symphony Orchestra, the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra, the Xiamen Philharmonic Orchestra and the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra.
The American Sara Daneshpour is known to Russian audiences for her participation in the XIV International Tchaikovsky Competition and the Tchaikovsky Stars concert series (2013). Recent accolades include 3rd prize at the International Anton Rubinstein Piano Competition (2017) and a victory at the International Music Competition in Seoul (2014). Sara Daneshpour's teachers over the years have included Leon Fleisher, Yoheved Kaplinsky and Oleg Volkov. Since 2015 she has been a student at the Cleveland Institute of Music under Sergei Babayan. The pianist's extensive touring programme has seen performances in the USA, Canada, Germany, Finland, Russia, Estonia, Norway, Denmark, France, Sweden, Spain and Japan.
Chinese musician Ming Xie, whom the legendary Martha Argerich named "phenomenal", has won numerous international awards, among them 2nd prize at the Valsesia Musica international piano competition in Varallo (Italy), the Gold Medal, the Audience Award and the Prize for the Best Performance of a Sonata by Alberto Ginastera at the International Piano Competition in Panama (2016) and several special prizes at the International Piano Competition in Sydney (2016). Ming Xie presents concerts at such venues as the Palau de la Música Catalana in Barcelona, New York's Lincoln Center, Severance Hall in Cleveland and the Beijing Concert Hall. In summer 2017 the pianist took part in the II Far East Festival Mariinsky, appearing with the Mariinsky Orchestra under Valery Gergiev at the Primorsky Stage of the Mariinsky Theatre.
Tomer Gewirtzman is one of the most famous Israeli pianists of the next generation. Initially he trained under Professor Vadim Monastyrsky of the Jerusalem Rubin Academy of Music and Dance. He subsequently continued his studies at the Buchmann-Mehta School of Music of the University of Tel Aviv (class of Arie Vardi) and the Juilliard School of Music (class of Sergei Babayan). Currently, Tomer Gewirtzman collaborates with many Israeli ensembles including the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, the Israel Symphony Orchestra, the Israel Chamber Orchestra and the New Haifa Symphony Orchestra. The pianist's recitals have taken place at London's Steinway Hall as well as concert venues in New York and Washington as part of the project Young Concert Artists.
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