The SYMF Masterclass Series was launched in the fall of 2019 to provide our Festival/Competition Winners the opportunity to play for world renowned artists.
Upcoming Masterclasses
Piano Masterclass with Prof. Fabio Bidini
Saturday, December 9, 2023
SYMF 2023 Masterclass Application Form
Fabio Bidini today is recognized as one of the most important pianists and pedagogues. Bernard Holland of the New York Times stated: “He is capable of an admirable simplicity…truly touching.”
At the age of five he was given his first piano lessons and, a half year later, he had his first public performance. In the following years he won 11 of the most important Italian piano competitions, including always the Audience Prize as well as all the special prizes.
He made his final graduation as “Magna cum Laude” and was one of the youngest graduates ever of the prestigious “Conservatorio Santa Cecilia” in Rome. Pianists who made a significant contribution to his artistic development were Orazio Frugoni and Maria Tipo.
After winning top prizes in the most famous international piano competitions, his sensational success at the Busoni and at the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition opened him the door to a constantly growing international career.
His outstanding piano playing that combines technical wizardry with poetic lyricism and his fascinating culture of the attack of the keyboard brought him to have a glowing London debut in the Barbican Center with the London Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Michael Tilson Thomas in the presence of Sir Georg Solti. Shortly after, he performed at the United Nation as a soloist of the BBC Wales and had his highly acclaimed North American debut with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra under Joel Levi.
Since then Mr. Bidini has been a frequent guest of the most prominent orchestras worldwide (San Francisco Sympony, Dallas Symphony, Budapest Festival Orchestra, Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia, The Philharmonia Orchestra of London, BBC Orchestra Wales) playing in the world´s most famous concert halls (Carnegie Hall, Kimmel Center Philadelphia, Kennedy-Center Washington, Royal Festival Hall, Davies Hall, Tonhalle Zürich, Gewandhaus Leipzig, Rudolfinum, Auditorio Nacionál-Madrid, Auditorio de Zaragoza, Muziekgebouw Amsterdam, among others).
He has also collaborated with leading conductors of our time, including Michael Tilson Thomas, Ivan Fischer, Andrey Boreyko, Zoltan Kocsis, Eri Klas, GianAndrea Noseda, Barry Wordsworth, Yoel Levi, Pavel Kogan, Louis Lane, Tadaaki Otaka, Mathias Bamert, Jesus Lopez Cobos, JoAnn Falletta, Jerzy Maksymiuk, Max Valdes, Keri-Lynn Wilson, Michael Christie, Carlos Prieto, Rossen Milanov among others.
He has been repeatedly invited to perform at prestigious festivals, such as the Tuscan Sun Festival Cortona/ Napa, Festival Radio France Montpellier Languedoc-Roussillon, La Roque d’Anthéron International Piano Festival, Stern Grove Festival, Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli International Piano Festival, Festival dei Due Mondi, Grant Park Festival Chicago.
Mr. Bidini is also greatly in demand as a chamber music partner. He has enjoyed artistic collaboration with the American String Quartet, the Janacek Quartet, the Brodsky Quartet, the Szymanowski Quartet, the Modigliani Quartet, Zoltan Kocsis, Nikolaj Znaider, Johannes Moser, Wolfgang Emanuel Schmidt, Paula Robison, Corey Cerovsek, Wendy Warner, Eva Urbanova, Eva Mei, Nina Kotova, Alexis-Pia Gerlach, Maria Bachmann, Dimitri Ashkenazy e Sabrina-Vivian Höpcker. He has formed a formal duo with Ms. Hopcker, and, with the publication of their debut CD of sonatas of S.Prokofieff and R.Strauss, they have laid the foundations for extensive collaborations with the US American label True Sounds.
Mr. Bidini’s discography comprises of 14 CDs of leading recording companies such as BMG, Naxos, Classichord, Musikstrasse, EPR, True Sounds, among others.
In 2005 Mr. Bidini accepted a professorship in the piano departement of the “Universität der Künste – Berlin”. In 2009 he won one of the most important chairs for piano in Germany at the “Hochschule für Musik Hanns Eisler” in Berlin.
In 2015 the Colburn Conservatory of Music in Los Angeles founded the Carol Colburn Grigor Piano Chair for Fabio Bidini and he currently serves as faculty at the prestigious conservatory.
He is an official Steinway Artist.
Past Masterclasses
Piano Masterclass with Dr. Dmitry Rachmanov • California State University, Northridge
Sunday, May 1, 2022
Dr. Dmitry Rachmanov is Chair of Keyboard Studies at California State University, Northridge. A sought-after performer, master class clinician, adjudicator and lecturer, Dr. Rachmanov has served on the faculties of Manhattan School of Music and Chicago College of Performing Arts at Roosevelt University, and has been a guest artist/lecturer/clinician at The Juilliard School, New England Conservatory, Eastman School of Music, Royal Northern College of Music (UK), Shanghai and Beijing Central Conservatories.
Rachmanov has appeared at Carnegie Hall, Kennedy Center, London’s Barbican and South Bank Centres, at venues across Europe and Asia, and has collaborated as a soloist with the Ukraine National Symphony, National Orchestra of Porto, Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra and San Luis Obispo Symphony, among others. He has recorded for Naxos, Parma, Master Musicians and Vista Vera labels.
An active member of the American Liszt Society, Dmitry Rachmanov served as the Artistic Director of the 2016 ALS Festival “Liszt and Russia” hosted by Cal State Northridge. He is the president of the society’s Southern California chapter.
A proponent of Russian repertoire, Rachmanov gave the US premiere of Boris Pasternak Piano Sonata, broadcast by the NPR, and his recital “The Art of the 19th Century Russian Character Piece” was noted by the New York Times for “considerable color and focus” he brought to each work. He is a founding member of the Scriabin Society of America; his April 2014 Scriabin program at Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall, part of the world recital tour commemorating Scriabin’s 100th memorial anniversary, was described as “a ‘poem of ecstasy’ in every sense: giant in conception, quantity, quality, execution, thoughtfulness, and sensitivity” by the New York Concert Review. He has since embarked on a project of recording a video anthology of Alexander Scriabin’s piano works.
Dr. Rachmanov is a graduate of The Juilliard School (BM & MM) and Manhattan School of Music (DMA). His teachers include Nadia Reisenberg, Arkady Aronov, Alexander Eydelman and Ada Traub. He is a recipient of numerous awards, among them “Jerome Richfield Memorial Scholar” at CSUN and receiving an “Outstanding CAPMT Member State Recognition Award” by California Association of Professional Music Teachers. In 2018 Dr. Rachmanov was selected as the 2018-19 Academic Affairs Research Fellow in the Mike Curb College of Arts, Media, and Communication at CSUN. In January 2019 he was a Co-Director of the ChamberFest @ CSUN Festival, with its sequel scheduled for the spring of 2022. In the summer of 2019 he was a resident at the Brahmshouse in Baden-Baden, Germany.
SYMF-2022-Masterclass-Flyer-8CELLO • FLUTE
VIRTUAL • ONLINE
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Fall 2020
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Fall 2019