11th Bösendorfer and Yamaha USASU International Piano Competitions

Baruch Meir, Israel/USA (chairman of the jury)

Pianist Baruch Meir is one of only 65 artists worldwide named as a Bösendorfer Concert Artist since the founding of the company in 1828.

”…Baruch Meir is an exceptional artist. He did a beautiful performance of my piano work entitled A Little Suite for Christmas, which was distinguished by deep musical insights and consummate technical skill. It was certainly one of the very finest performances this work of mine has ever received.”                               

– George Crumb, composer; 1968 Pulitzer Prize in Music; 2001 Grammy award; 2004 Musical America Composer of the Year.

Meir has performed extensively in Austria, Canada, China, England, France, Germany, Israel, Italy, Portugal, Serbia, and the United States. Meir has presented recitals at the Bösendorfer Saal, Vienna; Bauman Auditorium, Oregon; Murphy Hall, Popper Theater and Nixon Library in Los Angeles; Dixon Hall, New Orleans; Wise Auditorium, Jerusalem; Bates Recital Hall, Austin; and at the Toujours Mozart Festival in Salzburg, Austria.

An Associate Professor of Piano at the Arizona State University School of Music, Dance and Theatre, in the Herberger Institute, Meir maintains a busy teaching schedule in addition to his international concert career. He toured China’s Shanghai Conservatory (2005, 2007, 2014, 2018), the Sichuan Conservatory, and Wenzhou University, where he was awarded a guest professorship. He also taught at Seoul National University, Yonsei, Kookmin, Hanyang, Sunhwa, Kyoungbook and Seoul Arts High School in South Korea. Meir has given master classes at the Music Academy in Vienna, the Rubin Academy of Music in Jerusalem, the Manhattan School of Music and various conservatories and universities in the United States.

A native of Israel, Meir is a summa cum laude graduate of the Rubin Academy of Music at Tel Aviv University, where he earned his master’s degree in piano performance. He holds the Artist Diploma from the Royal College of Music in London and the Doctor of Musical Arts degree from ASU. His teachers include Rachel Gordon, Valter Aufheuser, Pnina Salzman, Michael Bugoslavsky, Irina Zaritskaya and Robert Hamilton. Meir’s distinctions include the American-Israel Cultural Foundation Awards, the British Council Fellowship, first place at the Klatzkin Competition for Contemporary Piano Music and the ASU Concerto Competition.

At Arizona State University, Meir maintains a class of outstanding pianists from all over the world. His students have been awarded prizes in various competitions, including top prizes at the MTNA National Young Artist Competition, Schmindbauer International Competition, Yamaha USASU International Junior and Senior Competition for Young Pianists, Young Concert Artist International Competition, Washington International Piano Artists Competition, as well as winners at the ASU Concert of Soloists Concerto Competition. Meir also frequently adjudicates in various competitions, including the Isidor Bajic Piano Memorial in Serbia, Los Angeles Young Musicians International Competition, the Russian Music Competition in Vancouver, Psanter Letamid National Piano Competition in Israel, and others. Each summer Meir teaches in music festivals abroad. He has taught at Music Fest Perugia and Schlern Music festivals in Italy, and at the White Nights International Festival in Russia. In 2022 he taught at the Chigiana Global Academy Intensive Piano Course in Siena and at the InterHarmony Festival in Aqcui Terme, Italy.

Meir is the founder, president, and artistic director of the Bösendorfer and Yamaha USASU International Piano Competition.

 Martha Argerich

Martha Argerich was born in Buenos Aires. From the age of five, she took piano lessons with Vicenzo Scaramuzza. In 1955 she went to Europe with her family, and received tuition from Friedrich Gulda in Vienna; her teachers also included Nikita Magaloff and Stefan Askenase. Following her first prizes in the piano competitions in Bolzano and Geneva in 1957, she embarked on an intensive programme of concerts. Her victory in the Chopin Competition in Warsaw in 1965 was a decisive step on her path to worldwide recognition.

Martha Argerich rose to fame with her interpretations of the virtuoso piano literature of the 19th and 20th centuries. But she does not regard herself as a specialist in "virtuoso" works - her repertoire ranges from Bach through Beethoven, Schumann, Liszt, Debussy and Ravel, to Bartók.

Martha Argerich has worked as a concert pianist with many famous conductors. She has also attached great importance to chamber music ever since, at the age of 17, she accompanied the violinist Joseph Szigeti - two generations older than herself. She has toured Europe, America and Japan with Gidon Kremer and Mischa Maisky and has also recorded much of the repertory for four hands and for two pianos with the pianists Nelson Freire, Stephen Bishop-Kovacevich, Nicolas Economou and Alexandre Rabinovitch. Martha Argerich has performed at Gidon Kremer's festival in Lockenhaus, at the Munich Piano Summer, the Lucerne Festival and at the Salzburg Festival, where she gave, for instance, a recital with Mischa Maisky in 1993.

She appeared with Claudio Abbado and the Berlin Philharmonic at the 1992 New Year's Eve Concert with Strauss's Burleske and also at the Salzburg Festival at Easter 1993. May 1998 saw the long-awaited musical "summit meeting" between Martha Argerich, Mischa Maisky and Gidon Kremer. On the occasion of a memorial concert for the impresario Reinhard Paulsen, the three artists came together in Japan, where they performed piano trios by Shostakovich and Tchaikovsky (recorded live by DEUTSCHE GRAMMOPHON). In March 2000 Martha Argerich gave her first great solo appearance in almost 20 years in New York's Carnegie Hall.

She has also dedicated herself to chamber music, and has recorded works by Schumann and Chopin with Mstislav Rostropovich, and cello sonatas by both Bach and Beethoven with Mischa Maisky. She has made numerous successful recordings with Gidon Kremer, such as violin sonatas by Schumann and works by Bartók, Janácek and Messiaen (PRIX CAECILIA 1991), and Mendelssohn's concerto for violin and piano with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra. Their recording of Prokofiev sonatas and melodies received the 1992 Tokyo RECORD ACADEMY AWARD, the DIAPASON D'OR 1992 and the EDISON AWARD 1993. One of their most outstanding recording achievements was that of the complete Beethoven violin sonatas (Nos.1-3: RECORD ACADEMY AWARD 1985), which was concluded with the release of the Sonatas op. 47 "Kreutzer" and op. 96 in 1995. Among her more recent releases is the above-mentioned live recording of piano trios by Shostakovich and Tchaikovsky with Mischa Maisky and Gidon Kremer.

Martha Argerich takes a great supportive interest in young artists. In September 1999 the first International "Martha Argerich" Piano Competition took place in Buenos Aires - a competition which does not only carry her name but in which she is president of the jury. In November 1999 the second "Martha Argerich Music Festival" took place in southern Japan, with concerts and masterclasses being given not only by Martha Argerich but also by Mischa Maisky and Nelson Freire among others.

 Sara Davis Buechner

Sara Davis Buechner is one of most diverse and celebrated concert pianists of our time, a musician of “intelligence, integrity and all-encompassing technical prowess” (New York Times), possessing “fascinating and astounding virtuosity” (Philippine Star) as well as “thoughtful artistry in the full service of music” (Washington Post); and celebrated for performances which are “never less than 100% committed and breathtaking” (Pianoforte Magazine, London). According to Japan’s InTune magazine, “When it comes to clarity, flawless tempo selection, phrasing and precise control of timbre, Buechner has no superior.”

In her twenties, Ms. Buechner was the winner of a bouquet of prizes at the world’s première piano competitions -- Queen Elisabeth of Belgium, Leeds, Salzburg, Sydney and Vienna. She won the Gold Medal at the 1984 Gina Bachauer International Piano Competition, and was a Bronze Medalist of the 1986 Tschaikowsky International Piano Competition in Moscow.

With an active repertoire of more than 100 piano concertos ranging from A (Albeníz) to Z (Zimbalist) -- probably the largest of any concert pianist today -- she has appeared as soloist with many of the world’s prominent orchestras: New York, Philadelphia, Cleveland, Saint Louis, San Francisco, Montréal, Edmonton, Vancouver, Victoria, Honolulu, Qingdao and Tokyo; the CBC Radio Orchestra, Japan Philharmonic, City of Birmingham (U.K.) Symphony Orchestra, BBC Philharmonic, Moscow Radio Symphony, Kuopio (Finland) Philharmonic, Slovak Philharmonic and the Orquesta Sinfónica de Castilla y León (Spain). Audiences throughout North America have applauded Ms. Buechner’s recitals in venues such as Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Kennedy Center and the Hollywood Bowl; and she enjoys wide success throughout Asia where she tours annually.

Profiles of Ms. Buechner have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Macleans, Paris Match, Piano Today, Noticias del Argentina, and numerous internet sources. She has been featured on the television programs Entertainment Tonight, Extra, In the Life, and Bynon. Radio profiles have been broadcast on NPR’s The Fishko Files and Performance Today, WFMT’s Dame Myra Hess Recital Series, WNYC’s New Sounds with John Schaefer, at WQXR’s Greene Space, and on Canada’s CBC Westcoast Performance.

Sara is the most prominent transgender musician appearing on the classical concert stage today. She received the Eleanor Roosevelt Award of Brandeis University, and is a member of the National Museum of Women in the Arts. She often presents talks and workshops to LGBTQIA+ groups, and has received praise for her solo autobiographical theater show “Of Pigs and Pianos,” which premièred at New York City’s TheaterLab in 2021 to rave reviews, and is now being presented a venues across the United States.

Sara Davis Buechner is the German Díez Chair of Keyboard Studies at the Greenwich House Music School in New York City, and is a longtime Professor of Piano at Temple University in Philadelphia. Previously she taught at NYU, UBC in Vancouver BC Canada, and was a Visiting Professor at the University of Shanghai. Ms. Buechner has presented lectures and masterclasses worldwide, notably at the Royal Academy, Juilliard School, Indiana University, Eastman, Shanghai Conservatory, and throughout Japan. She is an adjudicator of prominent music competitions worldwide. In addition, Ms. Buechner has served as Principal Music Consultant for Dover Publications, and her own compositions and cadenzas are published by Muse Press of Tokyo, Japan.

Since 1987, Sara Davis Buechner has been a dedicated Yamaha artist.

 Inna Faliks

“Adventurous and passionate” (The New Yorker) Ukrainian-born pianist Inna Faliks has established herself as one of the most communicative, and poetic artists of her generation. She has made a name for herself through commanding performances of standard piano repertoire, as well genre-bending, interdisciplinary projects, and inquisitive work with contemporary composers. Her new memoir, Weight in the Fingertips, A Musical Odyssey from Soviet Ukraine to the World Stage, was published by Globe Pequot Press in October 2023.

Ms. Faliks’s distinguished career has brought thousands of recitals and concerts throughout the US, Asia, and Europe. Recent seasons have included performances at Alice Tully Hall, National Sawdust, Ravinia Festival, National Gallery of Art, the Wallis Annenberg Center, Oji Hall in Tokyo, tours of China, with appearances in all of its major halls including the Beijing Center for Performing Arts, Shanghai Oriental Arts Theater and Tianjin Grand Theatre and more. She continuously appears in venues such as Carnegie Hall, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Salle Cortot in Paris, Moscow’s Tchaikovsky Hall and at many important festivals such as Verbier, Gilmore, Newport Classical and the Peninsula Music Festival , Music in the Mountains, Brevard, Taos, the International Keyboard Festival in New York, Bargemusic Here and Now, and Chautauqua. Since her acclaimed teenage debut with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra,she has been regularly engaged as a concerto soloist with renowned orchestras and conductors, in concerto repertoire of standard concerti and new works such as Clarice Assad's Lilith Concerto, composed for Faliks and premiered at the National Gallery of Art with Inscape Ensemble in March 2024.

Inquisitive and versatile, Inna Faliks has had a strong commitment to contemporary music, giving premieres of works composed for and dedicated to her by Timo Andres, Billy Childs, Richard Danielpour, Paola Prestini, Ljova, Clarice Assad, Peter Golub. Her newest CD recording , “Manuscripts Don’t Burn” on Sono Luminus, was featured on NPR Morning Edition in May 2024 and features five world premieres composed for Faliks by Clarice Assad, Mike Garson, Veronika Krausas, Ljova and Maya Miro Johnson, as well as Schubert-Liszt, Fazil Say and Fanny Mendelssohn, featuring music for solo piano and spoken word. In her “Reimagine Beethoven and Ravel” performance project and recording, nine contemporary composes responded to Beethoven Bagatelles and Ravel’s Gaspard de la Nuit. “13 Ways of Looking at the Goldberg” included new variations by contemporary composers based on Bach’s Goldberg Variations. Ljova’s “Voices” for piano and historical recording was composed for her and commissioned by the Milken Center of American Jewish Music in 2020.

Faliks created a one-woman show “Polonaise-Fantasie, Story of a Pianist”, an autobiographical monologue for pianist and actress, premiered in New York’s Symphony Space and performed it worldwide. She is head of piano and professor of piano at UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music, and is in high demand as Artist Teacher and Masterclass artist, as well as a solo recording artist on multiple labels.

 Robert Hamilton, USA

Internationally respected pianist and recording artist Robert Hamilton has been enthusiastically reviewed by two chief music critics for The New York Times.

Harold C. Schonberg (who also authored The Great Pianists) wrote: “He is a very fine artist. All of Hamilton’s playing has color and sensitivity...one of the best of the million or so around.” And Donal J. Henahan reported: “It was an enthralling listening experience. We must hear this major piano talent again, and soon!”

Robert Hamilton studied at Indiana University with the first winner of the coveted Levintritt award, Sidney Foster, graduating summa cum laude. A move to New York City brought studies with Dora Zaslavsky of the Manhattan School, coaching from legendary pianist Vladimir Horowitz, and a host of monetary awards from the Rockefeller Fund and U.S. State Department, launching a strong career and the winning of five major international competitions.

Hamilton has made countless tours of four continents, appearing in most music capitals. His orchestral engagements have included the Chicago, National, St. Louis, Milwaukee, Phoenix, Indianapolis, Grant Park, Chautauqua and S.O.D.R.E symphony orchestras. Hamilton has been heard over the national and international networks NPR, ABC, BBC London, Voice of America, Armed Forces Network, DRS Zurich and Radio Warsaw. He has also recorded for Phillips, Orion, Summit and Soundset Records. Reviewing a recent release in 2011, the All Music Guide wrote: “Magnificent virtuosity in combination with effortless control and hair-raising bravura make his performances absolutely irresistible. Each piece moves inevitably and ineluctably to the next, and the aesthetic whole is much more than the sum of its brilliant parts. A flat- out fabulous record.” Regarding his recent Mozart CD, The American Record Guide reviewer stated: “I never expected to hear anyone play Mozart so sensitively in this day and age. Almost unbelievable beauty the perfect recording of Mozart’s piano music.” And in China, his CD Miroirs was selected one of “The Top Ten Classical Albums of 2018” by Classics Overseas: “Pianist Robert Hamilton is a rare master of Ravel’s music.  His Miroirs has such inner beauty and subtle changes of tone colors that it is unquestionably equal to any ‘historically best’ interpretations.”  

Professor Hamilton’s students have also won many prizes and awards, appearing with the Indianapolis Symphony, Wichita Symphony, Phoenix Symphony, Hudson Valley Symphony, London Westminster Philharmonic, Orchestre Philharmonie d’Avignon, Kammerorchester Dusseldorf, Pazardjik National Orchestra, Sydney Symphony Orchestra, Nagoya Gakuen Philharmonic and Korea Symphony.

Featured in the book The Most Wanted Piano Teachers in the USA, Hamilton served as Artistic Director for the London Piano Festival during the 1990s. Since the year 2000, he has joined forces with Vladimir Feltsman and a distinguished group of prominent international pianists each July for PianoSummer in New York. Hamilton’s co-authored book Artistry: Pursuing the Mysteries of Music Performance was released in the U.S. in June 2021, and is scheduled for publication in China by the Shanghai Music Publishing House in 2023. 

 Daniel Kühnel

Daniel Kühnel, born in Jerusalem in 1973, has been the Artistic Director of the Hamburg Symphony Orchestra since the 2004/2005 season and the Sole Director since 2013. He is moreover an international festival manager. Having originally qualified as a lawyer, Kühnel began his music-directing career as an Assistant Opera Director and later as a Consultant Director at the Deutsche Oper Berlin.

Kühnel then became the youngest Artistic Director in Germany when he worked alongside Chief Conductor Andrey Boreyko. He pulled off international coups by engaging both Sir Jeffrey Tate in 2009 and Sylvain Cambreling in 2018 in the role of Chief Conductor. In Hamburg Kühnel relies on a repertoire of the highest level that is pointedly conscious of tradition, artistically demanding and yet consistently accessible. From the beginning of his tenure as Artistic Director, he employed an approach of expanding the concert experience, for example by incorporating dance, video, film and light art into concerts. With his sensational projects and through his approach of considering concert life as an integral and stimulating component of spiritual and political life, he was able to turn his orchestra into a significant cultural institution and an important actor in the cultural life of the Federal Republic of Germany.

Kühnel’s superbly reliable international network allows him to collaborate with some of the most renowned artistic personalities of our age. In 2018 he successfully set up the Martha Argerich Festival in Hamburg. The entirely independently financed festival under the umbrella of the Hamburg Symphony Orchestra is due to take place again in 2019.

Daniel Kühnel has enjoyed great success in devising and directing music festivals for some of the most important art and universal museums in the world. In 2015, Kühnel conceived the Dresden Art Festival for the Dresden State Art Collections, which took place in the autumn of that year under his direction. In the winter of 2016/17, Kühnel took on the planning and direction of a music festival for the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, which was intended to accompany and provide diplomatic interpretation for the spectacular (and later spectacularly cancelled) Tehran Exhibition. On behalf of Germany’s Foreign Office, in June 2017 Kühnel planned and directed the See the Sounds Festival in the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. Kühnel also devised and directed the Europe and the World Festival for the British Museum in London. Every performance during this two-week festival in April 2018 was sold out within just a few days, while the media lauded an ‘unusual and imaginative’ festival (The Sunday Times from 6 May 2018) and a ‘masterpiece’ (The Observer from 22 April 2018).

Kühnel studied Law and Musicology at the Free University of Berlin, completed the Second Legal State Exam and to begin with worked for the law firm Linklaters Oppenhoff & Rädler. He had previously studied piano at the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance, from which he graduated with distinction in 1991. There he received extensive training in musical theory, aural training and score reading. While at school he played the bassoon and received intensive ballet training. In tandem with his joint degree in Berlin, he also undertook classical voice training. He studied direction under Götz Friedrich and Willi Decker at the Deutsche Oper Berlin.

 Zhe Tang

Zhe Tang is one of the leading pianists and pedagogues of his generation in China. Mr. Tang's performances with the China Philharmonic Orchestra and the Shanghai Symphony were broadcast by the Chinese National Television and Radio reaching approximately 900 million people. He also gave the American premiere performance of the Concerto No.2 for Piano and Viola by Alexander Tchaikowsky. He has presented many solo recitals in the United States, Europe and the Far East. His performances have been heard on radio and television including Chinese National TV and Radio, BBC, Polish National Television, Oriental TV, WQXR of New York, WFMT of Chicago, among others.

Graduated from the Eastman School of Music where he taught and served as teaching assistant to Barry Snyder, Tang is Professor of Piano in Shanghai Conservatory of Music. He has also been appointed as the Vice Dean of Shanghai Conservatory of Music, Director of Teaching and Research for the Piano Department, Chair of the Piano Department for the Middle School Affiliated to the Shanghai Conservatory of Music, Chair of Shanghai Professional Pianists’ Society, Artistic Director of Shanghai Spring International Piano E-Competition, Artistic Director of Shanghai International Piano Festival & Institute, among others.

He has been on the jury for international piano competitions, including Gina Bachauer, Belgrade Jeunesses Musicales, Bonn Beethoven，USASU Bosendorfer，Cleveland, Enescu, Weimar Liszt，Hilton Head, and Dubai. Many of his pupils have won first prizes in almost all Chinese national competitions, as well as major and special prizes from International Piano Competitions. He was given the “Grand Award for Excellence in Teaching” by the Chinese government and was featured on the cover of “Piano Artistry”，the most important music journal in China.