Direktor

Director

Christian A. Pohl

Dear students, dear citizens of Leipzig!

Welcome to the International Mendelssohn-Academy Leipzig! Inspiring master courses, exciting concerts and friendly encounters: Thanks to our outstanding professors, the fifth Academy, too, promises to become a special event not only for its participants, some of whom come from afar, but also for the audience from Leipzig. The young pianists have found their way to Leipzig from more than twenty different countries, united over all borders by their passionate dedication
to piano play and music.

Master courses are held all around the world. And yet, the International Mendelssohn-Academy Leipzig exerts a power of attraction of its own: The number of applicants by far outnumbers the students we can admit as active participants.
Admission to the daily masterclasses and the nightly concerts in the Academy’s Large Hall is free. When else do you have the opportunity to experience artistic work on such a high level at first hand? Not only professional musicians, but laymen, too, are cordially invited to attend the courses and immerse themselves into the fascinating world of musical masterpieces by Mendelssohn, Bach, Schumann, Chopin, Liszt and many other composers together with professors and students.
Come visit the International Mendelssohn-Academy Leipzig, meet young pianists from all over the world, listen to piano evenings rendered by the outstanding young talents and experience four legendary piano professors! We are looking forward to you!

Yours sincerely
Christian A. Pohl
Professor for Piano and Piano Methods
Director of the International Mendelssohn-Academy Leipzig

Rektor

Rector

Gerald Fauth

Dear pianists from all over the world,

I would like to take the opportunity to inform you about the exceptional course concept of the International Mendelssohn-Academy Leipzig 2022 and cordially encourage you to apply for one of the sought-after master course places with four of the most prestigious piano teachers of our time. With its long-standing and oldest German conservatory of music, Leipzig now counts among Germany’s most sought-after places of study and abode.

Convince yourselves of the special flair of a town which is characterized by great history, but has yet remained young, reinventing itself every day without forgetting its traditions! You will find excellent course conditions: A concept which is well-wrought right down to the last detail, a perfect organization, highly experienced and inspiring professors, an attractive side program and a course atmosphere which is exceptionally cordial despite all professionality.

I would love to welcome you at HMT Leipzig in August 2022 and predict that you will definitely have unforgettable and inspirational hours and days in Leipzig and its environs!

Yours sincerely,
Gerald Fauth
Professor for Piano and Chamber Music
Rector of University of Music and Theatre Leipzig

Schirmherr

Patron

Burkhard Jung

Ladies and gentlemen, dear pianists, honoured guests - welcome!

For Leipzig, it is an honour, an obligation and a pleasure at the same time not only to consign the legendary work of Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy to the memory of the city as something past and historic, but also to honour his life and work again and again, to explore it further, to immortalise it in the hearts of people around the world. For today, when people around the world speak of Leipzig's traditional splendour as a musical metropolis, it is inevitably associated with his name, the name of Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy: one of the most important Gewandhaus bandmasters, the honorary citizen of our city, the highly talented painter and draughtsman, the Doctor philosophiae h.c. of the venerable Alma Mater Lipsiensis - and founder of the first German music conservatoire, our present-day Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy Academy of Music and Theatre. The latter is not only - now in its tenth year - the initiator and organiser of the International Mendelssohn Academy, but with this unique master class project for the best up-and-coming pianists in the world, it also sets a widely perceptible example for Leipzig as a city of music and as the centre of life for the gifted composer, whose 125th death anniversary we may celebrate in 2022.

Nowhere else, dear friends of music, will you find such a large number of authentic items on Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy: the house where he lived and died in the city centre has been renovated and refurbished; for the past 25 years it has served as a museum, is the centre of German Mendelssohn research and the seat of the Leipzig Mendelssohn Foundation. Feel all this when you are a guest in Leipzig and join me in looking forward to the International Mendelssohn Academy in our city. Once again, as its long-standing patron, I wish it the best possible response and let us hope together that it will finally be able to be heard again at the end of August 2022, largely unaffected by the Corona pandemic.

Your Burkhard Jung
Lord Mayor of the City of Leipzig

Pavel

Gililov

Pavel Gililov, who received his training as a student in the legendary Russian school of piano playing, is highly respected today as one of its exponents and champions.
He was born in 1950 in Donezk in the Soviet Union. Pavel Gililov graduated from the St. Petersburg Conservatory with distinction, and won the national Russian All-unions Competition while still a student in 1972. He was a prizewinner at the International Chopin Competition in Warsaw in 1975 and three years later won a prize at the Viotti Competition in Vercelli.

Pavel Gililov is in demand both as a soloist and as a chamber musician. He has worked with great success with cellists Mischa Maisky and Boris Pergamenschikow as well as with violinists Viktor Tretjakov and Pierre Amoyal, among others. Today, he is a member of the Berlin Philharmonic Piano Quartet. As a professor, he teaches piano studies at the Mozarteum University in Salzburg, while offering many masterclasses all over the world.

Pavel Gililov regularly serves as a jury member at international piano competitions. He is the chairman of the jury of the Telekom Beethoven Competition in Bonn.

Matti

Raekallio

Finnish pianist Matti Raekallio was born in Helsinki in 1954. He first studied in his home country, and subsequently with Maria Curcio in London, with Dieter Weber at the Vienna Academy of Music, and finally at the St. Petersburg Conservatory.
In 1981 Mr. Raekallio made his American debut at the Carnegie Hall in New York. In his concerts, he has performed cycles of the complete piano Sonatas of Beethoven, Scriabin, and Prokofiev, as well as altogether 62 piano concertos. He has made about 20 CDs, including an acclaimed set of the complete Prokofiev Sonatas.
For 30 years, he has taught at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, while also temporarily working as professor in Kungliga Musikhögskolan in Stockholm, Sweden, and at Western Michigan University, USA. In 2005, Mr. Raekallio became professor of the University of Music, Drama and Media Hanover, Germany. Two years later, he received the invitation to join the faculty of The Juilliard School in New York. From 2012 to 2014, he also worked as professor at Bard College Conservatory in New York State. His students include several first prizewinners in major international competitions. He regularly serves as a juror in them, and gives master classes in the USA, Europe and Asia.

In 2009, he became Honorary Doctor of the Estonian Academy of Music.

Jacques

Rouvier

Jacques Rouvier was born in Marseille in 1947. In 1965 and 1967, he received the highest graduating grade of First Prize in Piano and in Chamber Music at the National Conservatory in Paris. He studied with Vlado Perlemuter, Jean Fassina and Jean Hubeau and was awarded prizes at renowned competitions such as Viotti in Vercelli, Maria Canals in Barcelona and Long-Thibaud in Paris.

In 1970, he founded the Trio Rouvier-Kantorow-Muller, which continues to perform today. In 1979, he received an appointment as a professor at the National Conservatory in Paris and since then has been invited to teach masterclasses all over the world. Jacques Rouvier has concertized and taught, particularly in Japan and South Korea, for many years with great success. In addition to his teaching position in Paris, he has assumed a position as a professor at the University of the Arts in Berlin.
Many of his students, including such internationally famous artists as Arcadi Volodos and Hélène Grimaud, have won prizes at international competitions and today are themselves recognized representatives of the musical life of our times. Jacques Rouvier‘s recordings on record and CD have been highly acclaimed by the public and have received many awards such as Grand Prix du Disque and Grand Prix du Disque Français. Jacques Rouvier is considered one of the world's profoundest and stylistically most confident connoisseurs of the entire piano repertoire.

Arie

Vardi

The Israeli-born pianist Arie Vardi began his career as a performer at the age of 15. After winning the Israeli Chopin Competition, he performed with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra under Zubin Mehta. After emerging as the winner of the Enescu Competition in Bucharest, he received many concert engagements in Europe. Despite these considerable obligations, Arie Vardi continued his piano studies in Basel with Paul Baumgartner and enrolled in composition classes with Pierre Boulez and Karl-Heinz Stockhausen. He has given guest performances worldwide with major orchestras directed by prominent conductors such as Bychkov, Masur, Paray and Zinman. His concert tours as a soloist brought him to Western and Eastern Europe, the United States, Asia and Australia. He has played the complete piano concertos of Bach and Mozart and has the complete repertoire of Debussy and Ravel at his command. His CDs with RCA have received international awards.
Arie Vardi, regarded as one of the world’s leading piano pedagogues, is Professor of Piano at the University of Music, Drama and Media in Hanover and at the Rubin Academy of Music of the Tel Aviv University. Over thirty of his students have won first prizes at international competitions. His many successes have led him to become one of the most sought-after professors and jurors of our time.