Jury

Misha Nodelman is a master violinist who joined the Russian musical elite at an early age. His effortless masterful violin playing and deep musicality makes every concert with him an event. Misha Nodelman is first concertmaster of the New Philharmonic Orchestra of Westphalia, an international prize winner and has been teaching as an assistant to Prof. Zakhar Bron in Cologne since 2006.

Misha Nodelman was born in 1977 in St. Petersburg into a family of musicians. He attracted attention at an early age due to his extraordinary talent. After winning first prize at the Young Talents Competition in St. Petersburg, he received top-class Russian violin training at the St. Petersburg Conservatory, first at the special music school there for highly gifted children, then under Prof. Ovcharek.
During this time he became the winner of the violin competition of the “Gartow Foundation” St. Petersburg. With the string quartet “Modus” he won the third prize at the competition of the Munich Concert Association. He was also a member of the chamber orchestra “Saint-Petersburg Kamerata” under Saulius Sondeckies.

His path then led him to one of the most famous violin teachers of our time, Zakhar Bron in Cologne.
During this period he became a laureate of the 1st International Liana Issakadze Violin Competition and received the first prize as well as the special prize at the International Violin Competition Eurasia-2. He became a scholarship holder of the Oscar and Vera Ritter Foundation. Misha Nodelman completed his studies with the concert exam.

Misha Nodelman performs regularly as a soloist and chamber musician. As concertmaster of the Neue Philharmonie Westfalen, he is familiar with the workings of a large orchestra. An experience that makes him even more valuable as a soloist.
He leads the Nodelman Quartet, which brilliantly and expressively interprets classical music literature.
In the meantime, the Nodelman Quartet is one of the best string quartets in Germany. In addition to the concert stage, the Nodelman Quartet repeatedly stands out through peace projects, such as the nationally acclaimed multimedia project “Threnody for the Victims of Ukraine”, or “Klingende Stolpersteine”, an artistic project of the Nodelman Quartet against forgetting.

Since winter semester 2022/23, Misha Nodelman is a lecturer for violin at the International Music Academy Anton Rubinstein in Düsseldorf.

Yamei Yu is a laureate of numerous international violin competitions, including the Tibor Varga Competition in Sion, Switzerland, the Louis Spohr Competition in Freiburg, the Leopold Mozart Competition in Augsburg, and the ARD Competition in Munich. As a soloist, she has performed with renowned conductors such as Ivor Bolton, Vladimir Jurowski, Pavel Baleff, Yakov Kreizberg, Shao-Chia Lü, Lord Yehudi Menuhin, Kent Nagano, Ulf Schirmer, and Sebastian Weigle.

Her concert engagements include appearances at prestigious festivals such as the Richard Strauss Festival in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, the Ravinia Festival in Chicago, the Schubertiades in Schwarzenberg and Vilabertran/Barcelona, the Roskilde Festival in Denmark, the Berliner Festwochen, the Leipzig Bach Festival, the Stuttgart Bach Weeks, the Ludwigsburg Festival, the Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Music Festival, the Festival van Vlaanderen, the International Chamber Music Festival in Stavanger, the Oslo Chamber Music Festival, the Salzburg Festival, and the Crete Senesi Festival in Italy.

In addition, she has performed in prominent concert halls such as the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, the Berlin Philharmonie, the Schauspielhaus Berlin, the Staatsoper, the Herkulessaal and the Isarphilharmonie in Munich, the Wiener Konzerthaus, Wigmore Hall in London, and the Auditorio Nacional de Música in Madrid.

Since 2009, Yamei Yu has been a professor at the Robert Schumann Hochschule in Düsseldorf, where she leads a highly successful violin class. Many of her students have won prizes at international violin competitions and hold positions in major orchestras.

Yamei Yu plays a violin made by Goffriller, dating from 1730.

Yuri Bondarev, born in St. Petersburg, switched to the viola after studying violin at the Hanns Eisler Academy of Music in Berlin and was accepted into the class of Prof. Tatjana Masurenko at the Leipzig Academy of Music, where he also took his concert exam. Regular solo and chamber music performances have taken him to Austria, Italy, France, Greece, Sweden, Denmark, Holland and Japan. He has played in various ensembles including the Vienna Musikverein, the Leipzig Gewandhaus and the Milan Conservatory, the Alte Oper Frankfurt and the Tonhalle Düsseldorf.

He gained his first important orchestral experience with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra and the Vienna Philharmonic with conductors such as Riccardo Chailly, Kurt Masur, Daniel Harding, Dmitrij Kitajenko, Christopher Hogwood, Herbert Blomstedt and others. Since 2009 he has played as deputy principal violist with the Düsseldorf Symphony Orchestra.

Since 2012 he has been teaching violin, viola and chamber music at the Anton Rubinstein International Music Academy in Düsseldorf.