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.

Internationally regarded pedagogue, Dr Robin Wilson is Professor of Violin at the Royal Academy of Music in London and the Yehudi Menuhin School UK and in 2023-24 was visiting Professor of Violin at the Mozarteum University Salzburg. He regularly serves on the faculty of the Keshet Eilon International String Mastercourse in Israel, Valdres Sommersymfoni in Norway and Morningside Music Bridge at The New England Conservatory in Boston. Previously he has held appointments as Head of Violin at The Australian National Academy of Music and Lecturer in Violin at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, the University of Queensland and The Australian Institute of Music.
Robin has given masterclasses throughout Australasia, Asia, Israel, Europe, UK and the USA and his students are major prizewinners of international competitions, perform internationally as soloists and hold principal and tutti positions with many major orchestras. He is regularly invited to serve on the jury of international competitions. In 2018 he received a National Award from the Australian String Teachers Association for outstanding services to the string community in Australia.
Robin has performed at major venues and festivals throughout Australia, USA and the UK, is regularly broadcast on all the major radio stations throughout Australasia, and has released solo and chamber music recordings on Decca, ABC Classics, Vexations840 and VDE-Gallo. A member of the acclaimed Ironwood ensemble who have toured internationally, he is a former leader of the ARCO Chamber Orchestra and member of the Australian Octet, and has appeared as guest violinist with many leading Australian ensembles.
Robin’s research into the performance practice of Brahms’s music was awarded the prestigious Geiringer Prize from the American Brahms Society and he has presented lectures and recitals at major institutions throughout the US and UK, including Stanford and Yale Universities.
Robin studied in Sydney with Alice Waten and Janet Davies, and with James Buswell at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston. He plays a violin made by the Gagliano family in Naples in 1784.

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.

Michael Blatow is a violinist and graduate of the St Petersburg State Conservatory “N. A. Rimsky-Korsakov”. He was a member of the Aachen Symphony Orchestra from 1981 to 2019.

In 2002, he founded the Anton Rubinstein International Music Academy. During this period, Michael Blatow was able to continuously expand the Academy’s range of Bachelor’s and Master’s degree programmes through collaborations with music academies in Italy, the Netherlands and Switzerland. In 2014, he opened a branch of the Anton Rubinstein International Academy of Music in Berlin.

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.