Jury

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.

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.

Ilya Grubert was born in Riga, Latvia. He began his studies at the E.Darzin School of Music in Riga. Considered a student of exceptional falent, at the age of fifteen, the late Yuri Yankelevich, a renowned violin pedagogue of world fame, recognised Ilya’s exceptional talent and invited him into his school in Moscow and later at the Moscow Conservatory. He continued his studies with the famous Russian teachers Yuri Yankelevich and Zinaida Gilels at the Central Music School in Moscow, and then under renowned violinist Leonid Kogan at the Moscow conservatory. Ilya Grubert graduated with a doctorate in 1980. He earned his first international success at the Sibelius Competition in Helsinki in 1975. Subsequently, he won first prize in two prestigious international competitions, the Paganini Competition in Genova and the Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow in 1978.
He then embarked on a highly successful career and performed with exceptional talented pianist Naum Grubert and manny distinguished orchestras such as the Moscow Philharmonic, St Petersburg Philharmonic, the Russian State Orchestra, Dresden Staatskapelle, Rotterdam Philharmonic, Helsinki Philharmonic, Leningrad Philharmonic, BBC Welsh Symphony, New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, The Vienna Symphony Orchestra, The English String Orchestra, l’Orchestre d’Auvergne, etc. He has worked eminent conductors such as Mariss Jansons, Gennady Rozhdesvensky, Voldemar Nelson, Jaap van Zweden, Pavel Kogan, Vasilij Sinaisky, Mark Wigglesworth and Maxim Shostakovich and many more. His concerts and recitals have included tours in the United States, Canada, Australia and throughout Europe. His New York recital debut was greeted with much acclaim by the New York Times, which called him “a musician of exceptional talent in the tradition of the great virtuoso’s, possessed of an unwavering tone and extraordinary technique”
Ilya Grubert has a prolific discography which includes much of the main stream repertoire and also some lesser known works. In January 1996, he won the Golden Tuning Fork award for his performance of Sibelius and Bruch concertos. He has recorded for major recording companies such as RCA, Naxos, Chandos, Channel Classics and Ondine with a repertoire that includes the Sibelius, Tchaikovsky and Bruch Paganini 1 and 2 concertos and all Prokofiev’s violin compositions. His most recent recording released by Naxos is violin music by Heinrich Willem Ernst, which includes the Concertino, the Rondo Papageno and the Othello Fantasy – played in its original version with orchestra, which had never been recorded before. Also his recording of Mjaskovsklj and Weinberg violin concerts got enthusiastic reviews.
Ilya Grubert now lives in Holland and is a professor at the Amsterdam Conservatory. He is professor in Portogruaro winter academy (Italy) and University of Minho (Portugal) His students are very successfully in national and international competitions He plays a 1740 violin by Pietro Guarneri of Venice, formerly the property of Wieniawski.