Meet our 2023 Pianists & Adjudicators
Lewis Eady International Piano Festival [LEIPF]
6-10 December 2023 | Auckland
Supported by Lewis Eady Steinway NZ
CHIRON GROUP NZ
The Lewis Eady International Piano Festival presents recitals from concert pianists, masterclasses and workshops.
Overall, an exciting and enriching event for pianists and piano enthusiasts alike.
Antonio Pompa-Baldi Adjudicator
ITALY - Steinway Artist
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Born and raised in Foggia, Italy, Antonio Pompa-Baldi won the Cleveland International Piano Competition in 1999 and embarked on a multifaceted career that continues to extend across five continents. A top prize winner at the 1998 Marguerite Long-Jacques Thibaud Competition of Paris, France, Pompa-Baldi won a silver medal at the 2001 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition.
Mr. Pompa-Baldi appears at the world’s major concert venues including New York’s Carnegie Hall, Cleveland’s SeveranceHall, Milan’s SalaVerdi, Boston’s Symphony Hall, Shanghai’s GrandTheatre, and Paris ’Salle Pleyel, to name a few. He has collaborated with leading conductors, including Hans Graf, James Conlon, Miguel Harth-Bedoya, Theodore Kuchar, Benjamin Zander, Louis Lane, and Keith Lockhart. He has performed with colleagues such as Takacs String Quartet, Alison Balsom, Sharon Robinson, and principals of the Cleveland Orchestra, Dallas Symphony, New York Philharmonic, and Juilliard Quartet, among others.
Pompa-Baldi has recorded over 30 CDs to date for various labels, including Centaur Records, Harmonia Mundi, Steinway, Two Pianists, Azica, and Brilliant Classics. Antonio Pompa-Baldi is a Steinway Artist since 2003. He is one of ten invited to judge international piano competitions such as the Cleveland, HiltonHead, E-Competition (Minneapolis), BNDES Rio de Janeiro, and Edward Grieg (Bergen), among others. He serves as president of the jury and artistic advisor for the San Jose International Piano Competition since 2006. Pompa-Baldi is on the Piano Faculty of the Cleveland Institute of Music, where he is also head of the piano department. In 2023, he was named Vice Director for Education at the Lang Lang Art World organiSation in Hangzhou, China and an advisory board member of the Lang Lang International Piano Foundation in New York City. In 2015, Pompa-Baldi founded the Todi International Music Masters Festival, of which he is also an Artistic Director and Faculty Member. This summer festival takes place every August in the beautiful Italian town of Todi. It features internationally renowned faculty members and students from all over the world.
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Liszt: Ballade No. 2, in B minor
Roberto Piana: “Glances on the Divine Comedy” (2021)
Part One: Inferno
I. Mosé
II. Cleopatra
III. Cerbero
IV. Fortuna
V. Messo Celeste
VI. Epicuro
VII. Arpie
VIII. Penelope
IX. LuciferoIntermission
Chopin: Polonaise-Fantaisie, op. 61
Rachmaninoff: Variations on a theme of Corelli, op. 42
Bach - Busoni: Chaconne in D minor
Read Gainsford Adjudicator
NZ/USA
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Pianist Read Gainsford has been described as possessing “finger-numbing virtuosity and delicately chiselled precision”. Born in New Zealand, he has performed widely in the USA, Europe, Asia, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa as solo recitalist, concerto soloist and chamber musician, making successful solo debuts in Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall and London’s Wigmore Hall, as well as playing in the Kennedy Center, St Martin-in-the-Fields, Queen Elizabeth Hall, and others. Recent highlights include performing concertos with the Moravian Philharmonic Orchestra in Olomouc, Czechia, the Frenz ensemble in Paris, and Orchestra da Camera in Champaign-Urbana, and tours across the USA, including a fourth concert in Carnegie Hall.
Gainsford was a founding member of Trio Solis, was a member of the Garth Newel Chamber Players, and is currently a member of the Serafin Chamber Players. He has collaborated with the Audubon and Serafin Quartets, Pressenda Chamber Players, Aaron Berofsky, Kathryn Votapek, Richard Stoltzman, Jacques Zoon, Ricardo Morales, and many others.
A keen supporter of living composers, he has premiered and recorded Ladislav Kubik’s 3rd Piano Concerto and Marc Satterwhite’s Five Rivers of Hades and recorded Ellen Taafe Zwilich’s Images for two pianos and orchestra.
Highly in demand as a master-class clinician and teacher, he is Professor of Piano at Florida State University. He is delighted to return to the International Piano Festival in Auckland, having taken part previously in 2016.
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Liliya Ugay:
Raqs (2020)
Carillons à Musique (2017)
Schumann:
Kreisleriana, op. 16
Äusserst bewegt (extremely animated)
Sehr innig und nicht zu rasch (Very inwardly and not too fast)
Sehr aufgeregt (very agitated)
Sehr langsam (very slow)
Sehr lebhaft (very lively)
Sehr langsam (very slow)
Sehr rasch (very fast)
Schnell und spielend (fast and playful)
Intermission
Rachmaninoff:
Thirteen Preludes, op. 32
1 in C Major
2 in B-flat Minor
3 in E Major
4 in E Minor
5 in G Major
6 in F Minor
7 in F Major
8 in A Minor
9 in A Major
10 in B Minor
11 in B Major
12 in G-sharp Minor
13 in D-flat Major
Natalia Ricci Adjudicator
AUS
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Australian-born pianist Natalia Ricci enjoys a successful career as a chamber musician, soloist, and teacher, having performed and recorded internationally over the past 40 years in the USA, Canada, Scandinavia, Australia, New Zealand and throughout Europe.
Natalia has made many recordings for the BBC, ABC, Canadian, Italian, Norwegian and New Zealand national radios. She has also appeared in live concert telecasts in Italy, Norway, Spain and Australia. She has performed in international music festivals such as the Sydney Festival, Banff Summer Chamber Music Festival, Canada, the International Festival of Spanish Music and Dance, ‘Encuentros Españoles’, the International Bartok Festival, Hungary, the Gradus International Music Festival, Spain, the London Objective Music Festival, UK, the Deia International Festival, Mallorca and the Sydney Symphony Contemporary Music Festival.As a collaborative artist, Natalia is especially recognised for her work with string players. She has been associate artist to renowned musicians such as Ruggiero Ricci, Leonid Gorokhov, Kolja Blacher and Adelina Oprean.
Natalia holds the position of Senior Lecturer in Piano at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. Also, she leads the Piano Division of the Open Academy Rising Stars pre-tertiary performance program. She is a dedicated and sought-after teacher whose students have been major prize-winners in many prestigious international and national competitions and who have also been invited to play at such prestigious venues as Carnegie Hall and the Sydney Opera House.
She is a renowned specialist in Spanish music and founded ‘Encuentros Españoles’, a ground-breaking International Festival exploring the links between Spanish Piano Music and its flamenco roots. The most recent edition of Encuentros Españoles in September 2022, dedicated to the three great Spanish nationalist composers de Falla, Granados and Albeniz, featured a series of concerts and workshops at the SCM celebrating their music, including the complete cycles of Goyescas and Albeniz’s masterpiece, Iberia.
Natalia is frequently invited to lecture and give masterclasses abroad (in South America, Europe and New Zealand), interstate and in regional NSW and to adjudicate in national and international piano competitions.
Otis Prescott-Mason
NZ
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Otis Prescott-Mason is a Wellington-born pianist and a classical performance student at Victoria University of Wellington's New Zealand School of Music. He began his piano studies with Erin Taylor at the age of five before studying with Emma Sayers from 2018 to 2020. Otis has been studying under his current teacher, Dr. Jian Liu, since 2018. He has also had lessons with Edith Fischer, Boris Berman, Antti Siirala, Jan Jiracek von Arnim, Christopher Elton, Graham Scott, Christian Pohl, James Giles, Louis Schwizgebel, Daniel Lebhardt, Marina Lomazov, Jerry Wong and Rena Shereshevskaya.
In 2022, Otis was awarded 1st prize, Best Performance of a Classical Sonata, and the Audience Choice Award at the Lewis Eady National Piano Competition, and later, during the same year, he was awarded 1st prize at the PACANZ National Piano Competition. Otis was also awarded 1st prize at the 2020 New Zealand Junior Piano Competition.
Otis has performed in many music festivals in New Zealand and abroad, including the Whakatipu Music Festival, At World's Edge Festival, New Zealand International Music Festival, and the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. He has also collaborated with several orchestras in New Zealand, such as the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra, Orchestra Wellington, Wellington Chamber Orchestra, and Kapiti Concert Orchestra.
Through the generous sponsorship of Professor Jack C. Richards, Otis was fortunate to travel to Switzerland to attend the 2022 Semaine Internationale de Piano in Blonay. He was invited to return to the 2023 edition of the festival where, supported again by Professor Richards, in August, he gave a solo recital.
In 2023, Otis was one of the inaugural recipients of the recently redesigned ROSL Pettman Scholarship. This scholarship allowed him to travel to Europe for two months to attend several piano festivals, benefit from many private lessons, and complete a UK concert residency in which he collaborated with Benjamin Baker, Daniel Lebhardt, and fellow ROSL Pettman recipient Jack Moyer.
Otis is excited to be giving a solo recital at the Lewis Eady International Piano Festival, presenting a programme that explores the journey from minor to parallel major, culminating in Liszt's B minor Sonata.
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Scarlatti: K.213 + K.214
Bortkiewicz: Nos.1-4 from Lamentations and Consolations, Op.17
Scriabin: Four Preludes, Op. 22
Scriabin: Sonata No.5, Op 53
Intermission
Mozart: Adagio in B minor, K.540
Liszt: Sonata in B minor, S.178
2020 Lewis Eady National Junior Piano Competition - 1st Prize
2022 Lewis Eady National Piano Competition awarded 1st Prize, Best Performance of a Classical Sonata, and the Audience Choice Award