Artist(s)

ELISABETH BRAUß

Born in 1995, Elisabeth Brauß studied in the classes of Elena Levit, Matti Raekallio, and Bernd Goetzke at the Hannover University of Music, Theatre and Media. She has given performances at the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg, in the Tonhalle Zurich, in the Barbican Centre in London, at
the Konzerthaus Berlin, at the Heidelberg Spring Festival, at Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival, and at the Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Festival. As a soloist, she has performed with orchestras such as Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, and the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen. In addition to first prizes at the International Steinway Competition in Hamburg and at the International Grotrian Steinweg Piano Competition in Braunschweig, she was also awarded the Lower Saxony Prätorus Music Prize in 2012. She went on to win first prize at the TONALi Grand Prix in Hamburg in 2012, first prize in the “Sound and Explanation” competition in Frankfurt in 2015, and the KlavierOlymp in Bad Kissingen in 2016. In 2019 she gave her first performance at the Ruhr Piano Festival.

GIUSEPPE GUARRERA
Born in Sicily, Giuseppe Guarrera has been studying in the class of Nelson Goerner at the Berlin Barenboim-Said Academy since 2018, after having previously studied in Italy and at the Hanns Eisler University of Music in Berlin. Appearances with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Vasily Petrenko, with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra of London, the Orchestre Symphonique de Montreal, and the Orchestra of La Fenice (Venice) under Dmitri Kitaenko have been some of the highlights of his career. For the inaugural concert of the new Pierre Boulez Auditorium in Berlin, Giuseppe Guarrera premièred a new piano concerto by Benjamin Attahir with the Pierre Boulez Ensemble conducted by Daniel Barenboim. Guarrera has also performed in Brussels, in Paris, at the Sony Auditorium in Madrid, at the Teatro La Fenice in Venice, at the Verdi Theatre in Trieste and at the Bologna Festival. During his studies, Guarrera won a series of distinctions including 2nd Prize at the James Mottram Competition in Manchester (2015) and 1st Prize at the Concorso Nazionale Premio in Venice (2010). He has actively participated in masterclasses given by masters of their craft including Daniel Barenboim, Ferenc Rados, Sergei Babayan, and Michel Beroff; he also worked as the assistant of Eberhard Feltz at Hanns Eisler University and as the assistant of Nelson Goerner at the Barenboim-Said Academy. In 2018, Elena Bashkirova selected him as that year’s Festival Scholarship holder, which led to his début at the Festival in 2019.

GIUSEPPE GUARRERA
Born in Sicily, Giuseppe Guarrera has been studying in the class of Nelson Goerner at the Berlin Barenboim-Said Academy since 2018, after having previously studied in Italy and at the Hanns Eisler University of Music in Berlin. Appearances with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Vasily Petrenko, with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra of London, the Orchestre Symphonique de Montreal, and the Orchestra of La Fenice (Venice) under Dmitri Kitaenko have been some of the highlights of his career. For the inaugural concert of the new Pierre Boulez Auditorium in Berlin, Giuseppe Guarrera premièred a new piano concerto by Benjamin Attahir with the Pierre Boulez Ensemble conducted by Daniel Barenboim. Guarrera has also performed in Brussels, in Paris, at the Sony Auditorium in Madrid, at the Teatro La Fenice in Venice, at the Verdi Theatre in Trieste and at the Bologna Festival. During his studies, Guarrera won a series of distinctions including 2nd Prize at the James Mottram Competition in Manchester (2015) and 1st Prize at the Concorso Nazionale Premio in Venice (2010). He has actively participated in masterclasses given by masters of their craft including Daniel Barenboim, Ferenc Rados, Sergei Babayan, and Michel Beroff; he also worked as the assistant of Eberhard Feltz at Hanns Eisler University and as the assistant of Nelson Goerner at the Barenboim-Said Academy. In 2018, Elena Bashkirova selected him as that year’s Festival Scholarship holder, which led to his début at the Festival in 2019.

ALEXANDER ULLMAN
Alexander Ullman gained international attention in 2011 when he won the International Franz Liszt
Competition in Budapest. Born in London in 1991, he studied at the Purcell School, at the Curtis Institute
in Philadelphia, and at the Royal College of Music back in London, where he concluded his studies in 2017
with an Artist Diploma as a Benjamin Britten Piano Fellow. His teachers have included Leon Fleisher, Ignat
Solchenizyn, Robert McDonald, and Dmitri Alexeev. Ullmann has performed at Wigmore Hall and Queen
Elizabeth Hall in London, at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, the Gewandhaus in Leipzig, Kimmel Center
in Philadelphia, Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., at theSeoul Arts Centre, at the Oriental Arts Centre in
Shanghai, and at the NCPA in Beijing. He has performed piano concertos with the Philadelphia Orchestra,
the London Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, the Dutch Radio Filharmonisch Orkest, the Saint Petersburg
Philharmonic, Budapest RSO, and Korean Symphony Orchestra, under the baton of conductors including
Vladimir Ashkenazy, Giancarlo Guerrero, and Markus Stenz. He gave his first performance at the Ruhr Piano
Festival in 2019.

LAUREN ZHANG
Born in Albuquerque, NM in 2001, Lauren Zhang started learning the piano when she was four years old. At
the age of six she also started receiving violin lessons: even after her family moved to the United Kingdom
when she was eight, she has continued to play both instruments until today. Lauren Zhang was accepted as
a young talent by the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, and she has also actively participated in a number of
masterclasses. She was fourteen when she won First Prize at the International Competition for Young Pianists
held in Ettlingen (Germany). Two years later she won First Prize at the renowned BBC Young Musicians
Competition. 2019 marked the year when she gave her first performance at the Ruhr Piano Festival.

Composer(s)

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