Jury – Pianists

Soloist, chamber musician, teacher. He has won prizes at some of the most prestigious international piano competitions: Third Prize at the Eleventh International Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw (1985), prizes at piano contests in Milan (1980, Fifth Prize), Palm Beach (1988, First Prize and a prize for the best performance of works by Fryderyk Chopin), Monza (1988, First Prize), Dublin (1988, Second Prize), New York (1989, Jorge Bolet Special Prize), Calgary (1992, Second Prize) and the Gold Medal at the Anton Rubinstein Competition in Tel Aviv (1989).  

Jabłoński has performed in Europe, the Americas, Asia and Israel. He has given recitals in a series of master concerts at the Berlin Philharmonic Hall. He has appeared with such ensembles as the Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century, Berner Symphonie-Orchester, Radio-Sinfonieorchester Stuttgart des SWR, Düsseldorfer Symphoniker, Hamburger Symphoniker, Jenaer Philharmonie, Festival Orchestra of the Grand Teton Music Festival, Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra, Lahti Symphony Orchestra, Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra, Kirishima Festival Orchestra, National Philharmonic Orchestra in Warsaw and Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra in Katowice. His performances have been conducted by such maestros as Andrey Boreyko, Krzysztof Penderecki, Jerzy Maksymiuk, Jerzy Semkow, Antoni Wit, Witold Rowicki, Jan Krenz and Frans Brüggen. Krzysztof Jabłoński has also been passionate about chamber music performing on the piano alongside such accomplished instrumentalists as Tsuyoshi Tsutsumi, Arto Noras, Konstanty Andrzej Kulka, Tomasz Strahl, Teng Li, Tamaki Kawakubo, Jing Zhao, Roberto Díaz and Daniel Gaede. He has also collaborated with Kwintet Warszawski. 

 The artist has recorded a dozen or so albums released in Poland, Germany and Japan. In the next few years, he will record the complete works by Fryderyk Chopin performed on modern and period instruments in a project commissioned by the Fryderyk Chopin Institute. 

 Jabłoński was appointed as head of the Faculty of Piano and Keyboard Instruments at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen in China in 2022. Previously, he taught piano at the academies of music in Wrocław, Katowice and Warsaw. He also lectured at Mount Royal University in Calgary and the University of Calgary. He has also been a lecturer, masterclass instructor and jury member at international piano competitions. He received the title of professor in 2006. 

Pianist, teacher and organiser of musical events. He has won prizes at prestigious competitions, including the Ferruccio Busoni Competition in Bolzano, the UNISA Piano Competition in Pretoria (the Estelle Zwick Prize), a Grand Prix at the Concorso Pianistico Internazionale in Marsala, Sicily and a Grand Prix and four special prizes at the Concurso Internacional de Musica in Porto.  

 The artist graduated with distinction from the Ignacy Jan Paderewski Academy of Music in Poznań. In 1986-1988, he was a trainee assistant of Victor Merzhanov at the Moscow State Tchaikovsky Conservatory. Since 1998, he has been a professor of the Feliks Nowowiejski Academy of Music in Bydgoszcz and he has also conducted master classes throughout Poland, as well as in Kyiv, Dnipro, Moscow, Narva, Porto and Lviv. 

  He has appeared in concert in Europe, the United States, Canada, Japan and South Africa. He has also performed in a piano duo with his wife, the distinguished pianist Tatiana Shebanova. His rich recording output comprises 11 albums with music by such composers as Karol Szymanowski, Fryderyk Chopin, Witold Lutosławski, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Johann Sebastian Bach. He has recorded for Polskie Nagrania, DUX, Pony Canyon and Blüthner Classic. For his CD albums, he has received two nominations for the ‘Fryderyk’ Music Award in 2002 and 2006. Jarosław Drzewiecki has frequently sat on the jury of the following music competitions: the Maurycy Moszkowski International Competition ‘Per aspera ad astra’ in Kielce, the Miłosz Magin Competition in Łódź, the Fryderyk Chopin Competition of Polish and Ukrainian Music in Dnipro and the International Baltic Chopin Competition in Narva. He has also been a jury member at the competitions in Kropyvnytskyi, Druskininkai, Gomel, Banská Bystrica, Moscow, Kyiv, Copenhagen, Porto, Prague and Lviv.  

 Jarosław Drzewiecki initiated a number of special cultural enterprises, such as the European Festival of the Music Academies in Warsaw and the International Master Competition for Music Teachers, as well as the Wawer Music Festival in Warsaw. He is the chairman of the Podkarpacka Fundacja Rozwoju Kultury (Podkarpacka Foundation for the Development of Culture), which is the organiser of the International Piano Forum ‘Bieszczady Without Frontiers’ (‘Bieszczady bez granic’) in Sanok. In 2005, he received the Order of the White Star from the hands of the President of Estonia, and in 2013 an honorary degree from the Mykola Lysenko National Academy of Music in Lviv. In 2018, he was awarded the Silver Medal ‘Labor Omnia Vincit’ of the Hipolit Cegielski Society and the Medal and Title of ‘The Friend of the Children’s Memorial Health Institute’. 

Pianist performing throughout Europe as a soloist, chamber musician and Lied accompanist. He is one of the most versatile and distinguished musicians of his generation, fascinated by the expressive potential of period keyboard instruments, such as the fortepiano, the harpsichord, the clavichord or the organ. He has been considered one of the leading interpreters in the field of Romantic performance practice and gained international renown for his pioneering recording of complete piano works by Robert Schumann.  

Koch has performed with such musicians as Andreas Staier, Gottfried von der Goltz, Steven Isserlis, Dorothea Mields, Markus Schäfer, Frieder Bernius, and orchestras such as Collegium 1704 and Concerto Köln. He also collaborates closely with instrument makers, restoration specialists and major instrument museums. He teaches at the Robert Schumann Hochschule in Düsseldorf and at the academies in Verbier and Montepulciano. He has appeared in more than 200 radio and television productions, and has brought out over 25 albums with music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Franz Schubert, Felix Mendelssohn, Norbert Burgmüller, Fryderyk Chopin, Ferenc Liszt, Ferdinand Hiller, Richard Wagner and Johannes Brahms, as well as an extensive collection of publications. In his concert practice, he only ever uses authentic period instruments.  

Tobias Koch is regularly invited to major music festivals: in Ludwigsburg (Schlossfestspiele), Bonn (Beethoven Festival), Düsseldorf (Schumannfestival), Leipzig (Mendelssohn Festival) and other places. He made his Warsaw debut in 2013 appearing at the ‘Chopin and His Europe’ festival with a recital of Polish nineteenth-century music. Soon after, the Fryderyk Chopin Institute released his album titled Pożegnanie Ojczyzny, and he has been invited to every edition of the festival in Warsaw ever since. In September 2018, the artist was a jury member at the First International Chopin Competition on Period Instruments.

British pianist, soloist and chamber musician, Jonathan was a gold medallist at the Royal Academy of Music upon graduation in 1983. He was a recipient of a Fulbright Scholarship and numerous prizes at music competitions, including the gold medal at the Royal Overseas League Competition and first prize at the European Piano Competition. Praised by critics and audiences alike, he has performed worldwide as a recitalist and with many leading orchestras and ensembles, such as the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, the BBC Concert Orchestra and the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra (Narodowa Orkiestra Symfoniczna Polskiego Radia). 

Jonathan Plowright has become known as an ambassador of the Polish Romantic repertoire, recording both popular and less well known music by Polish composers. His recordings released by the labels Hyperion, BIS, Dux and Warner have won accolades such as Preis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik, Gramophone Editor’s Choice, BBC Music Magazine Choice, Diapason d’Or, FonoForum Tipp, CD of the Week on Classic FM, ABC Classic FM, the Daily Telegraph and Sunday Times, and nominations for Gramophone and International Classical Music Awards.   

His two albums with works by Zygmunt Stojowski helped a wider reception of and interest in the composer’s musical legacy and met with wide critical acclaim.  He released solo albums commemorating the 200th and 150th anniversaries of Chopin and Paderewski, Hommage à Chopin and Homage to Paderewski.   He has also released CDs of music by such composers as Michał Bergson (World Premiere Recording of newly discovered Concerto), Jerzy Gablenz (World Premiere Commercial Recording), Henryk Melcer, Ignacy Paderewski, Władysław Żeleński and Aleksander Zarzycki. Collaborating with the Karol Szymanowski Quartet, Jonathan Plowright has made recordings of chamber works by Ignacy Friedman, Ludomir Różycki, Juliusz Zarębski and Władysław Żeleński.   

Jonathan was on the Keyboard Faculty of the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, and is often invited to give masterclasses, consultation lessons and prize adjudications at competitions and international conservatoires.  In 2013 he was made a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Music. 

Pianist, soloist and chamber musician. He won the International Chopin Competition in Hanover in 2007 and received the honourable mention ‘Medalla per Unanimitat’ at the Maria Canals International Piano Competition in Barcelona in 2006. In 2013, he was given the prestigious Berenberg-Kulturpreis award in Hamburg. He was the first pianist to perform a concert on Chopin’s rediscovered Pleyel piano (No. 13214) in commemoration of the composer’s birthday on 1 March 2021.  

Rutkowski graduated from the Fryderyk Chopin Academy of Music in Warsaw, where he studied with Prof. Anna Jastrzębska-Quinn. In 2005-2010, he was a postgraduate student of Evgeni Koroliov at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Hamburg.Hubert Rutkowski’s interpretations are influenced by his passion for the old-school, nineteenth-century aesthetics. The basis for the development of his artistic profile lies in the pianistic traditions of Fryderyk Chopin, Teodor Leszetycki and their successors, such as Karol Mikuli, Moritz Rosenthal, Raul Koczalski and Artur Schnabel. 

An important moment in Hubert Rutkowski’s career was the recording of obscure piano works by Julian Fontana and compositions by Teodor Leszetycki for the Acte Préalable label (2007, 2008). In the Chopin Year 2010, Naxos released his album titled Pupils of Chopin. Ever since that time, the artist has kept a busy concert schedule travelling across Europe and to Asia, Latin America and the United States of America. He has appeared at numerous festivals, e.g. the Schleswig Holstein Music Festival, Husum Klavierfestival, Ars Longa Music Festival in Moscow, Mozart Festival in Warsaw, Paderewski Festival in Paso Robles (USA), Artur Rubinstein Festival in Łódź and International Paderewski Festival in Warsaw. He has played alongside some of the most renowned musicians and conductors, such as Lilya Zilberstein, Łukasz Borowicz, Alexei Lubimov, Severin von Eckardstein, Martin Haselböck and Jamie Phillips. 

In recent years, Hubert Rutkowski has been fascinated with and dedicated to performing on period pianos. He has recorded works by Debussy on an 1880 Erard instrument (2013) and Chopin’s music on an 1847 Pleyel piano (2018) released by Piano Classics. 

Hubert Rutkowski serves as artistic director of the Chopin Festival in Hamburg, and he has been the initiator and director of the Teodor Leszetycki International Piano Competition held at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Hamburg. 

In April 2010, he became one of the youngest professors in Germany to win the professorship at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Hamburg, where he has also taught piano and, since 2014, been in charge of the Piano Department. 

Pianist, solo and chamber musician. She graduated from the Lithuanian Academy of Music, studying under Prof. Olga Šteinbergaitė. In 1989-1991, she completed a postgraduate course at the Pyotr Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow, where she studied with some renowned teachers, such as Lev Vlassenko, Mikhail Pletnev and Mykola Suk. She furthered her education in Germany and Switzerland with such professors as Bernard Ringeissen, Rudolf Buchbinder and Karl-Heinz Kämmerling. She was a prize winner at the M.K. Čiurlionis International Piano Competition in Vilnius in 1986 and 1991, the Y.K.A.A. International Piano Competition in Oberlin, United States in 1991 and she received the Grand Prix at the N. Rubinstein International Piano Competition in Paris in 1999.  

She has performed in all the major cities and towns of Lithuania, as well as the concert halls of Latvia, Bulgaria, Denmark, France, Finland, Poland, Germany, Ukraine, Switzerland, Russia and the United States. She has played alongside the Lithuanian Chamber Orchestra, the Lithuanian National Symphony Orchestra, the Kharkov Philharmonic Orchestra, as well as the symphony orchestras of the Saint Petersburg Conservatory and the Bulgarian Conservatoire.  

Aleksandra Žvirblytė is also active as a chamber musician having performed with such artists as Inesa Linaburgytė, Liubov Chuchrova, Algirdas Budrys, Dalia Stulgytė, Mindaugas Gecevičius, Algirdas Verbauskas, Pavelas Giunteris, Veronika Vitaitė and Oleg Molokojedov.  

She divides her time between the life of a concert pianist and a job at the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre, where she is an Associate Professor at the Piano Department. She also offers master classes, takes part in scientific conferences and is a jury member at international music competitions. Her students have won prizes at more than fifty international piano competitions and have given concerts as soloists, performing alongside orchestras and ensembles from Lithuania, Europe and the United States.  

Aleksandra Žvirblytė is a founder and director of the M.K. Čiurlionis International Music Festival held in Palanga and Vilnius. She regularly appears at prestigious music festivals in Lithuania, France and Denmark, and she has released more than 100 recordings and numerous premiere performances of new compositions written by Lithuanian composers.