Accompanists
 
Daniel Blumenthal
United States of America, °1952
Born in Landstuhl (Germany), Daniel Blumenthal is of American origin. He began his musical studies shortly after his fifth birthday and is a graduate of the University of Michigan (Bachelor of Music) and the Juilliard School in New York (Master of Music, Doctor of Musical Arts). He has won several international competitions : Sydney and Leeds in 1981, Geneva and Busoni in 1982, and the Queen Elisabeth Competition in 1983. He enjoys an international reputation as a soloist, concert musician, and chamber musician. Daniel Blumenthal is professor op piano performance at the Brussels Conservatory and the Thy Chamber Music Festival in Denmark. In 1995 he served on the jury of the Queen Elisabeth Piano Competition. He has recorded over 80 CDs. Daniel Blumenthal is honorary member of Icons of Europe and musical advisor to this not-for-profit cultural association.
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Thomas Hoppe
Thomas Hoppe has collaborated with many renowned musicians and singers, including Itzhak Perlman, Antje Weithaas, Tabea Zimmermann, Alban Gerhardt, Jens Peter Maintz, and Frans Helmerson. After studying under Lee Luvisi, he continued his training at the Juilliard School of Music, where he worked for Dorothy DeLay and Itzhak Perlman’s studio. As a pianist for the ATOS Trio and for the wind ensemble 4.1, he has performed to acclaim at many concerts all over the world. For almost twenty years, he has accompanied the candidates at international competitions such as the Queen Elisabeth Competition, the Joseph Joachim International Violin Competition in Hanover, and the International Violin Competition of Indianapolis. He teaches masterclasses in musical accompaniment and in chamber music all over Europe, and also performs with quartets such as the Shanghai Quartet, the Modigliani Quartet, the Mandelring Quartet, and the Simply Quartet. Thomas Hoppe lives in Berlin with his family and has been a professor of chamber music at the Folkwang Universität der Künste in Essen since 2018.
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Dana Protopopescu
Romania
Dana Protopopescu started studying music in Bucharest at a very young age and went on to study at the Brussels Conservatory and the Hochschule für Musik in Hanover, under Eduardo del Pueyo and Karl Engel. She gave her first concert with an orchestra at the age of 16. Since then, she has performed with leading conductors such as I . Markevitch, L. Langrée, M. Basarab, I. Baciu, E. Elenescu, M. Cristescu, E. Simon, H. Andreescu, O. Balan, and A. Rahbari. She has played in Abu Dhabi, London, Moscow, Paris, Barcelona, Madrid, Bucharest, Montreal, Washington, Seoul, and Boston. Dana Protopopescu has recorded numerous CDs, including the complete works for piano of Mendelssohn, and Beethoven’s complete sonatas for violin and piano and Grieg’s sonatas with Liviu Prunaru. Her recordings of the Hummel and Weber concertos have won high praise in reviews in CD Classics, the Penguin Guide, Diapason, and elsewhere. She received a Music Critic Award in Bucharest. An enthusiastic chamber music player, she has performed with A. Dumay, Y. Toda, L. Prunaru, M. Beaver, M.-N. Lemieux, M. Rizzi, M. Martin, F. Helmerson, and G. Hoffman. She has been an accompanist at a number of international competitions and since 2004 has accompanied the soloists of the Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel.
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Takashi Sato
Japan, °1983
Born in Akita, Japan, in 1983, Takashi Sato is recognised as one of the most outstanding Japanese pianists of his generation. He has won prizes at several competitions, including the Music Competition of Japan 2001 (1st prize), the Schubert International Piano Competition 2007 (1st prize), the Queen Elisabeth Competition 2010 (laureate), and the Città di Cantù International Piano Competition 2011 (1st prize). After graduating from Tokyo University of the Arts with top honours in 2006, he studied with Arie Vardi at Hanover University for Music and Drama until 2011, when he was awarded the Diplom-Konzertsolist. He also attended the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna under the tutelage of Roland Keller. Alongside his accomplishments as soloist, working with numerous orchestras including the NHK Symphony Orchestra, the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra, the Osaka Symphony Orchestra, the Sydney Symphony, and the Belgian National Orchestra, he is equally appreciated as an adept chamber musician and has collaborated with many renowned artists, including Karl Leister, Horigome Yuzuko, Watanabe Reiko, Sato Shunske, and Kamio Mayuko. A recording of Edvard Grieg’s complete sonatas for violin and piano with Sato Shunske was awarded a Grand Prize by the Agency for Cultural Affairs of Japan at the National Arts Festival in 2007. Since 2014, he has been giving a recital series, ‘Schubert-Zyklus’, in Tokyo, presenting the complete works for piano of Franz Schubert.
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Jonas Vitaud
France, °1980
Jonas Vitaud started to study the piano at the age of six and the organ at the age of eleven. Trained by Brigitte Engerer, Jean Koerner, and Christian Ivaldi, he won four first prizes at the Conservatoire National Supérieur in Paris. A laureate of several international competitions (Lyons, ARD from Munich, Trieste, and Vienna), both as a soloist and as a chamber musician, he has performed at prestigious festivals such as the festival of the Lille Piano(s) Festival, Piano aux Jacobins, Août Musical in Deauville, the Festival de la Chaise Dieu, the Fêtes musicales de Nohant, the Festival Chopin de Bagatelle, the Richard Strauss Festival in Germany, the Musical Autumn in Caserta (Italy), the iDans festival in Istanbul, the Dubrovnik Summer Festival, and the French May in Hong Kong.

He has performed with orchestras such as the Orchestre du Capitole and the Orchestre de Chambre de Toulouse, the Orchestre des Pays de Savoie, the Moravian Philharmonic, the Munich Radio Orchestra, and with vocal (e.g. Sequenza and Les Solistes de Lyon) and contemporary-music ensembles. He is keenly interested in chamber music, which he has played with Bertrand Chamayou, Hwang Sumi, Christian-Pierre La Marca, Geneviève Laurenceau, Yann Levionnois, and the Quatuor Zaïde, among others. Passionate about contemporary music, he has worked with modern masters such as Henri Dutilleux, Thierry Escaich, György Kurtag, and Philippe Hersant. Jonas Vitaud has taught at the CNSM in Paris since 2013. In 2016, Jonas Vitaud was awarded a Grand Prix as an instrumental soloist by the Académie Charles Cros. He is also an associated artist of the Fondation Singer-Polignac.
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Relive the performances of Violin 2024
The Competition's CD's
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