Itamar Zorman
Violin
Distinguished by his emotionally gripping performances and gift for musical storytelling, Itamar Zorman is regarded as a singularly soulful and evocative artist. The recipient of an Avery Fisher Career Grant and a Borletti-Buitoni Trust award, Itamar Zorman was also a laureate of the 2011 International Tchaikovsky Competition. He has given recitals at Carnegie Hall, Wigmore Hall, the Louvre Recital Series in Paris, the Laeiszhalle Hamburg, Muziekgebouw Frits Philips in Eindhoven, the HR-Sendesaal Frankfurt and the Kolarac Hall in Belgrade, and at festivals including the Kronberg Academy, Rheingau, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Delft and the Copenhagen Summer Festival, as well as Marlboro, Classical Tahoe and Chamberfest Cleveland in the US.
Itamar Zorman’ solo career encompasses four continents. He has appeared with orchestras in the USA, Europe, Asia and South America, including the American Symphony Orchestra, Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse, Belgrade Philharmonic, Kremerata Baltica, Het Gelders Orkest, Israel Philharmonic, the Tokyo Symphony, the KBS Symphony Seoul, as well as the St. Petersburg Philharmonic and the Russian State Symphony Orchestra “Novaya Rossiya. A committed chamber player, he has led the Mahler Chamber Orchestra play-directed Camerata Nordica and is a founding member of the Israeli Chamber Project. He is also a member of the Lysander Piano Trio, with which he won the 2012 Concert Artists Guild Competition.
Itamar Zorman’s diverse repertoire is reflected in his discography; June 2022 saw the release of his third CD ‘Violin Odyssey’ on the First Hand Records label, featuring seldom heard works by composers such as Schulhoff, Bacewicz, Revueltas and Pejacevic, while his previous CD, ‘Evocation’ (BIS Records, 2019) featured the violin works of Paul Ben-Haim.
Born in Tel-Aviv to a family of musicians, Zorman is a graduate of the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance, the Juilliard School, where he studied with Robert Mann and Sylvia Rosenberg, and the Manhattan School of Music. He is also an alumnus of the Kronberg Academy where he studied with Christian Tetzlaff.
Itamar Zorman is a recipient of scholarships from the America-Israel Cultural Foundation; he currently plays on a Guarneri Del Jesu from 1734, from the collection of Yehuda Zisapel.
Stepan Simonyan
Piano
Critically acclaimed as “one of the great Bach interpreters of his generation”, Stepan Simonian is driven by a yearning to explore and illuminate the multiple facets of the great works of piano repertoire, particularly by Schubert, Schumann, Brahms, Beethoven, Mozart, and Bach.
His Silver Medal at the International Johann Sebastian Bach Competition in 2010, his training within a well-cultured piano school tradition at Moscow Conservatory under Pavel Nersessian, as well as with Oleg Boshniakovich, then with Evgeni Koroliov in Hamburg, all form part of the experiences that have marked his musical taste, his interpretations, and his teaching.
Born in Moscow in 1981, Simonian won First Prize at the 2005 Virginia Waring International Piano Competition, and Third Prize at the 2008 Jose Iturbi International Piano Competition, both in the US.
In recognition of his achievements in chamber music, he was awarded the prestigious Berenberg Cultural Prize in 2009 in Hamburg, where he has made his home. In 2014 he won Third Prize at the Aram Khachaturian International Piano Competition in Yerevan, Armenia.
Stepan Simonian is invited to perform at some of the most important festivals and concert venues throughout Europe and the US. He has appeared as a soloist with many national and international orchestras and conductors.
Stepan’s performances have been broadcast on television channels and major classical stations including ARD, MDR Leipzig, NDR Hamburg, SWR Stuttgart, HR Frankfurt, BR Munich, Deutschlandradio Kultur, and Radio France.
His début CD, a complete recording of J. S. Bach’s toccatas for keyboard for the GENUIN label, was highly praised by music critics. In 2018 the cpo label released Khachaturian’s Piano Concerto and Concert Rhapsody with the Rheinische Philharmonie State Orchestra conducted by Daniel Raiskin. In 2019 the Cologne label CAvi-music published Simonian’s second Bach CD: the Goldberg Variations, recorded in cooperation with NDR.
Since 2009 Stepan Simonian has been a tenured professor at his alma mater, the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hamburg, where he lectures in solo piano performance.