Michael Endres
Chair of Jury
Daniel Herscovitch
Juror
Konstantin Shamray
Juror
Michael Endres
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The German/New Zealand Pianist Michael Endres has been described by Richard Dyer of the Boston Globe as, "…one of the most interesting pianists recording today " and by British Gramophone Magazine “...he is an outstanding Schubert Interpreter ". Among his many recordings ( thirty-three in total ) he has won the prestigious French award, Diapason D’or, three times and was also awarded the 'Choc du Musique' twice, with The New York Times reviewing "performances with pianist Michael Endres were revelatory".
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Michael gained a Master’s degree at the Juilliard School in New York under Jacob Lateiner, Chamber music under Felix Galimir and studied with Peter Feuchtwanger in London. He has won many prizes such as the Concours Geza Anda (Zurich) and first prize at the International Schubert Competition. His solo recordings include sets of the complete sonatas by Mozart, Schubert, Weber and in particular the rarely heard English composer Arnold Bax. As well as all works of Ravel and Gershwin he has recorded the Songs Without Words by Mendelssohn, Barcarolles by Faure, as well as a 3 CD set of works by Robert Schumann.
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He has a wide repertoire and a keen interest in performing lesser played composers like Leopold Godowsky, Charles Ives, Eduard Tubin and is one of only 3 pianists who has ever recorded the whole 400 Dances of Franz Schubert (with whom he has a special affinity).
Michael plays at many festivals in Europe, America and Asia including Newport (USA), Beethoven Fest Bonn, Salzburg Festival, Shanghai Festival, and has performed at Wigmore Hall, Berlin Philharmonie, Munich Philharmonie, Zurich Tonhalle, Musikverein Vienna, Suntory Hall Tokyo, La Scala Milan, to name a few. He accompanied the legendary German Baritone Hermann Prey for many years and performed with the Berlin Philharmonic soloists, String Quartets such as the Artemis, Fine Arts Quartet, the Enso Quartet on their New Zealand tour with Chamber Music NZ and the NZ String Quartet.
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He has a distinguished teaching career as Professor of Piano in various leading European schools such as the "Hochschule fuer Musik” Cologne, the "Hanns Eisler" Hochschule in Berlin and the “Barrat Due” Institute in Oslo, Norway.
Michael currently lives in Canterbury with his New Zealand wife Susan, a violinist and ceramicist.
Daniel Herscovitch
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Daniel Herscovitch studied with Alexander Sverjensky at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music then, with the generous support of a German Government DAAD scholarship, under Professor Rosl Schmid in Munich. While based in Germany he performed extensively on the continent and in England and toured Australia three times. He also appeared at several international festivals including the Berlin Festival, the Zagreb Biennale and the Saarbrücken Tage der Neuen Musik.
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Since returning to Australia he has been active in solo and chamber music, and has appeared at the Adelaide Festival of the Arts, the Mostly Mozart Festival, the New Directions Festival and the Festivals of Melbourne and Sydney. He was a regular guest artist at the Sydney Spring Festival of New Music and has also toured for Musica Viva and New Zealand several times. He has appeared with Synergy, Flederman, the Song Company and the Australia Ensemble and has toured with The Seymour Group. He was a soloist in the first Australian performance of the Bartók Concerto for Two Pianos and has appeared in concert with Wanda Wilkomirska, Jane Manning, Clemens Leske, Gerard Willems, Bernadette Harvey, Vivian Choi and Ole Böhn.
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Daniel has toured extensively including to Hong Kong, Singapore, the UK, Europe and the USA. He has performed Bach’s monumental Art of Fugue on four continents and his last overseas tour included performances of Hindemith’s Ludus Tonalis. Recent tours took him to Asia, the UK, Norway and Germany and he has visited Indonesia regularly.
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Daniel’s solo repertoire ranges from Purcell to Carter and beyond, and includes contemporary Australian, Asian, European and American works, several of which he commissioned and premiered. He has also presented papers at conferences in Australia and Europe on ornamentation in Bach, Bach’s Art of Fugue, ornamentation in Beethoven, as well as on practice methods, and he is sought after as guest lecturer on subjects ranging from baroque performance to Bartók.
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His recordings of repertoire ranging from the 17th to the 21st centuries have been released on Tall Poppies, Toccata Classics, CSM, Continuum, Biodiversity, Wirripang and ABC Classics labels. His recent CD of music by Roger Smalley was Editor’s Choice in the October issue of Gramophone, and two further CDs of works by Don Banks and Peter Dart are scheduled for release in the UK later this year. He is currently Associate Professor of Piano at The University of Sydney Conservatorium of Music, where he has also lectured for many years in chamber music and piano pedagogy.
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Konstantin Shamray
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Described as an exhilarating performer with faultless technique and fearless command of the piano, Australian based Russian pianist Konstantin Shamray enjoys performing on an international level with the world’s leading orchestras and concert presenters.
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The pianist was born in Novosibirsk and commenced his studies at the age of six with Natalia Knobloch. He then studied in Moscow at the Russian Gnessin Academy of Music with Professors Tatiana Zelikman and Vladimir Tropp, and the Hochschule fur Musik in Freiburg, Germany with Professor Tibor Szasz.
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In 2008, Konstantin burst onto the concert scene when he won First Prize at the Sydney International Piano Competition. He is the first and only competitor to date in the 40 years of the competition to win both First and People’s Choice Prizes, in addition to six other prizes. He then went on to win First Prize at the 2011 Klavier Olympiade in Bad Kissingen, Germany and has performed at the Kissinger Sommer festival. In July 2013, following chamber recitals with Alban Gerhardt and Feng Ning, he was awarded the festival’s coveted Luitpold Prize for “outstanding musical achievements”.
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Since then, Konstantin has performed extensively throughout the world. In Australia future highlights include engagements with the Adelaide Symphony, West Australia, Melbourne and Sydney Symphony orchestras. Outside of Australia he has performed with the Russian National Philharmonic, the Mariinsky Theatre Orchestra, Moscow Virtuosi, Orchestre National de Lyon, Prague Philharmonia, Belgrade Philharmonic Orchestra and the Calgary Philharmonic among others. He has enjoyed collaborating with distinguished conductors such as Vladimir Spivakov, Dmitry Liss, Tugan Sokhiev, Nicholas Milton and Asher Fysh. Chamber music plays a strong role in the artist’s musical career, and collaborations include tours with the Australian String Quartet, the Australia Piano Quartet, Kristof Barati, Andreas Brantelid, Li Wei Qin and Leonard Elschenbroich.
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He has enjoyed critical acclaim at the Klavier-Festival Ruhr, the Bochum Festival in Germany, the Mariinsky International Piano Festival and the White Nights Festival in St. Petersburg, Adelaide festival, 2019 Musica Viva Sydney and Huntington festivals as well as the Musica Viva National tour 2021 with ANAM orchestra. Konstantin has recorded albums with the labels Naxos, ABC Classics and Fonoforum.
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Konstantin is Lecturer in Piano at the Elder Conservatorium of Music at the University of Adelaide, and was awarded his PhD for his performance-based project ‘The piano as Kolokola, Glocken and Cloches: performing and extending the European traditions of bell-inspired piano music’.