Florestan Chamber Music Young Artist Scholarship Competition
This competition is open to all piano and cello students residing in Minnesota no older than 18 years of age on May 31, 2021. All prize money should be used for the students’ continuing music education.
Participants will be divided into three categories:
Elementary (through grade 4): up to 4 minutes
Middle School (grades 5-8): up to 7 minutes
High School (grades 9-12): up to 10 minutes
Prizes:
Elementary: 1st $50; 2nd $25
Middle School: 1st $75; 2nd $50
High School: 1st $100; 2nd $75 (1st prize winner will be asked to perform at a Florestan Chamber Music concert next season).
All auditions will be submitted by recorded video via YouTube. Cello students may choose to have accompaniment, but accompaniment is not required, and will have no impact on competition results. All applications, application fees, and video submissions are due by 11:59pm on May 31. Results will be sent in early summer.
Please follow these three steps in order to participate:
Step 1: Fill out an application form.
Step 2: Pay your non-refundable application fee of $20 via PayPal. No application will be considered valid until the application fee is received.
Step 3: Submit your video link(s) using this video submission form.
All steps in the process must be completed by 11:59pm on May 31, 2021. We will confirm receipt of your materials by email.
Repertoire Pieces: Each contestant will submit a video recording that is no longer than their specified category's time limit. Any videos longer than their time limit will be disqualified. Repertoire choice is entirely up to the contestant. Cuts are allowed. Multiple pieces are allowed, time permitting.
Video submissions: Please upload your videos to YouTube. Please ensure your video is set to “public” or “unlisted.” Please title your video: [your last name], [Composer name], [Title of piece]. You may submit as a single video, or as separate videos by piece. Submit your YouTube video link(s) to us using the form from Step 3, above.
The jury’s decisions are final. All applicants will receive written evaluations by the jury.
The official results will be posted on this website, as well as sent by email.
All communication, including scheduling for the performances, will be conducted by e-mail. Please direct any questions to florestanchambermusic@gmail.com
2021 Jurors
Alexander Braginsky
Alexander Braginsky was born and educated in Moscow. He received his first piano lessons from his mother, a well-known concert pianist. At the age of six he begun study with Alexander Goldenweiser, a close friend of Leo Tolstoy and a classmate of Rachmaninov and Scriabin. It was through Goldenweiser, with whom he spent 12 years as his youngest student, that Braginsky came into contact with the great 19th-sentury romantic tradition. After Goldenweiser death, he continued to study with Theodore Gutman, another illustrious representative of the “Golden Age” of Russian piano school.
Braginsky’s repertoire extends from Baroque to avant-garde. He performed over twenty world premieres, most of which were works commissioned and written for him, including music by Stephen Paulus, Libby Larsen and Paul Fetler’s Piano Concerto, commissioned by the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra. Braginsky performed extensively in the former USSR, Israel, England, Belgium, Italy, Germany, Taiwan, the People’s Republic of China, Spain, France, Cuba and the United States. The London Times characterized Braginsky’s playing as “splendid” and the Chicago Sun-Times called him “...a pianist with a fine, commanding sound that he can also use with great delicacy and expression.”
Braginsky has recorded for DDF, Sound StarTone and d’Note labels. He has appeared repeatedly on BBC, National Public Radio, RTB-BRT, Radio Moscow and other radio and TV stations throughout the world.
Braginsky was artist-in-residence in Churchill College, Cambridge in 1981 and 1986. From 1995 to 2006 he was on the faculty of the International Music Summer Course in Vienna, Austria, and on the faculties at IKIF at Mannes College in New York City and BIMFA and Cadenza festivals in Beijing and Shanghai. Braginsky has presented numerous masterclasses in Europe, Asia and North America. Currently he teaches at the University of Minnesota School of Music where he is Professor of Piano. Many of his students have won national and international competitions.
Alexander Braginsky frequently serves as a judge or a jury Chair at International and National Piano Competitions. He is the Artistic Director of the Musicians in Debut International (MIDI) as well as the Founding President and the Artistic Director of the Minnesota International Piano-e--competition.
Cellist Tanya Remenikova has inspired critical acclaim during her 40-year international performing career. Reviews from around the world describe her "impassioned approach" to cello playing as having an "elegant, singing tone," "expressive radiancy," "sonority," and "lustre."
Performances have brought her to the major halls in music capitals around the world: London, Moscow, Jerusalem, Brussels, Bonn, Frankfurt, Florence, Taipei, Shanghai. Remenikova has been soloist with the Israel Philharmonic, Jerusalem Symphony, Minnesota Orchestra, and Orchestre Nationale de Belgique, among others. In the United States, recital performances have taken her to New York, Washington, D.C., Chicago, Los Angeles, Detroit, Kansas City, Houston, San Francisco and the Aspen Music Festival.
Remenikova's recordings of Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Stravinsky, and Britten are on the DDF and Sound Star Tone labels. Her concert performances have been broadcast in several countries on networks such as the BBC in London, BRT-RTB in Brussels, WFMT in Chicago, WQXR in New York City, National Public Radio, and American Public Radio on such nationally broadcast programs as Saint Paul Sunday Morning.
Professor and chamber music coach on the faculty at the University of Minnesota School of Music since 1976, Remenikova has attracted students from all over the world. As a teacher, she relies on her own thorough training in music, both as cellist and pianist. Before she became a student of the world renowned Mstislav Rostropovich at the Moscow Conservatory in Russia, Remenikova studied with Valentin Berlinsky, a member of the renowed Borodin Quartet.
An avid chamber music player, she performs regularly with the Saint Paul-based Hill House Chamber Players. She also appeared in the Barge Chamber Music Series in New York and with the Karlsruhe Trio in Germany. She has given master classes in Europe, Asia and the U.S. and premiered a number of new compositions, including a work dedicated to her by Judith Zaimont, "Tanya" Poems for Cello Solo.
She is a recipient of 2007 Master Teacher Studio Award from the Minnesota Chapter of the American String Teachers Association.
