NUME Academy & Festival will host internationally acclaimed artists that will be performing and holding extraordinary masterclasses.
Acclaimed worldwide for his profound musicianship and technical mastery, British cellist Steven Isserlis enjoys a unique and distinguished career as a soloist, chamber musician, educator, author and broadcaster.
As a concerto soloist he appears regularly with the world’s leading orchestras and conductors, including the Berlin Philharmonic, National Symphony Orchestra Washington, London Philharmonic and Zurich Tonhalle orchestras. He gives recitals every season in major musical centres, and plays with many of the world’s fore- most chamber orchestras, including the Australian, Mahler, Norwegian, Scottish, Zurich and St Paul Cham- ber Orchestras, as well as period-instrument ensembles such as the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra. Unusually, he also directs chamber orchestras from the cello in classi- cal programmes.
As an educator Steven Isserlis gives frequent masterclasses all around the world, and since 1997 he has been Artistic Director of the International Musicians’ Seminar at Prussia Cove in Cornwall, where his fellow-pro- fessors include Sir Andras Schiff, Thomas Adès and Ferenc Rados.
The recipient of many awards, Steven Isserlis’s honours include a CBE in recognition of his services to music, the Schumann Prize of the City of Zwickau, and the Piatigorsky Prize in the USA. He is also one of only two living cellists featured in Gramophone’s Hall of Fame. In 2017, he was awarded the Glashütte Original Music Festival Award in Dresden, the Wigmore Hall Gold Medal, and the Walter Willson Cobbett Medal for Servi- ces to Chamber Music.
He gives most of his concerts on the Marquis de Corberon (Nelsova) Stradivarius of 1726, kindly loaned to him by the Royal Academy of Music.
Awarded both the “P. Schidlof Prize” and the “J. Barbirolli Prize” for “the most beautiful sound” at the prestigious Lionel Tertis International Viola competition in England in 2000, Italian-born violist Ettore Causa is praised for his exceptional artistry, passionate intelligence and complete musicianship.
He has made solo and recital appearances in major venues around the world, such as Carnegie Hall, Zurich Tonhalle, Madrid National Auditorium, Salle Cortot, Tokyo Symphony Hall, Teatro Colon, etc., and has performed at numerous international festivals, such as the Menuhin, Salzburg, Tivoli, Prussia Cove, Savonlinna, Launadire and Norfolk Festivals.
Also a devoted chamber musician, Mr. Causa has collaborated extensively with internationally renowned musicians such as the Tokyo, Artis, Brentano, Cremona and Elias String Quartets, Pascal Rogé, Boris Berman, Peter Frankl, Thomas Ades, Natalie Clein, Ana Chumachenco, Ani Kavafian, Alberto and Antonio Lysy, Liviu Prunaru, Thomas Demenga, Ulf Wallin, William Bennett and others.
His highly praised recordings include several Claves CDs, among those his transcription of romantic pieces, which was awarded a prestigious “5 Diapasons” by the French magazine.
Recently he was one of the honor guest at the 43rd International Viola Congress where he performed with enormous success his own arrangement of the Schumann cello concerto
Mr. Causa performs on a viola made for him by Frederic Chaudiere in 2003
She has been awarded in several national and international competitions, both in the soloist and in chamber music categories. Mari played at the Prometeo festival with the homonymous quartet, at the Portogruaro Festival and at the Chamber music Festival in Mantua, "la folle Journeé" festival in Japan, and others. She has collaborated as piano accompanist in masterclasses and musical courses, in Italy, the United States, Spain, Switzerland and Belgium held by renowned teachers such as Ilya Grubert, Pavel Vernikov, Gli Shaham, Natalia Gutman and many others. She works as a pianist collaborator for the two-year experimental advaced training courses at the "Maderna" Conservatory of Cesena, the higher Institute for musical studies "Peri" of Reggio Emilia and "Vecchi-"Tonelli" of Modena, as well as for the violin advanced training courses held by the the Portogruaro Music School, clarinet masterclasses in Milan held by M° F. Meloni, as well as constantly collaborating with the Haydn Orchestra of Bolzano.
American violinist Stella Chen garnered worldwide attention with her first-prize win at the 2019 Queen Elizabeth International Violin Competition, followed by the 2020 Avery Fisher Career Grant and 2020 Lincoln Center Emerging Artist Award.
Since then, Stella has appeared across North America, Europe, and Asia in concerto, recital, and chamber music performances. She recently made debuts with the New York Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony, Minnesota Orchestra, Israel Philharmonic, Chamber Orchestra of Europe, Baltimore Symphony, Belgian National Orchestra, and many others and appeared at the Vienna Musikverein and Berlin Philharmonie. In recital, recent appearances include Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, the Phillips Collection, Rockport Music Festival, and Nume Festival in Italy. She appears frequently with Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center both in New York and on tour.
For her all-Schubert debut album, released in March of 2023 to critical acclaim on the Apple Music label Platoon, Stella was named the 2023 Young Artist of the Year at the Gramophone Awards.
Among the highlights of her busy 2023/24 season are debuts with orchestras in Japan, China, North America, and Europe; the US premiere of Jörg Widmann’s Second Violin Concerto under the direction of the composer and the world premiere of a new violin concerto written for her by American composer Jon Cziner; her debut at the Heidelberg Festival with Igor Levit; and a recital for the San Francisco Symphony’s Spotlight Series.
Stella has appeared as a chamber musician in festivals including the Kronberg Academy, Moritzburg, Ravinia, Seattle Chamber Music, Perlman Music Program, Music@Menlo, Bridgehampton, Rockport, and Sarasota. Chamber music partners include Itzhak Perlman, James Ehnes, Matthew Lipman, Jan Vogler, and many others.
She is the inaugural recipient of the Robert Levin Award from Harvard University, where she was inspired by Robert Levin himself. Teachers and mentors have included Donald Weilerstein, Itzhak Perlman, Miriam Fried, and Catherine Cho. She received her doctorate from the Juilliard School where she serves as teaching assistant to her longtime mentor Li Lin.
Stella plays the 1700 ex-Petri Stradivarius, on generous loan from Dr. Ryuji Ueno and Rare Violins In Consortium, Artists and Benefactors Collaborative and the 1708 Huggins Stradivarius courtesy of the Nippon Foundation.
Boris Kusnezow is one of the most sought after collaborative pianists of his generation. He performs with eminent instrumentalists and singers worldwide. His performances have taken him to renowned concert venues such as the Carnegie Hall in New York, the Concertgebouw Amsterdam, the Wigmore Hall London and the Berlin Philharmonie.His artistic activities are documented in 12 CDs and numerous radio recordings. Several of his CDs have been nominated for prizes, including the Opus Klassik and Preis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik.Boris Kusnezow is in demand as an official pianist for some of the world’s most prestigious instrumental and singing competitions, most recently being invited to the ARD Competition in Munich, the Joseph Joachim Competition in Hannover, the Stuttgart International Violin Competition and the Queen Elisabeth Competition in Brussels.Boris Kusnezow was born in Moscow and began his musical education at the traditional Gnessin Academy. He has lived in Germany from the age of eight and completed his musical studies in Hannover with Professor Bernd Goetzke. Thereafter followed first place at the German Music Competition, international awards such as Fellowship of the Borletti-Buitoni Trust and scholarships from the Deutsche Stiftung Musikleben and the Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes. In addition to his active performing activities, he is founder of the piano chamber music academy Chamber Lab in Montecastelli/ Italy, artistic director of the International Music Academy for Soloists (IMAS) as well as the Schaumburger Schlosskonzerte at Schloss Bückeburg and volunteers for the Loewe Foundation, where he focuses on the promotion of classical music.Teaching has become an important element in Kusnezow‘s artistic career. In 2020 he was appointed professor for piano chamber music at the University for Music and Theatre „Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy“ Leipzig.
Andreas is one of the most sought-after performing artists from Scandinavia, winning worldwide critical acclaim for his ability to make the music not only sound, but both speak, dance and sing.
His debut disc of the Tchaikovsky, Schumann and Saint-Saëns cello concertos with the "Danish National Symphony Orchestra" was released by EMI in 2008, and since then his discography has grown long. Most recent he released a much acclaimed CD with both Haydn Cello Concertos in 2021 with the period ensemble Concerto Copenhagen led by Lars Ulrik Mortensen and his latest release “48 Strings” from 2022 features music for 1, 2, 4 and 12 celli and pays homage to the four greatest cellists from the beginning of the 20th century. Also in 2022, he finished a remarkable project with video recordings of Piatti’s 12 Caprices available on Youtube and Apple Music.
Andreas won first prizes in the 2006 Eurovison Young Musicians Competition, the 2007 International Paulo Cello Competition and, in subsequent years, received music awards and fewllowships including the Borletti-Buitoni Trust Fellowship in 2008, the BBC’s New Generation Artist 2008-2011, The European Concert Hall Organisation “Rising Star” tour in the 2008/09 season. In 2015 he received the Carl Nielsen Prize in Copenhagen and since 2022 Andreas has been teaching as visiting professor at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki
Andreas plays the 1707 ‘Boni-Hegar’ Stradivarius.
Born in Rimini, Enrico Pace studied with Franco Scala at the Pesaro Conservatory, where he also graduated in composition and conducting. He furthered his studies at the International Piano Academy “Incontri col Maestro” in Imola, and his invaluable mentor thereafter was Belgian teacher Jacques de Tiège.
After winning first prize at the Franz Liszt International Competition in Utrecht in 1989, Enrico Pace has performed all over the world: Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, Teatro alla Scala and Sala Verdi in Milan, Rome, Berlin, Wigmore Hall in London, Dublin, Herkulessaal in Munich, Prague, Philharmonie in Berlin and various cities in South America. He has been invited to play at numerous international festivals, including Lucerne, Salzburg, Edinburgh, La Roque d’Anthéron, Rheingau, Verbier, Schleswig-Holstein, Husum and the Brescia and Bergamo Piano Festivals.
Highly regarded as a soloist, he performs with such prestigious orchestras as the Royal Orchestra of the Concertgebouw, the Munich Philharmonic, the Bamberger Symphoniker, the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, the Orchestra Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome, the Rotterdam Philharmonic, the Dutch Radio Philharmonic Orchestra (RFO), the Netherlands Philharmonic the Orchestra del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, the Göteborg, London and Stavanger Symphony Orchestras, the Brussels Philharmonic, the Philharmonisches Orchester Freiburg, the Rheinische Philharmonie, the Sydney and Melbourne Symphony Orchestras, the Konzerthausorchester Berlin, the MDR-Sinfonieorchester Leipzig, the Camerata Salzburg, the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra, the G. Verdi of Milan and the Filarmonica Toscanini of Parma.
Enrico Pace has collaborated with numerous conductors including Roberto Benzi, Gianandrea Noseda, Zoltan Kocsis, Kazimierz Kord, Mark Elder, Lawrence Foster, Vassily Sinaisky, Stanislav Skrowaczewski, Bruno Weil, Andrey Boreyko, Eliahu Inbal, Carlo Rizzi, Jan Latham-Koenig, Walter Weller and Antoni Wit.
Enrico Pace has also collaborated with such violinists as Leonidas Kavakos, Frank Peter Zimmermann, Akiko Suwanai, and Liza Ferschtman, and with cellist Sung-Won Yang, performing with them in Europe, the USA, and Asia.
Other partners in the field of chamber music include not only cellist Daniel Müller-Schott, clarinetist Sharon Kam, pianist Igor Roma and cornetist Marie Luise Neunecker, but also the Keller Quartet, RTE Vanbrugh Quartet and the Prometheus Quartet. A regular guest at chamber festivals, he has visited Delft, Moritzburg, Risør, Kuhmo, Montreux, Stresa and West Cork.
Past highlights include the Beethoven Sonatas cycle, with Leonidas Kavakos, in New York (Carnegie Hall), Athens, Florence, Milan, Amsterdam, Moscow, Tokyo, at the Salzburg Festival and Beethovenfest Bonn, as well as other performances in the United States, Europe and China. He has also performed Bach Sonatas with Frank Peter Zimmermann in New York, Amsterdam, Zurich, Frankfurt, Bamberg and Japan. With Matthias Goerne he brought Schubert’s Schwanengesang to La Scala in Milan. In Zurich, Frankfurt and Cologne he played with violist Antoine Tamestit, in Japan and at London’s Wigmore Hall with Akiko Suwanai, and in Korea and Japan with cellist Sung-Won Yang. As a soloist he has performed in such halls as the Concergebouw in Amsterdam and the Herkulessaal in Munich.
With Leonidas Kavakos and cellist Patrick Demenga he recorded Mendelssohn’s Piano Trios (Sony Classical). His recording of the complete Beethoven Sonatas for piano and violin with Leonidas Kavakos was released by Decca Classics in January 2013 and was nominated for a Grammy Award. In April 2016 Decca Classics released a CD in which the duo performs virtuosic pieces. With Frank-Peter Zimmermann he recorded Busoni’s Sonata No. 2 and J.S. Bach’s Six Sonatas for Violin and Piano 1014-1019 for Sony Classical. In 2011 the Piano Classics label released his well-known recording of Liszt’s Années de pèlerinage “Suisse” and “Italie.”
Acclaimed by reviewers as a “formidable clarinetist" and praised for his "passion, sumptuous tone, magical finesse and dazzling virtuosity", Tommaso Lonquich is Solo Clarinetist with Ensemble MidtVest, the international chamber ensemble based in Denmark. He is also an Artist of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center in New York, with which he performs in the United States and on worldwide tours.
He has appeared on the most renowned stages of four continents, partnering among others with Christian Tetzlaff, Ilya Gringolts, Pekka Kuusisto, David Finckel, Wu Han, Nicolas Altstaedt, Ani and Ida Kavafian,Maximilian Hornung, Anneleen Lenaerts, Yura Lee, Gilles Vonsattel, Juho Pohjonen, Radovan Vlatkovicand the Danish, Zaïde and Vertavo string quartets.
As an invited guest principal in several orchestras and as a soloist, he has collaborated with conductors including Zubin Mehta, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Fabio Luisi, and Leonard Slatkin. He can be heard on more than twenty albums, on both modern and historical clarinets.
In Denmark, Tommaso Lonquich is Co-Founder & Co-Artistic Director of Schackenborg Musikfest, already one of Scandinavia’s most prestigious festivals. He previously founded and directed KantorAtelier, a vibrant cultural space based in Florence and dedicated to the exploration of music, theatre, art and psychoanalysis.
A devoted mentor, Tommaso Lonquich served as Head of Chamber Music at the Dædalus Advanced Studies Program in Florence, an institution which he co-founded. He has given masterclasses at the Juilliard School, the Manhattan School of Music, and at the Royal Danish Academy of Music, among others.
Alongside his artistic career, Tommaso Lonquich is a clinical psychoanalyst and co-founder of the International Center for Lacanian Psychoanalysis in Ljubljana, Slovenia.
In 2009 and 2010, Irène won the 1st prize and the public prize at the International Violin Competition of Avignon and two special prizes at the 1st edition of the International Violin Competition in Mirecourt. In May 2011, Irène was awarded the 1st prize at the 46th International Instrumental Competition in Markneukirchen for her performance of the Beethoven violin concerto, as well as the fManfred-Scherzer prize for her outstanding interpretation of a piece by Reger.
In 2012, Irène received the Appassionato Joël Klépal prize in Caen and was given a generous grant from the Meyer Fondation. In 2014, she went at the Kronberg Academy in Germany to study with Mihaela Martin in Further Master Studies, and received artistic advice from internationally renowned musicians until 2017.
She has been supported by Fondation pour la vocation Marcel Bleustein-Blanchet, Fondation SAFRAN pour la musique, la Fondation de l’Or du Rhin, la Fondation d’Entreprise Banque Populaire, ArteMusica Stiftung, and Günther Caspar Stiftung.
In 2021 Irène was a prize-winner at the Young Classical Artists Trust International Auditions.
Founder and artistic director of NUME Academy & Festival Vlad Stanculeasa is a prize winner in the Enescu, Valsesia and Molinari competitions, Vlad Stanculeasa is an active solo and chamber music performer, as well as a teacher in european conservatories. Since 2022 Vlad held a teaching post at the conservatory in Barcelona ESMUC and is regularly invited to give masterclasses in Spain, Italy and Sweden. As a soloist, he’s performed with the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, Lausanne Chamber Orchestra, Basel Chamber Orchestra, Kammersymphonie Leipzig. He’s collaborated as soloist with many conductors including Kent Nagano, Lahav Shani, Han Na Chang, Konrad von Abel.
Was selected by Lord Yehudi Menuhin to be the pianist of the International Menuhin Music Academy in Switzerland where she performed concerts and tours. Tecu has recorded together with violinist Alberto Lysy “Romantic pieces for violin and piano. Lorena is a staff pianist at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston and the Boston University College of Fine Arts.
