2027 Competition Jury Member
ITALY
Italian pianist Alessandro Deljavan began playing piano before the age of 2, gave his first performances at 3, and began winning international competitions from the age of 5, including first prize at the Concours Musical de France in Paris at 9. At 18, he was invited to the International Piano Academy Lake Como, where he studied with William Grant Naboré and worked with mentors including Dmitri Bashkirov, Fou Ts’ong, John Perry, Richard Goode, and Andreas Staier.
Mr. Deljavan made an early international breakthrough performing Brahms’s Piano Concerto No. 1 with the Mariinsky Theatre Orchestra in St. Petersburg. Since then, he has performed throughout Europe, Asia, and the Americas with such orchestras as the Fort Worth Symphony, Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano Giuseppe Verdi, Israel Camerata Orchestra, Lithuanian Chamber Orchestra, and Boston Philharmonic at Symphony Hall.
A prolific recording artist, he has released more than 80 albums, from complete cycles of Chopin and Scriabin to projects on period instruments. Reviewing his recent Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach recording, Rondo magazine wrote that he “emerges as a truly radical interpreter,” bringing performances that are “forward-looking, internally liberated, and deeply humane,” while Gramophone praised “a warmth and humanity that seeks only the music’s expressive truth.”
His performances have earned international praise: the Dallas Morning News proclaimed “Deljavan played Chopin’s B minor Étude with jaw-dropping virtuosity and heart-stopping eloquence.” And his mentor Fou Ts’ong called him “one of the most interesting pianists I have heard in my life.”
Mr. Deljavan currently serves as professor of piano at the Conservatorio di Musica “Luigi Cherubini” in Florence, Italy.