✔ A concert (2023-24 Season) of the Milan Symphony Orchestra Giuseppe Verdi at the Mahler Auditorium.
✔ A chamber music concert (2023-24 Season) at the Gerolamo Theater in Milan, with the principal chairs of the orchestra
✔ A concerto for the Un piano per la città season in Monza in 2023
✔ A series of five or more concerts organized by Weltklassik am Klavier in Germany.
✔ One or more concerts for Fondazione Gioventù Musicale d’Italia
✔ A concert at the Fazioli Concert Hall in Sacile, for Fazioli and with the Regional Theatre of Friuli Venezia Giulia, in 2023.
✔ A concert offered by Banco di Desio and Brianza in 2023
✔ A concert offered by Hauskonzert – Amici della Musica di Ispra in 2023
✔ A concert offered by Piano City Milano 2023-24
✔ A Recital offered by the ProMusica Association
✔ A solo recital for the Società dei Concerti season in Milan
✔ More concerts will be announced in the next months.
Jury and Prizes
27th Edition – 2024

Prizes include checks and grants for a total amount of € 32.500 and a series of concerts, to be held by the winner in Italy’s most important classical music seasons and concert halls, through all 2025.
→ First prize
€ 15.000 “City of Monza”
→ Second prize
€ 8.000
→ Third prize
€ 5.000 “Monza East & Monza West Rotary Clubs”
→ Scholarship
€ 2.000 combined with the Special Audience Award, awarded during the final round.
→ “Massimo Galli” Prize
In memory of Massimo Galli, artistic promoter and record producer. Awarded to the candidate, chosen from among the 6 semi-finalists, who has reached his greatest artistic peak in one of the rounds. The Prize consists of the production of a CD, at the Fazioli Concert Hall, published by the Piano Classics label, with a program agreed with the label and the organization of the Competition.
→ Chopin Prize
€ 1.000 in memory of Febea D’Andria D’Eredità, offered by her daughter Maria Rosaria Sallustio D’Andria, awarded to the best performance of a piece by Chopin.
→ “Rina Sala Gallo Musical Association Council” Prize
€ 1.000 awarded to the youngest candidate among the semi-finalists.
→ Student Jury Prize
€ 500 and a Masterclass by Liceo Musicale Bartolomeo Zucchi, offered by Inner Wheel Monza.

Concert opportunities for the winners
Coming soon
The Jury

Roberto Prosseda
Italy
(President and Artistic Coordinator)
Born in Latina in 1975, is one of the most active and versatile Italian musicians on the current international scene. Particularly appreciated for his interpretations of Mozart, Schubert, Schumann, Chopin and Mendelssohn, he has dedicated himself to these composers in his numerous Decca recordings.
In the last twenty years, Roberto Prosseda has regularly performed with some of the most important orchestras in the world, including the London Philharmonic, New Japan Philharmonic, Moscow State Philharmonic, Santa Cecilia, Filarmonica della Scala, Brussels Philharmonic, Residentie Orkest, Staatskapelle Weimar, Calgary Philharmonic, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, and Leipzig Gewandhaus. He has performed under the direction of David Afkham, Marc Albrecht, Christian Arming, Harry Bickett, Oleg Caetani, Riccardo Chailly, Pietari Inkinen, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, George Pehlivanian, Dennis Russel-Davies, Tugan Sokhiev, Jurai Valcuha, and Jan Willem de Vriend.
In Italy, he is a regular guest of the major concert institutions, including the Accademia di Santa Cecilia, Teatro alla Scala, Unione Musicale di Torino, Teatro la Fenice, Accademia Chigiana di Siena, and Teatro Comunale di Bologna.
In addition to his regular performances in the world’s leading concert halls, he is also active as a musical communicator and creator of innovative musical programs. He is currently the artistic director of the Cremona Musica International Exhibitions & Festival.
After serving twice as a judge of the Rina Sala Gallo Monza International Piano Competition, for this edition, he is the President of the Jury and Artistic Coordinator.

Lera Auerbach
Russia
A renaissance artist for modern times, Lera Auerbach is a widely recognized conductor, pianist, and composer, an award-winning poet and an exhibited visual artist. All of her work is interconnected as part of a cohesive and comprehensive artistic worldview. She holds multiple degrees from the Juilliard School in New York and the Hannover University of Music, Drama, and Media in Germany. Her teachers include Milton Babbitt, Rosalyn Tureck, Joseph Kalichstein, and Einar Steen-Nøkleberg.
She has become one of today’s most sought-after and exciting creative voices bringing her performances and music on the world’s leading stages, from Vienna’s Musikverein and London’s Royal Albert Hall to New York’s Carnegie Hall and Washington D.C.’s Kennedy Center. Auerbach’s works for orchestra are performed by the world’s leading conductors, including Manfred Honeck, Christoph Eschenbach, Alan Gilbert, Neeme Järvi, Vladimir Jurowski, Charles Dutoit, Andris Nelsons, Osmo Vänskä, Hannu Lintu, and Marin Alsop.
Her music is championed and recorded by today’s most prominent classical performers, including violinists Gidon Kremer, Leonidas Kavakos, Daniel Hope, Hilary Hahn, Vadim Gluzman, Vadim Repin, Julian Rachlin; cellists Alisa Weilerstein, Gautier Capuçon, Alban Gerhardt, David Finckel; violists Kim Kashkashian, Nobuko Imai, and Lawrence Power, and many others.
Auerbach is equally prolific in literature and in the visual arts. She is the recipient of the 2021 Marsh Hawk Press – Robert Creely Memorial Award for her English poetry manuscript “Morning Music.
Boosey and Hawkes / Sikorski publish her music, and recordings are available on ECM, Deutsche Grammophon, Nonesuch, Sony Classical, Alpha Classics, BIS, Cedille, and many other labels.

Jed Distler
USA
Composer and pianist Jed Distler studied with Andrew Thomas, Stanley Lock and William Komaiko, and taught for more than 20 years at Sarah Lawrence College. Early in his career Distler gained acclaim for his transcriptions of jazz piano solos by Art Tatum and Bill Evans, while his new music piano recitals have offered premiers of works by Virgil Thomson, Andrew Thomas, Richard Rodney Bennett, Frederic Rzewski, Alvin Curran, Lois V Vierk and many more.
Distler’s presenting organization Composers
Collaborative Inc. earned a 2013 Guinness Record for world’s largest keyboard ensemble, featuring a composition of his own scored for 175 electronic keyboards.
His 2023/2024 tours included performances, master classes and artist residencies at the Bari Piano Festival, the Karlskrona Piano Festival, the Rovigo Conservatory, Cremona Mondomusica, Festival Musical Durtal, the Stretto Piano Festival and the Chicago International Competition and Festival.
Distler is the Artistic Director for “Salon Concerts” at Klavierhaus, a weekly series that provides an inclusive environment and expressive forum for pianists of all generations. As Artist-in-Residence for WWFM – The Classical Network, Distler is the creator, host and producer of the 2017 ASCAP Deems Taylor Virgil Thomson Award radio program “Between the Keys”, as well as a new podcast called “The Piano Maven with Jed Distler”. Appreciated for his reviews and articles to Gramophone and Classicstoday.com, he has written numerous CD booklet notes for Sony/BMG and Universal Classics. Distler is an exclusive Steinway Artist.

Inna Faliks
Ukraine / USA
(from the Second Round)
“Adventurous and passionate” (The New Yorker) Ukrainian-born American pianist Inna Faliks has made a name for herself through her commanding performances of standard piano repertoire, as well genre-bending interdisciplinary projects, and inquisitive work with contemporary composers. After her acclaimed teenage debuts at the Gilmore Festival and with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, she has appeared on many of the world’s great stages in recital and with many major orchestras, performing with conductors Leonard Slatkin, Keith Lockhart and many others. Her recent seasons include performances at Ravinia Festival in Chicago, National Gallery in Washington DC, Accademia Chigiana in Italy, as soloist with US orchestras nation-wide, and repeated tours of all the major venues in China.
She collaborates with and premieres music by some of today’s most significant composers, including Billy Childs, Richard Danielpour, Timo Andres and Clarice Assad. Expanding her activity beyond music, she founded the award-winning poetry-music series “Music/Words” in 2008, with dozens of performances in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles, both on stage and on WFMT radio.
As a writer, she has been published by the LA Times and Washington Post and she is winner of many prestigious competitions. Inna Faliks is currently Professor of Piano and Head of Piano at UCLA. She is in demand as Artist Teacher and is frequently invited to judge competitions and give masterclasses at major conservatories and universities. She is a Yamaha Artist.

Michail Lifits
Germany
Born in 1982 in Tashkent (Uzbekistan), Michail Lifits moved to Germany at the age of 16. He studied at the Hanover Hochschule für Musik, Theater und Medien in the studios of Karl-Heinz Kämmerling and Bernd Goetzke. He also received formative artistic influences in postgraduate studies with Boris Petrushansky at the International Piano Academy “Incontri con il Maestro” in Imola (Italy).
The winner of the 57th Ferruccio Busoni International Piano Competition has given numerous concerts at venues including Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center in New York, Wigmore Hall in London, Philharmonie Berlin, Herkulessaal, Prinzregententheater and Philharmonie in Munich, Laeiszhalle and Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, Sala Verdi in Milan, Tonhalle Zürich, Concertgebouw Amsterdam, Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels.
As a soloist, he has appeared with many renowned orchestras such as the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, the Residenzorchester Den Haag, NDR Radiophilharmonie Hannover, the Haydn Orchestra Bozen, the Moscow Soloists, Orchestra of Valencia, Orchestra dell’Arena di Verona, Hong Kong Sinfonietta, the Munich Symphony Orchestra and the Munich Chamber Orchestra.
Lifits is a welcome guest at renowned international festivals. These include the Verbier Festival, Festspiele Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Rheingau Musik Festival, Ruhr Piano Festival, Kissinger Sommer, Festival Pianistico Internazionale di Brescia e Bergamo, Festival d’Auvers-sur-Oise, Schwetzingen SWR Festival, Bergen International Festival, Menuhin Festival Gstaad, BBC Proms.
Since 2011 Michail Lifits has been an exclusive artist for Decca Classics and, in 2022, he was appointed professor of piano at the University of Music FRANZ LISZT Weimar.

Roland Pöntinen
Sweden
(from the Second Round)
Since his debut with the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic in 1981, Roland Pöntinen has performed with major orchestras throughout the world. He has been invited to many prestigious festivals including Schleswig-Holstein, Verbier and Mostly Mozart Festival, N.Y. and worked with conductors like Esa-Pekka Salonen, Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, Evgeny Svetlanov and Leif Segerstam to name a few. Highlights include performances with the Philharmonia Orchestra in Paris and London, Los Angeles Philharmonic in the Hollywood Bowl, with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra in Glasgow and Edinburgh as well as appearances at the London Proms where he has played both the Grieg Piano Concerto and the Ligeti Piano Concerto.
Pöntinen has given recitals in New York (The Frick Collection), London (Wigmore Hall), Bogotá, Istanbul, Stockholm and the Verbier Festival. Often immersed in large scale projects he has recently performed the complete cycles of Beethoven Sonatas and Années de Pèlerinage by Liszt.
Roland Pöntinen is also active as a composer and his Blue Winter was performed by the Philadelphia Orchestra under Wolfgang Sawallisch at Carnegie Hall in 1998.
His latest work, L’heure bleue for trombone and piano, dedicated to Christian Lindberg, was premiered in 2021. He has also arranged music by Legrand, Joni Mitchell and Weill for Håkan Hardenberger and Academy of St Martin in the Fields.
Pöntinen is a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Music and in 2002 he received the Litteris et Artibus, a royal medal for recognition of eminent skills in the artistic field.

John Rink
UK
Pianist, writer, recognized scholar, and professor, John Rink is one of the world’s foremost authorities on the music of Fryderyk Chopin. A graduate of Princeton University, King’s College London, and the University of Cambridge, he earned a “Concert Recital” Diploma and Premier Prix in piano at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama. As a performer, he has recently focused on period instruments and is an authority on playing “Pleyel” pianos. He is an award-winning expert on the manuscript and printed sources for Chopin’s works, the performance history of his music over the past 200 years (including Chopin’s own playing style), analysis of the repertoire, editorial practices, and aspects of critical reception.
For his dedication to the study of the great composer, in 2019 he received the Bene Merito honorary distinction from the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs for contributions to the ‘strengthening of Poland’s status in the international arena’.
Since 2009, he has been Professor of “Musical Performance Studies” at the University of Cambridge. He is also Fellow in “Music” at St John’s College, Cambridge, as well as a visiting professor in the University of London and at conservatoires in Shanghai and Singapore. He has published numerous books, including the prize-winning “Annotated Catalogue of Chopin’s First Editions” (with Christophe Grabowski, 2010). He is Editor-in-Chief of “The Complete Chopin – A New Critical Edition” (Edition Peters), and General Editor of a series of books on musical performance published by Oxford University Press. He also directed the AHRC Research Centre for Musical Performance as Creative Practice as well as the three projects at Chopin Online. He was a member of the juries of the International Chopin Competition in Warsaw in 2015 and 2021 and will serve again in 2025.