Pianissimo Winter Piano Festival 2025

GES-2 House of Culture in partnership with the Pianissimo Festival presents a winter programme of piano music, continuing the international cultural dialogue at GES-2.

Programme 

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The Pianissimo Festival is designed to acquaint a broad audience with the young generation of musicians through a series of concerts held in spaces that are new to classical music. The concerts are held at locations where music meets painting, architecture, or natural landscapes, enabling a synergy between different art forms. Venues in past years have included the Italian Hall of the New Hermitage (Saint Petersburg), GES-2 House of Culture (Moscow), and the Strelka Warehouses (Nizhny Novgorod) as well as the Valery Gergiev Concert Hall in Repino on the Gulf of Finland, the ballroom of the Kulm Hotel in St. Moritz (Switzerland), and the Copacabana Palace Theater in Rio de Janeiro (Brazil).

Photo: Anya Todich

This year’s winter programme will include concerts by outstanding piano talents of the new generation from Italy, China, and Brazil: Giacomo Menegardi, Ziyu Shao, and Tales Machado will perform a selection of works from the classical piano repertoire at the GES-2 Playhouse on three nights in January 2025.

Programme

Tickets

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Giacomo Menegardi (Italy)

When: 15 Jan, 20:00–21:30

Giacomo Menegardi (b. 2000) studies piano with Massimiliano Ferrati on the master’s programme at the Conservatorio Agostino Stefani in Castelfranco Veneto in Italy. Accolades include first prizes in the Alkan Competition for Piano Virtuosity (2021), the International W.A.Mozart Piano Competition in Lugano (2020), the Città di Spoleto International Piano Competition (2019), and the Marco Bramanti National Competition (2018). Giacomo Menegardi has performed at leading concert halls in Italy, other European countries, and the USA.

Programme

Claude Debussy (1862–1918)
Estampes, L. 108

Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873–1943)
Etude-Tableau in A minor, Op. 39, no. 2

Felix Mendelssohn (1809–1847)
Fantasia (Sonate écossaise) in F-sharp minor, Op. 28

Modest Mussorgsky (1839–1881)
Pictures at an Exhibition

Ziyu Shao (China)

Tickets

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Когда: 16 Jan, 20:00–21:30

Ziyu Shao (b. 2010) has studied with Elena Berezkina at the Gnessin School in Moscow since 2018. He was the winner of the Sixth Franz Liszt Young Pianists Competition (2023, Weimar), the Fifth Manhattan Music Competition (2020, New York), the Chopin Competition in Warsaw. and other international music contests. He has toured in Warsaw, Amsterdam, and New York.

Programme

Robert Schumann (1810–1856)
Carnaval, Op. 9

Frédéric Chopin (1810–1849)
Ballade no. 1 in G minor, Op. 23

Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873–1943)
Sonata no. 1 in D minor, Op. 28

Tales Machado (Brazil)

When: 19 Jan, 20:00–21:30

Tickets

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Tales Machado (b. 2006) is among the foremost young musicians in Brazil. He is currently studying at the University of São Paulo in the class of Eduardo Monteiro. He has also trained in Belgium and has given concerts in Brazil, Europe, and Russia.

Programme

Franz Liszt (1811–1886)
“Funérailles” from Harmonies poétiques et religieuses, Op. 173

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827)
Sonata no. 3 in C major, Op. 2

Maurice Ravel (1875–1937)
Sonatine, M. 40

Frédéric Chopin (1810–1849)
24 Preludes, Op. 28