“Luca Buratto won the 2015 Honens International Piano Competition Friday night at Jack Singer Hall in Calgary, Alberta,” writes Stephen Hunt in Saturday’s (9/12) Calgary Herald (Canada). “The Italian pianist took home $100,000 plus a career development package valued at around a half-million dollars…. Buratto closed the musical portion of the festival Friday night, performing Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 3 in C major, Op. 26…. Buratto, [at age 22] the youngest performer in the competition, was chosen over American Henry Kramer and Ukrainian Artem Yasynskyy, by a jury of seven that included pianists Alessandra Ammara, Janina Fialkowska and Pedja Muzijevic; Jeremy Geffen (Director, Artistic Planning at Carnegie Hall), Charles Hamlen (Artistic Advisor, Orchestra of St. Luke’s and former head of IMG Artists), Paul Hughes (BBC Symphony Orchestra general manager), and Costa Pilavachi (Universal Music Group International’s Senior Vice President of Classical A& R)…. Buratto prepared each day of his stay at Honens by watching the U.S. tennis tournament on television…. That pastime gained an eerie momentum Friday, when not one, but two Italian women won semifinal matches Friday to advance to the finals of the U.S. Open…. ‘Today,’ he said, ‘is maybe Italian day.’ ”
Posted September 15, 2015
