Stanislav Ioudenitch
Davide Cabassi
Praised for his technical brilliance and profound musical insight, Stanislav Ioudenitch is recognized as one of the most distinguished pianists of his generation. Winner of the Gold Medal at the 2001 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, he has captivated audiences worldwide with performances that combine intellectual depth, emotional nuance, and virtuoso artistry. Prior to his Cliburn win that launched his international career, Ioudenitch had gained top prizes at many international competitions, including the Ferruccio Busoni, William Kapell, Maria Callas, and New Orleans International Piano Competitions, among others.
Ioudenitch's career as a soloist has taken him to renowned stages across the globe, including Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, Munich's Gasteig, Milan's Conservatorio Verdi, Moscow's Great Conservatory Hall, the Mariinsky Theatre, Beijing's Forbidden City Concert Hall, Paris's Théâtre du Châtelet, Fort Worth's Bass Hall, Boston's Jordan Hall, the Orange County Performing Arts Center, the International Piano Festival of La Roque d'Anthéron, and the Aspen Music Festival.
He has appeared with leading orchestras such as the Munich Philharmonic, the Mariinsky Orchestra, the National Symphony Orchestra (Washington, D.C.), the Rochester Philharmonic, the English Chamber Orchestra, the Honolulu Symphony, and Russia's National Philharmonic. His collaborations include esteemed conductors such as James Conlon, James DePreist, Asher Fisch, Justus Franz, Valery Gergiev, Günther Herbig, Mikhail Pletnev, Stefan Sanderling, Carl St. Clair, and Michael Stern.
Ioudenitch has also collaborated with distinguished chamber ensembles, including the Takács Quartet, the Prazák Quartet, and the Borromeo Quartet.
A lifelong advocate for artistic growth, Stanislav Ioudenitch's pedagogical lineage is deeply rooted in the traditions of some of the 20th century's most influential pianists and pedagogues. His teachers have included Natalia Vasinkina at the Uspensky School of Music in Tashkent, Dmitri Bashkirov and Galina Eguiazarova at the Reina Sofía School of Music in Madrid, and Karl Ulrich Schnabel, Leon Fleisher, Rosalyn Tureck, and William Grant Nabore at the International Piano Foundation in Como, Italy (now the International Piano Academy Lake Como). Ioudenitch later became the youngest faculty member in the history of the Lake Como Academy and was subsequently appointed Vice President, a role he continues to hold today.
As the founder of Park University's International Center for Music in Kansas City, Ioudenitch serves as both Artistic Director and Professor of Piano. He is also a Professor of Piano at Oberlin Conservatory and at Madrid's Reina Sofía School of Music, where he holds the Fundación Banco Santander Piano Chair.
Ioudenitch's contributions to music education have gained international recognition, with his students winning top prizes at prestigious competitions such as the Cliburn, Tchaikovsky, Geza Anda, London, Enescu, and Sydney. Many now maintain thriving careers as performers on international stages. Beyond his teaching, he is frequently invited to serve as a juror at important international competitions and to lead masterclasses around the world.
Davide Cabassi made his debut at the age of thirteen with the Rai Symphony Orchestra in Milan playing Shostakovich's Second Concerto under the baton of Vladimir Delman, the beginning of a career as a soloist that since then has led him to perform with the major European and American orchestras including the Munchner Philharmoniker, Orchestra Filarmonica della Scala, Neue Philharmonie Westfalen, Russian Chamber Orchestra, Magdeburg Philharmoniker, Fort Worth Symphony, Enid Symphony, Big Spring Symphony, Hartford Symphony, Orquesta Sinfonica de Cordoba, Haydn Orchestra Bolzano, Verdi Orchestra Milan, Orchestra Pomeriggi Musicali Milan, Orchestra di Padova e del Veneto, Orchestra Romantique Paris, OSI Lugano, OFT Turin, Orchestra dell'Arena di Verona, Tiroler Festspiele Erl Orchestra and many others, collaborating with conductors such as Gustav Kuhn, James Conlon, Daniele Gatti, Asher Fisch, Antonello Manacorda, David Coleman, Vladimir Delman, Marco Angius, Tito Ceccherini, Carlo Goldstein, Jader Bignamini, Enrique Mazzola, Daniele Callegari, Massimo Zanetti, Mikhail Tatarnikov, Philip von Steinaecker, Howard Griffiths, Johannes Wildner, Federico Maria Sardelli, Kimbo Ishi-Ito, Helmut Rilling, Gabor Takacs-Nagy and many others.
He has played for the most important Italian musical realities such as the Società del Quartetto, Serate Musicali, Società dei Concerti, Piano Festival of Brescia and Bergamo etc. and abroad, invited both in Europe and in more than 35 American states, in China and Japan in halls such as Carnegie Hall in New York, Rachmaninoff Hall in Moscow, Gasteig in Munich, Mozarteum in Salzburg, Louvre and Salle Gaveau in Paris, Forbidden City Hall and NCPA in Beijing, Roque d'Antheron and Tiroler Festspiele.
A passionate chamber musician, he has played in numerous chamber ensembles, 0 (in 2018 he founded the Baggio Sinfonietta) and his vast repertoire signals particular interest in today's music - there are many compositions dedicated to him performed for the first time.
A long collaboration with the Teatro alla Scala has led him to play for étoiles such as Roberto Bolle, Svetlana Zacharova, Massimo Murru and Sylvie Guillem.
Parallel to his concert activity, Cabassi has undertaken an intense recording activity. He released his first recordings for labels such as Sony BMG (his first album Dancing with the orchestra won the Classic Voice magazine's critics' award in 2007 for the best recording debut of the year), Concerto Classics and Col-legno.
In 2012 he made his debut for Decca, with an extraordinarily successful album with some Mozart Sonatas and Variations and undertook the recording of Beethoven's Piano Sonatas.
He began studying piano at a very young age, graduating with honors in the class of Prof. Edda Ponti at the Giuseppe Verdi Conservatory in Milan and is the first Italian admitted to the International Piano Foundation in Cadenabbia, on Lake Como, with William Grant Naborè, K. U. Schnabel, L. Fleisher, D. Bashkirov, R. Tureck, A. Weissemberg, and many others.
He has been teaching in Italian conservatories since 2003: his students are regular winners of prizes at major international competitions (Honens Calgary, Schumann in Zwickau, Cliburn, Epinal, Finale Ligure, Premio delle Arti, Montichiari, Piombino, Gorizia, Prima la Musica etc.).
He is the artistic creator of the concert seasons Kawai in Ledro (TN), Un pianoforte in Ateneo (Kawai - Cattolica, Milan), the Incontri Contemporanei (Milan), the Kawai Summer Music Camps in Ledro and the Shigeru Kawai International Competition.
In 2010 he founded with his wife, the Russian pianist Tatiana Larionova, the concert season Primavera di Baggio, to enhance and culturally relaunch the disadvantaged suburbs of his city, involving children and "invading" the associative spaces, especially those redeemed from the mafias.
Great music in Milan
The PIANO IN THE UNIVERSITY Project is the result of an agreement between the Milan branch of Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore and one of the most important manufacturers in the world of musical instruments, Kawai Pianos of Hamamatsu (Japan). Its promoters are the Master Davide Cabassi (professor at the Milan Conservatory) and Prof. Enrico Reggiani (director of the Studium Musicale di Ateneo) as, respectively, artistic creator and scientific director.
The aim of the Project is to contribute to enriching the musical offer of the City of Milan according to innovative criteria and methods from a cultural-musicological point of view and of the highest artistic profile, first of all, by establishing a chamber music season at the Aula Magna of the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Milan which will make use of established and prestigious names in international piano concertism.
