LEONID BARANOV – violine
GEORGIANA PLETEA – piano
ATTENTION! All concerts of the festival in Biel are free for Ukrainians with S status.
Leonid Baranov
Leonid Baranov was born in St. Petersburg in 1994 and began to take violin lessons at the age of five. He attended the music school of the St. Petersburg State Conservatory, where he was taught by Anneliya Skliarskaya. Leonid Baranov is currently studying with Ilya Gringolts and Yuuki Wong at the Haute Ecole de Musique de Lausanne.
Since the age of 15, the young violinist has performed with symphony orchestras in various cities in Russia, as well as in Europe, Asia and the USA. Concert halls such as the Vienna Konzerthaus, the Hong Kong City Hall, the Israeli Opera in Tel Aviv, the Incheon Arts Center in South Korea, the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg and Carnegie Hall in New York are well known to him.
Leonid Baranov was a student of Shmuel Ashkenasi, Dora Schwarzberg, Vadim Gluzman, Grigory Kalinovsky and Pavel Vernikov and he was able to work with renowned musicians and conductors such as Itamar Golan, Evgeny Sinaiski, Victor Yampolsky and Colin Metters.
In 2020, Leonid Baranov received a scholarship from the Rahn Kulturfonds and at Rahn Musikpreis 2022 he won the first prize in the category for violin.
From September 2022 he has a permanent employment at the Philharmonia Zurich, the orchestra of the Zurich Opera House.
Georgiana Pletea
The young pianist was born in Bucharest in 1993. She began her piano studies at the age of 7 with Gabriela Enasescu and continued her studies with Elisa Barzescu.
From 2012 to 2020 she studied in the class of Professor Adrian Oetiker at the Musik Akademie Basel and completed her Master’s degree in Specialised Musical Performance as a Soloist and Master’s degree in Music Pedagogy with excellent results.
Georgiana Pletea is a laureate of numerous competitions: Rahn Music Prize 2020, Mozart Competition Targoviste, Music Olympiad Romania, International Competition Carl Czerny, Pro Piano Competition Bucharest, Concorso Pietro Argento Gioia del Colle and the International Competition Sigismund Toduta.
At the age of 16 Georgiana Pletea already performed in the Romanian Athenaeum with the George Enescu Collegium Orchestra Bucharest. In Switzerland, she performed twice with the Basel Symphony Orchestra as part of her graduation and played at festivals in Lenk, Schaffhausen, Verbier and with the Weil am Rhein Orchestra Society. Further performances took place at music festivals such as the "Remember Enescu" National Festival – Brasov, the Chopin 200 International Festival or the World Music Concert – City Hall Brisbane Australia and many others.
During her master studies in Basel, Georgiana Pletea attended master classes with renowned professors such as Roger Vignoles, Susan Tomes, Johannes Meissl, Homero Francesch and Emanuel Ax.