JURIES 2027
Italian pianist Roberto Plano performs regularly throughout North America and Europe – notably at Lincoln Center, Sala Verdi, Salle Cortot, Wigmore Hall, and the Herkulessaal. He has appeared with orchestras worldwide, under the direction of renowned conductors such as Sir Neville Marriner, James Conlon, Pinchas Zukerman, and Miguel Harth-Bedoya. He has given recitals at the Newport Festival, Portland Piano Festival, Ravinia Festival, and Gilmore International Piano Festival in the US, at the Chopin Festival in Poland, and at the Bologna Festival Italy, and many others. He has performed with acclaimed string quartets including the Takács, Cremona, St. Petersburg, Fine Arts, Jupiter, and Muir, with soloists Domenico Nordio, Ilya Grubert, Pavel Berman, Jiří Bárta, and Enrico Bronzi, as well as in duo with his wife, pianist Paola Del Negro.
Roberto Plano was the First Prize Winner at the Cleveland International Piano Competition in 2001, and a prize winner at the Honens, Dublin, Sendai, Géza Anda, and Valencia competitions, as well as a finalist at the Cliburn and the Busoni competitions, in addition to having won 15 First Prizes in national competitions in Italy. Mr. Plano’s engaging personality has made him a favourite guest on radio programs such as NPR’s Performance Today.
His more than 20 albums have earned numerous five-star reviews. He recently released a series of world-premiere recordings of music by Andrea Luchesi (1741–1801) and gave the world premiere of two Luchesi piano concertos with the Nuova Orchestra da Camera Ferruccio Busoni in Trieste, followed by the American premiere with the Toledo Symphony, conducted by Stefan Sanderling. His debut recording for Decca Classics features Liszt’s Harmonies poétiques et religieuses—works Decca had not recorded since the 1960s.
Recent engagements include appearances as a soloist with the Kremerata Baltica at the Portogruaro International Music Festival in Italy and with the Royal Camerata at the Romanian Athenæum in Bucharest, Romania, as well as concerts at the Stellenbosch International Piano Symposium in South Africa, the Yamaha Centre in Taiwan, the Vivace Vilnius Festival in Lithuania, the Gijón International Piano Festival in Spain, and the Boston Athenæum in the USA. He has also given several concerts in Russia, including two at the Kremlin State Palace in Moscow, and completed a 10-concert chamber music tour in China.
Roberto Plano studied at the Verdi Conservatory in Milan and the École Normale de Musique de Paris – Alfred Cortot, where he earned the Diplôme supérieur de concertiste, receiving the First Prize by unanimous decision. He has been described by The Chronicle as the “Pavarotti of the Piano” for his lyricism, and was called the heir to Rubinstein and Horowitz by Chicago radio commentator Paul Harvey. In Italy, he has appeared on the cover of the country’s leading music magazine, Amadeus, and has received several honours, including the Lumen Claro, awarded by the city of Varese to its most celebrated citizens.
Since 2023, he has served as Professor of Piano and Chair of the School of Keyboard Studies at the Conservatorio della Svizzera Italiana in Lugano, Switzerland, and as International Visiting Professor of Piano at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester, UK.
The International Jury of the Concours musical international de Montréal is housed at the Ritz-Carlton – Montréal
