Join our Piano Masterclass in Vienna - the City of Music!
Our masterclass (July 13-17, 2026) is aimed at students and professionals who want to get their piano playing at the next level. Our teachers are international renowned pianists and professors from Music Universities from all over Europe. The Masterclass will take place at the Musikquartier 1040 Wien from Mon-Fri. On Friday, the participants have the possibilty to perform at Ehrbarsaal, Vienna (Vienna´s second oldest concert hall, where Brahms, Bruckner, Schönberg, Reger, and Bartok have performed amongst others).
Those who wish can then participate in the International Vienna Piano Competition 2026 "Wiener Klassik" on July 18-20 - please be aware of the application deadline for the competition (Jan 31st, 2025).
Submit your application now and be part of the Vienna Piano Summer Festival!
July 13 - 17
2026
Vienna (Austria)
FACTSHEET
🎶 The Masterclass will take place from Mon, July 13 to Friday, July 17, 2026, at Musikquartier 1040, Mühlgasse 30, 1040 Wien.
🎶 Around 25 people will be invited to participate.
🎶 Classes will take place between 9 am and 6 pm. The final schedule will be published after registration.
🎶 The Final Concert will take place at Ehrbarsaal, Viennas second oldest concert venue, on Friday evening.
🎶 Daily Workshops and concerts in the evening
🎶 The course fee is 790€ and includes one private lesson every day (50 Min), participation in the workshops/lectures in the evening and the the final concert.
🎶 All participants will have access to the live streaming / recording of their performance
🎶 All participants will receive a certificate of attendance
🎶 The application deadline is Jan 31st, 2026
🎶 There is no application fee
"I was so happy being accepted and I was not disappointed. I would recommend it to any pianist because I learned so much during these five days. The masterclass opened my eyes on so many things and I loved the environment/ambiance. This project was a success and the organizers deserve a big applause. It was a wonderful experience, thank you with all my heart."
"Everything was just perfect"
"What I liked most:
-The very professional and precise organisation
-Making new friends
-The lessons with Amandine Savary were really inspiring and helpful
-Karajev’s beautiful movie
-Playing in Ehrbar Saal"
Gallery
PROFESSORS OF THE MASTERCLASS
Boris Bloch
Former Professor at the Folkwang University of Arts, Essen
Christiane Karajev (AT)
Professor at the University of Music and performing Arts Vienna (MDW)
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Iura Margulis (DE/RU)
Professor at the University of Music and Arts Vienna (MUK)
Amandine Savary (FR)
Professor at the University of Music and performing Arts Vienna
Biliana Tzilinkova (AT/BGR)
Professor at Mozarteum Salzburg
APPLICATION
FAQ
When will I know if I'm accepted to the Masterclass?
After your application, we will send you the invitation by the End of April
Can I choose my teacher?
You can indicate your preference for your teacher and we will try our best to accommodate you.
Will anyone play in the final recital?
It is planned that everyone plays in the final recital. However, the final decision of who will play which piece is reserved to the administration and the teachers.
Do you offer accommodation?
We do not offer accommodation, but we recommend you to book your accommodation according to your budget through platforms such as bookins or Airbnb
How do I create video links?
You can upload your videos on YouTube or Vimeo (public or private) and put the link in our form.
Do I have to speak German?
No, classes will be held in English.
Do you provide practice rooms?
You can book practice rooms by the hour through this link: https://pbs.bechstein.io/
PROFESSORS OF THE MASTERCLASS
BIOGRAPHIES
Boris Bloch (UKR, GER, USA)
Former Professor at the Folkwang University of Arts Essen
Born in Odessa, the pianist and opera conductor Boris Bloch has long been regarded as one of the most important interpreters of classical and romantic piano music. He studied at Moscow’s Tchaikovsky Conservatory under the world-renowned pianists and pedagogues Dmitri Bashkirov and Tatyana Nikolayeva. Following his graduation, he won the first prizes at the “Ferruccio Busoni” International Piano Competition in Italy, and the Young Concert Artists Award in New York.
His repertoire extends from Scarlatti and Bach, the Viennese Classicists, Chopin and Liszt and covers the German and Russian Romantics to the most important composers of the 20th century. Bloch’s detailed knowledge of the piano literature of the last three centuries, his familiarity with the entire history of music and its protagonists along with his stupendous pianism and strong artistic personality form the basis for his playing, which features depth of expression, abundance of color, stylistic originality and an incomparable “singing tone.”
He has performed as soloist with European orchestras such as Vienna, Leipzig, Berlin, Bergen, Rome, Budapest and Moscow, and with US orchestras including Cleveland, Houston and Pittsburgh. With the TonhalleOrchestra Zurich he performed all of Rachmaninov's piano concertos and, under the baton of Christoph Eschenbach the rarely played Busoni concerto, along with all of the Tchaikovsky piano concertos with the Staatskapelle Berlin and Scriabin’s Concerto with the Duisburg Philharmonic Orchestra.
Bloch has also made a name for himself as a conductor, especially during his time as the Music Director of the Odessa Opera; His repertoire as a conductor includes among others all the operas by Tchaikovsky, Mussorgsky and Rachmaninov.
Bloch has recorded extensively, to great acclaim. Several of his recordings have acquired benchmark status, especially his recordings of Liszt’s opera paraphrases, which were awarded the Grand Prix International du Disque Liszt by the Liszt Society of Budapest and the Diapason d’Or of Paris. Other discs include compete Mussorgsky’s piano works, Mozart’s “Coronation Concerto,” Tchaikovsky’s Third Piano Concerto and Busoni’s Piano Concerto along with recordings of Schubert, Bach, Chopin, and many others. His latest CD releases are six CDs on Gramola with complete cycles of Liszt’s Années de pèlerinage" and "Harmonies poétique et religieuses" and a box of selected Beethoven’s Piano Sonatas. He recently completed the Boris-Bloch Edition, 10 cd’s bearing the title “Aveu passionné »
His students at the Folkwang University of the Arts in Essen include Nikolaus Lahusen (1960-2005), Evgeny Bozhanov, Vladimir Kharin, Peter Jozsa, and Eduard Kiprsky. Valentin Malinin and Stanislav Korchagin, among others, participated in his master classes.
Christiane Karajev (AT)
Professor at the Music University of Vienna (MDW).
60 years at the piano - 40 years of teaching at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna.
Christiane Karajeva completed her studies at the Vienna Academy of Music and at the Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow.
Her most important teachers included Richard Hauser, Dieter Weber, Lev Naumov and Wilhelm Kempf. At the age of seventeen, she was the youngest prizewinner at the International Beethoven Competition. She performed mainly as a soloist in the most important concert halls in Vienna and traveled to Central Europe, Canada, Mexico, South Korea and the Middle East.
As the pianist of the Beethoven Trio Vienna, she performed successfully with the ensemble in Europe, the USA and Japan until 1999. Numerous CDs have been recorded under the Camerata label.
She regularly leads masterclasses in Austria, Korea and Japan and has worked as a mobile teacher in the international Erasmus program, including in Finland, Lithuania, Estonia, Italy, Portugal, Poland and Canada.
In 2017, she held master classes and solo recitals in Iran for the first time.
Her first solo CD with works by Scriabin and Schubert was released by Gramola in 2017, followed by another CD in 2020 with works by Berg, Medtner, Janacek and Schubert.
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Iura Margulis (DE/US)
Professor at Musik and Arts University Vienna (MUK)
Concert pianist, recording artist, master teacher, lecturer, and author Jura Margulis has been internationally
recognized for his compellingly communicative and emotionally charged performances, for the range of his
expressive tonal palette and his consummate transcendental virtuosity, as well as for his innovative approach
to specialized pedagogy, piano construction, repertoire, technology and pianistic tradition. Reviewers have
praised the "absolute authority" of his interpretations and the sense of "controlled obsession" he transmits
at the keyboard (Fono Forum). The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung noted that his aesthetic is both "impulsive
and contemplative." The Los Angeles Times praised his "excellent pianism" and called him "highly musical:”.
The Washington Post applauded his "titanic reserves of sheer power" and his "effortless spontaneity.”
The Fort Worth Star-Telegram called his performance "… the perfect Beethoven for the audience of our time
… sweeping lyricism … imagination, originality, and good taste pervaded every phrase." Drehpunkt Kultur,
Salzburg stated: "After the performance one fleetingly thinks of the pianists that became legends, but
comparisons are impermissible. Margulis is a master sui generis (of his own kind)."
His orchestral appearances include performances with the Russian National Orchestra at the Hollywood Bowl, the Montreal Symphony Orchestra under Charles Dutoit, the Südwestrundfunk Orchestra, the Memphis Symphony Orchestra, the National Orchestra of Venezuela, the Thailand Philharmonic Orchestra, the Prague Symphony Orchestra, the Shenzhen Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Orchestra della Svizzera Italiana. He has played in numerous festivals, including the Schleswig Holstein Musik Festival, the Berliner Festwochen at Berlin Philharmonic Hall, the Verbier, the Lugano, and the Sommets du Classique Festivals in Switzerland, the Argerich-Beppu Music Festival in Japan, the Martha Argerich Festival in Hamburg, and the Salzburger Festspiele in Austria. In his younger years Margulis was a laureate in more than a dozen national and international competitions, including Busoni in Italy and Guardian in Ireland. He was also a recipient of the DAAD scholarship and the esteemed Pro Europa prize awarded by the European Foundation for Culture.
AcXve as a chamber musician, Margulis is a founding member of the Margulis Piano Trio and performed with, among many others, Dmitry Sitkovetsky, Lilya ZIlberstein, Alissa and Natalia Margulis, Alexander Buzlov, Mark Baranov, Arnold Bezuyen, the soloists of the Moscow Virtuosi, members of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and the Moscow String Quartet. He also concerXzed with Martha Argerich on one and two pianos in Germany, Switzerland, Japan, and the USA. Their next performance is schedule for 2024.
In the last decade (COVID years;-) he performed in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, St. Louis, Dallas, CincinnaX, Salt Lake City, Liale Rock, Tulsa, Carmel, AusXn, Phoenix, San Jose, Minneapolis, Memphis, and New Orleans, as well as to Frankfurt, Düsseldorf, Hamburg, Elmau, Berlin, Bologna, Bruxelles, Bayreuth, Budapest, Bangkok, Barcelona, Beijing, Paris, Cape Town, Madrid, Yerevan, Warsaw, Aix-en-Provence, Almaty, Ankara, Lugano, Jerusalem, Hong Kong, Sapporo, Seoul, Shenzhen, Salzburg, Vienna, Moscow,
St. Petersburg, Tel Aviv, Tbilisi, Thessaloniki, Tokyo, and Tallin.
Margulis has recorded ten CDs for Sony, Ars Musici, Oehms Classics, Naxos, and is featured on BMG, AvanX, and Steinway Classics, covering a wide spectrum of repertoire. These recordings have atrracted significant attention, including selection as a „reference recording" by Fono Forum, and inclusion on the "Bestenliste" of the Deutschen Schallplattenkritik (German Recording Review). His CD featuring piano transcriptions of music from Bach to Caplet (2007), received 10 out of 10 for "artistic quality" from KlassikHeute. The accompanying review stated: "not since Horowitz’s old RCA recording have I encountered a performance of Saint-Saëns’ Danse Macabre that so grippingly leaps from the stage, as here in Jura Margulis’ own transcription." The review also noted that Margulis’ own transcription of a little-known piece by André Caplet "should, like Ravel’s own transcription of his La Valse, claim a place in the repertoire of young pianists."
Klassik.com, also giving the CD its highest rating, raved that Margulis "cannot be praised enough." Margulis’ Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Berg solo CD was released in fall of 2009; All Music Guide wrote: "This CD is one of the best played, best interpreted, best programmed recitals of piano music of the year". In 2011 Margulis released a CD with the complete Liszt violin and piano duo repertoire with his sister Alissa Margulis.
In 2012 a CD with Schumann’s Dichterliebe in original version and Berg’s Seven Early Songs with tenor Arnold Bezuyen was released.
In 2013 he created the Margulis Sordino Pedal with Steingraeber & Sons, www.MSP.com announces: "The Margulis Sordino Pedal is a quantum leap for the dynamic (volume) and spectral (color) expressive palette of the modern concert grand piano." In 2014 Margulis released an all Schubert con Sordino CD on a MSP Steingraeber D-232 prototype. Fono Forum writes: "Margulis plays (Schubert) with an enthusiasm, a
sensitivity, and a creative imagination that are near incomparable." By now dozens of MSP Grand Pianos are distributed throughout institutions and concert venues worldwide. In 2015 his latest CD was released with all original transcriptions of music form Bach to Shostakovich on the MSP Steingraeber D-232 including a piano duo with Martha Argerich of Night on Bald Mountain by M. Mussorgsky, also in Margulis’ original
transcription - "… astonishing …" Piano News; "… demonic … a brilliant achievement ... " Pianiste. He is the author of (originally an online platform “The Call Project” in 1996-2008) "Pianist To Pianist” (PtoP in 2010), a collection of thoughts, observations, research, methodology, rules, exceptions, concerns, considerations, and secrets … and published it by its eponymous title in print media in 2020 by EmanoMedia, Switzerland.
Jura Margulis’s father and grandfather were significant pianists and pedagogues and methodical piano pedagogy is an integral part of his arXsXc vision. He holds master classes in the USA, Germany, Austria, Italy, Switzerland, Spain, Portugal, Poland, Hungary, Slovenia, Estonia, Armenia, Israel, Korea, Hong Kong, China, and Japan. Born in Leningrad / St. Petersburg, UDSSR, Jura Margulis was raised in West Germany, where he studied with his father, Vitaly Margulis of Kharkiv, at the MusikHochschule Freiburg. He was also a
student at the prestigious Fondazione per il Pianoforte in Cadenabbia at Lake Como in Italy. In 1994 he moved to the United States to study with maestro Leon Fleisher at the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore and made the US his home. A university professor by 30, Margulis in 2008 became the inaugural holder of the Emily J. McAllister Endowed Professorship in Piano at the J.W. Fulbright College of the University of AR State. In 2018 Jura Margulis returned to Europe following an appointment as full professor of piano and
member of the Center of Science and Research at the Music and Art University in Vienna, Austria, where he resides.
Amandine Savary (FR)
Professor at the Music University of Vienna
First Prize winner of the Osaka Chamber Music Competition, Frankfurt Commerzbank Piano Trio Competition, Second Prize winner of the YCA in NY and Third Prize, audience Prize and special Prize of the Vienna Chamber Music Competition, Amandine Savary has performed in Europe as well as Japan, USA and Australia, establishing a substantial reputation as an accomplished and versatile pianist and chamber musician.
Amandine is a Laureate of Fondation d’Entreprise Banque Populaire, Tillett Trust, Kirckman Concert Society, Philip and Dorothy Green Award and Park Lane Group, Martin Musical Scholarship Fund, Hattori Foundation and the Worshipful Company of Musicians.
Amandine’s passion for chamber music is reflected in numerous recordings and awards for these recordings include the prestigious Diapason d’or, Gramophone magazine’s Editor’s Choice, Telerama FFFF, amongst many others. On top of her concert activity, she is regularly invited as teacher for academies and jury of international music competitions.
She was piano and chamber music teacher at the Royal Academy of Music in London until 2021 and became Associate of the Royal Academy of Music. Since October 2021, she teaches at the Beethoven Institute of the Wien MDW.
Biliana Tzilinkova (AT/BGR)
Professor at Mozarteum Salzburg
The pianist Biliana Tzinlikova is at home on the solo stage and both as a chamber musician and song accompanist. Her curiosity and spirit of discovery enable her to look back on a multi-faceted discography, which largely includes world premiere recordings from the piano literature.
Biliana Tzinlikova developed the spectrum of her pianistic abilities during her studies under the influence of different piano traditions: the Russian Piano School – studies with Marina Kapatzinskaja at the State Academy of Music in Sofia – and the Leygraf Piano School – master concert studies with Christoph Lieske at the Mozarteum University. The intensive work with Ruggiero Ricci (1998 – 2003) and Ferenc Rados (2002 – 2005) was also particularly formative. Furthermore, BilianaTzinlikova gained important impulses from master classes with Elisso Virsaladse, Arndzej Jaszinsky, Pavel Gililov, Menahem Pressler, Paul Badura-Skoda, Alexander Lonquich and Klaus-Christian Schuster.
More recently, her artistic work as a concert pianist has focused on the rediscovery and performance of forgotten piano music. This passion is showcased in her CD recordings. In 2014, she released a world premiere of Franz Anton Hoffmeister’s Piano Sonata on a 3 CD set (Grand Piano, Naxos International), which promptly made a name for her in the professional world. The recordings received enthusiastic reviews from internationally recognized music organizations and academics alike. She continued recording, releasing a CD with virtuosic variations from Stephen Heller in 2016, piano music of the French composer Louise Farrenc in 2018, and a CD with works from Germaine Tailleferre, Georges Auric and Louis Durey in 2020. (All three published by Paladino Music).
Since 2017 Tzinlikova has also been working together with actresses and actors to organize crossgenre concert programs that focus on female composers’ works in music history. As a sought after chamber music partner, she collaborates often, locally and abroad, with internationally renowned artists such as Christian Gerhaher, Adrian Eröd, Thomas Selditz, Klara Flieder, Thomas Riebl, Colin Jacobsen, Ulf Schneider, Ann Harvey-Nagl, Vesna Stankovic, Stephan Picard, Patrick Demenga, Gustav Rivinius, Dany Bonvin, Esther Hoppe, Christophe Pantillon, Marta Sudraba, Andreas Schablas, Christoph Zimper, and members of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra.
As a soloist, she has performed at the Mozart Week Festival in Salzburg, and with Stefan Sanderling with the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra. She has given concerts in almost every country in Europe, as well as the USA. In 2004, she had her debut in the Viennese Concert house. Biliana Tzinlikova is a professor at the Mozarteum University in Austria. Since her habilitation she has led a class for piano and chamber music there, and is the initiator and artistic director of the festival „Kammermusiktage Erika Frieser“, which is dedicated to works by female composers.
Since May 2023, Biliana Tzinlikova has been a co-founder and member of the Ehrbar Chamber Music Society in Vienna.