MUSIC: DUDANA MAZMANISHVILI A Georgian Pianist

Dudana Mazmanishvili was born in 1980 in Tbilisi, Georgia. She received her first piano lessons, at age three, from her mother, Tamar Apakidze. Three years later she was accepted into the Central Music School for Talented Children in Tbilisi.
Dudana’s concert debut took place at the age of eight when she performed Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 15 with the Georgian State Orchestra. By age 14 she played Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2 with the Tbilisi Symphony Orchestra. Since then she has regularly performed in Germany, Russia, France, Poland, Italy, and the United States. One highlight was in 2001 when she played a solo recital in the Max-Josef-Hall of the Munich Residence, a performance which was recorded by Bavarian Radio and subsequently broadcasted several times in Germany.
Since 1998 Dudana has been a student of Prof. Elisso Virsaladze at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Munich. This year she began her studies with Prof. Jerome Rose in New York.
Dudana is a prize winner of numerous international piano competitions, including 1992 Dvarionas International Competition in Vilnius, Lithuania, 1995 Città di Senigallia Competition in Italy, 1996 Sarrebourg Competition in France, 1998 Chopin Competition in Corpus Christi, Texas, Isabel Scionti Competition in Kingsville, Texas, 2005 Washington International Piano Competition and a special recognition winner of the 2002 Tchaikovsky Piano Competition in Moscow. Other noteworthy successes in that year were the Nicolai Rubinstein International Competition in Paris, where she was awarded first prize, the prestigious Solo Recital Award of the Merano International Music Festival in Italy and being a prize winner of the International Keyboard Festival in New York. In 1998-2001, Dudana received the annual Honorary Prize awarded by President Eduard Shevardnadze to talented young Georgians.
Dudana’s concerts in 2004 included Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3 with the Nordwestdeutsche Philharmonie, when the Westfälische Abend-Zeitung described her as a “soloist who captured the soul of the music…. She captivated the audience with her sensitive, poetic sound…. She plays with bravura and great virtuosity.”
In 2005 Dudana is scheduled to record a CD featuring the Rachmaninoff piano transcriptions at the Bavarian Radio for the label Oehms Classics.

Homepage: http://www.dudana.com/index.php

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