At the age of five, Nikola heard a recording of Rachmaninoff’s third piano concerto, played by Vladimir Horowitz. At that moment he knew that he wanted to play the piano and his enthusiasm and talent for the piano flourished. His breakthrough came when he won the 2012 Steinway Competition in the Concertgebouw Amsterdam, together with the audience´s prize. In 2014 he won the “Concertgebouw Competition” and in 2015 he finished second in The Young Pianist Foundation Competition.
Over the past four years, Nikola has given many concerts. For instance, the Festival Classique (the Hague) and a concert in the “Circustheater” (the Hague). Nikola has also been invited to the “Concertboerderij” of Rian de Waal and played a concert together with the well-known pianist Daniël Wayenberg and orchestra. He has also given several concerts in the small auditorium of the Concertgebouw of Amsterdam. On the recent 250th anniversary of Mozart’s visit to The Netherlands, Nikola played Piano Concerto no 1 KV 107 and the concerto for two pianos (KV 365) by Mozart, in performance with the Ciconia Consort. They performed in four Dutch venues.
Nikola has a preference for the works of Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Liszt, Rachmaninoff, Prokofiev and Chopin and he is fond of listening to recordings of pianists Horowitz, Cziffra, Rubinstein, Lipatti and Gould. At present Nikola is thirteen years old and a student of Marlies van Gent at the School for Young Talent of the Royal Conservatory in the Hague. Since September 2015, Nikola has been studying at the Accademia Pianistica Internazionale “Incontri col Maestro” in Imola (Italy) with Maestro Enrico Pace and Marlies van Gent. Nikola has participated in several masterclasses over the past three years (including those of Ruth Nye, Edith Fischer and Dominique Merlet).
Nikola will be playing J S Bach´s Partita no 2; Clementi´s Sonata in G opus 50 no 3, Mendelssohn´s Variations Sérieuses op 54, Schubert´s Auf dem Wasser zu singen (arr for piano by Liszt), and Etudes op 10 no 3, op 10 no 4 and Ballade no 3 by Chopin.
Tickets are €20 and can be obtained from lynne.algarvehistory@gmail.com
