Jury

Sten Lassmann has performed regularly as a soloist and chamber musician since winning first prize at the 6th Estonian Piano Competition in 2002. He has performed all over the world and in some of the most prestigious venues, such as the Glenn Gould Studio in Toronto . , the Purcell Hall in London, the Large and Small Halls of the Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow, the Concert Hall of the Giuseppe Verdi Conservatory in Milan and the Concert Hall of the Forbidden City in Beijing. He has toured Beethoven’s Fifth Concerto and Prokofiev’s Second Concerto with the Estonian National Symphony Orchestra, and played the Estonian premiere of James Macmillan’s Second Concerto with the Tallinn Chamber Orchestra. His recent engagements include Mozart’s K 595 with the Helikunst Orchestra, Khachaturian’s Piano Concerto with ENSO, and all of Bach’s multi-keyboard concertos with the Tallinn Chamber Orchestra.

Sten Lassmann began his musical education at the Tallinn Central Music School in 1989 and continued at the Estonian Academy of Music and Theater with prof. Ivari Ilja. Later he also studied at the National Higher Conservatory of Music and Dance in Paris with prof. Brigitte Engerer and at the Royal Academy of Music in London with Ian Fountain. An important musical influence also comes from his father, Peep Lassmann, an esteemed piano professor at the Estonian Academy of Music and Theater and a former student of Emil Gilels at the Moscow Conservatory. In 2013, Sten Lassmann was awarded a doctorate at the Royal Academy of Music in London for his research on the Estonian composer Heino Eller. He also received the Heino Eller Music Prize (2011), the Estonian Cultural Fund’s annual music prize (2015, 2021) and in 2018 was elected Associate of the Royal Academy of Music (ARAM). Lassmann is currently a senior piano professor at the Estonian Academy of Music and Theater.

Since 2008 he has been involved in a project to make the first recording of complete piano works by Heino Eller for Toccata Classics in London. With the publication of the final volume in August 2023, the series has covered all 206 of Eller’s piano compositions on 9 CDs. Sten Lassmann is also an avid chamber musician and in recent years has performed recitals with violinists Stanislav Pronin, Pavel Berman, Natalia Lomeiko, Mikk Murdvee Katariina Maria Kits, Movses Pogossian, Robert Traksmann, Triin Ruubel and Anna-Liisa Bezrodny, soprano Earring. Kerge, mezzo-sopranos Maarja Purga and Karis Trass, bass Pavlo Balakin and cellist Valle-Rasmus Roots.