The President The Hon. Bronwyn Bishop AO and the Friends Council have great pleasure in inviting the Friends to a Piano Recital by Calvin Abdel on Sunday 16th March 2025 at 3pm at the Goethe Institut, 90 Ocean Street, Woollahra Members $45.00, Non-Members $50.00.
Bookings online https://www.trybooking.com/CXYKB or phone Terry Mackin 9972 3556
Program
Ludwig van Beethoven – Piano Sonata No. 28 in A major Op. 101
Claude Debussy – Images I (Book 1)
Ananda Sukarlan – Rapsodia Nusantara No. 10
Frederic Chopin – Ballade No. 1 in G minor
Frederic Chopin – Ballade No. 2 in F major
Dubbed by The Australian as the ‘Piano Man’, the Indonesian/Australian pianist Calvin Abdiel is establishing himself as one of the finest young musicians internationally. He has given high profile performances in numerous countries, including in Australia, Austria, Russia, Indonesia, Germany, Denmark, and Switzerland.
He received the George Frederick Boyle Third Prize and Nancy Weir Best Australian Pianist Prize in the internationally renowned Sydney International Piano Competition (the Sydney) as its youngest competitor in the 2021 edition. He was noted to be the first Australian to reach the grand finale of the competition after almost 20 years, and he also received the Nancy Weir Best Australian Pianist prize as well as the Australian Elizabethan Theatre Trust prize of an overseas scholarship to further his musical career. Following the announcement of his win, The Australian’s, Matthew Westwood described him as ‘Piano Man’ and wrote about his extraordinary ‘pianistic authority.’ He went on a debut recital tour in Australia in 2022 at various concert halls in NSW, ACT and Victoria which was presented by the Sydney.
Born in Jakarta, Indonesia, Abdiel fostered interest in classical music from the age of 5, picking out his first sounds from the piano. Since then, he has garnered numerous awards internationally through his performances. He made his orchestral debut in 2017 with the St Petersburg State Capella Symphony Orchestra and subsequent performances with the Queensland Symphony Orchestra and the Swiss orchestra, Les Chambrites. He has worked with conductors including Anatoliy Rybalko, Gerard Schwartz, Richard Davis, Roger Benedict, Paul Terracini and Benedetto Montebello.
His previous achievements include the 2nd prize at the International Competition for Young Pianists: Steps to Mastery (St Petersburg, Category C, 2017), 2nd prize and a string of awards (Concerto Prize, Queensland Symphony Orchestra Vote Prize and Audience Prize) at the Lev Vlassenko Piano Competition as its youngest participant (Australia, 2017), 3rd Prize in the Val de Travers International Piano Competition (Switzerland, 2018) and 1st Prize in the Ananda Sukarlan Award International Piano Competition (Jakarta, 2020), which is the largest piano competition in Indonesia. As the winner of the 2021 SCM Piano Unit Concerto Competition, he performed Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 3 in May 2022 with the Sydney Conservatorium Symphony Orchestra. In the same year, he was the recipient of the Frank Albert Prize for Music at the Sydney Conservatorium. Hislive performances in Australia have been recorded by ABC Classic FM and Fine Music FM for delayed broadcast. In 2022, he performed Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 4 as the soloist at a historical concert with the G20 Orchestra at the Candi Borobudur (UNESCO World Heritage Site), which was broadcasted on the national television in Indonesia (TVRI) and online. In 2024, he received 3rd prize at the 27th ‘Mauro Paolo Monopoli Prize’ International Piano Competition (Barletta, Italy, 2024) and performed with the Orchestra ICO ‘Suoni del Sud’.
Calvin Abdiel is currently undertaking his Master of Arts degree with Prof. Eldar Nebolsin at the Hochschule für Musik Hanns Eisler. Recently, he completed his Bachelor of Music (Performance) degree with First Class Honours at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music under Natalia Ricci. As a chamber musician, Abdiel performed in the Canberra International Music Festival in 2021 and Out West Piano Festival in 2023. He was the founding member and former conductor of the youth orchestra Cantate Deo Chamber Orchestra from 2020 to 2023. His musical activity has been supported by the SCM George and Margaret Henderson Overseas Scholarship, Sydney Eisteddfod Kawai Piano Scholarship, Theme and Variation Foundation, Institut Francais d’Indonesie (IFI), Australian Elizabethan Theatre Trust, and the International Piano Foundation “Theo Lieven”. He had masterclasses with guest artists such as Orli Shaham, Justas Dvarionas, Michael Endres and Vyacheslav Gryaznov at the Sydney Conservatorium. In 2017, he was selected to perform in the Musica Viva sponsored masterclass in Sydney given by the renowned pianist Angela Hewitt. He has also participated in masterclasses in Singapore and Indonesia with the acclaimed pianist/conductor Jahja Ling in 2018. In 2019, he was the recipient of the Henderson Piano Scholarship at the SCM, which allowed him to attend masterclasses in Weimar and Portugal with renowned pianists Ferenc Rados, Denes Varjon and Boris Berman. As a scholarship holder in the Lieven Piano Summer School in 2022 and 2023, he also had masterclasses with Andreas Steier, Lilya Zilberstein, Paul Roberts, Davide Cabassi, Arie Vardi, Alexei Volodin, Alon Goldstein, and Robert Mcdonald. In 2023, a scholarship from IFI enabled him to study the piano works of Ravel with Pascal Roge in Nice, France.