The three contestants that made it to the final of Top of the World 2013 Piano Competition in Tromsö are
François Dumont (France)
Emmanuel Rimoldi (Italy)
Lukas Vondacek (Czech Republic)
The Grand Finale will take place on June 21st at 7.30 pm at Kulturhuset in Tromsö The 3 final contestants will be playing each a piano concert with the Artic Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Peter Szilvay.
Francois Dumont was born in Lyon on October 19th 1985. He began to play the piano at the age of five. At the age of fourteen, Dumont entered the Paris Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique, where he studied with Bruno Rigutto and Hervé Billaut. Other mentors of Francois Dumont include Murray Perahia, Menahem Pressler, Dimitri Bashkirov, Leon Fleisher, William Grant Naboré, Paul Badura-Skoda, Pierre-Laurent Aimard, Stanislav Ioudenitch, and Fou Ts'ong. He also honed his piano skills at the International Piano Academy Lake Como. Francois Dumont has been invited to perform with orchestras in Lyon, Montpellier, Corsica, and Paris, playing concertos by Poulenc and Mozart as well as Bach concertos for three and four pianos with Bruno Rigutto. In 2006, he performed Chopin's Piano Concerto No. 2 with the Liepāja Symphony Orchestra in Latvia
Emanuel Rimoldi was born in Milan in 1986 to a Rumanian mother and an Italian father, and has played the piano since he was five. He received his Bachelor’s Degree “Magna Cum Laude” in 2006 from “G.Verdi” Conservatory of Milan, and his Master’s Degree “Magna Cum Laude” in 2008 from the same institute. His teachers were Professors Risaliti and Balzani.
Born in Opava, Czech Republic in 1986, Lukas Vondracek’s musical ability was spotted at the age of two by his parents, both professional pianists. Lukas made his New York debut at Carnegie Hall’s Issac Stern Auditorium at the age of 16. He moved to the U.S. in 2009 and received an Artist Diploma from Boston’s New England Conservatory of Music, where he studied with Hung-Kuan Chen. His other teachers include Vladimir Ashkenazy, Peter Barcaba, Rudolf Bernatik and Andrzej Jasinsky.
Tromsø – The Gateway to the Arctic, the place with the most northern lights activity in the world, two months of midnight sun in the summer, and a lively and colourful downtown. Great arctic history surrounded by the drama of the Lyngen Alps, the calmness of the blue fjords and hundreds of islands. Tromsø is a lovely surprise – a mere 2000 km from the North Pole.
