Meet the Jury

Semi-finals pre-selection jury, live jury to be announced.

Denise Lutgens (The Netherlands)Pianist, Teacher at Globe\MCO and Holland International Piano School

Denise Lutgens was born inThe Netherlands. From an early age it was clear that her passion was music and her love for the piano started at auctions where she went with her father as a toddler and preschooler. She started her piano lessons with Marianne Maessen at the music school in Venlo. It soon became apparent that she was making great progress and at the age of 8 she was admitted to the Young Talent Class of the conservatory in Amsterdam. In 2000 she continued her young talent training with Ton Demmers at the Conservatory in Tilburg. In 2002 she continued her piano studies at the Anton Rubinstein Akademie with Alla Blatow. Here she became acquainted with Prof. Vladimir Krainev who immediately invited Denise to continue her studies with him in Hanover at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater. She studied here from 2002 - 2008. In June 2008, Denise passed her grammar school exams at the St. Willibrord Gymnasium in Deurne and then continued her studies at the Royal College of Music in London. Denise was the first Dutch pianist to be admitted to this prestigious training. In 2009 she obtained her Propedeuse of Music at the Royal College of Music. She continued then her studies in The Hague, where she also graduated with Prof. Naum Grubert at the Royal Conservatoire. During her studies, her love for teaching became apparent. During her 1st year in London she started giving general music group lessons to young children and lessons to beginning children. In 2015 she also organized an International Piano Competition for 83 international young talents in The Hague. Denise herself also participated in a number of competitions at a young age, which resulted in a first prize in the Steinway Competition Netherlands, Rotary Competition, Alexander Scriabin Competition Paris and DTKV Wettebewerb, Germany.
In 2009 Denise opened Holland International Piano School together with collegue pianist Dani Luca, which is still running succesfully in The Hague. Since 2018 she is also a teacher at Globe CKC located in Music Centre for the Broadcast Hilversum, The Netherlands.
In the past few years her students won multiple prizes in competitions amongst 1st prizes at Orbetello Piano Competition, Golden Piano Talents, Danubia Talents, Memorijal Jurica Murai, Monegrarte International Piano Competition, Steinway competition and many more. Her students were intived to play on numeral prestigious opportunities amongst Festival Classique in The Hague, a meet / tv appearence with prime minister Mark Rutten, several tv and news papers publications (Telegraaf, Ivo Niehe, Gooi en Eembode, etc).
Now another fuction is added and she is artistic Director for Globe International Piano Competition in Hilversum, The Netherlands.

István I. Székely, Hungary / Spain

Michael Schalamov, Germany

Nati Ballarín, Spain