Yulianna Avdeeva (Russian: Юлианна Авдеева, born July 3, 1985 in Moscow) is a Russian concert pianist.

Avdeeva started piano lessons at the age of five, studied at the Gnessin Special School of Music in Moscow, and graduated from Zürcher Hochschule der Künste. After her graduation, she became assistant to her teacher, Konstantin Scherbakov. Since 2008 Avdeeva has studied at the International Piano Academy Lake Como. She has received outstanding international recognition as the winner of First Prize of the 16th International Fryderyk Chopin Piano Competition (Warsaw, 2010). She is the fourth female to have won this title, after Halina Czerny-Stefańska, Bella Davidovich (ex aequo in 1949) and Martha Argerich (1965).

Piers Lane (born 8 January 1958) is an Australian classical pianist. His performance career has taken him to more than 40 countries. His concerto repertoire exceeds 75 works.

His English father and Australian mother met while auditioning as piano students for the Royal College of Music. Although born in London, he grew up in Brisbane. He graduated with a Medal of Excellence from the Queensland Conservatorium of Music, where his teacher was Nancy Weir, winning the Margaret Nickson Prize in 1978 and the Ruby C Cooling prize in 1977 and 1978. He was later awarded an honorary doctorate by the conservatorium.

He first came to prominence at the inaugural Sydney International Piano Competition in 1977, at which he was named Best Australian Pianist (he was a judge at the 2004 competition). He later studied overseas on a Churchill Fellowship.

Highlights in the past two years have included concerto performances at Avery Fisher Hall, Lincoln Center in New York with the American Symphony Orchestra under Leon Botstein; Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto with The Queensland Orchestra, which received a Limelight Award for Best Orchestral Concert of 2007; concerto appearances with the City of Birmingham Symphony, London Philharmonic, Hallé and Ulster Orchestras; a solo recital in Birmingham’s Symphony Hall for the BBC; a three-recital series called Metamorphoses and an all-Chopin recital at the Wigmore Hall in London; and appearances in many major piano festivals in the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy and Scandinavia. He has also played with all ABC and BBC Orchestras, the Aarhus, City of Birmingham, Bournemouth, Gothenburg and New Zealand Symphony Orchestras, the Hallé, Philharmonia, Kanazawa Ensemble and City of London Sinfonia, the London, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic and Royal Philharmonic Orchestras and the Orchestre National de France among many others. He has been soloist five times at the BBC Proms in London’s Royal Albert Hall.

Geoffrey Peter Bede Hawkshaw Tozer (5 November 1954 – 21 August 2009) was an Australian classical pianist and composer. As a child prodigy, he composed an opera at the age of eight, and became the youngest recipient of a Churchill Fellowship award at 13. His career included tours of Europe, America, Australia and China, where he performed the Yellow River Concerto to an estimated audience of 80 million people. Tozer had more than 100 concertos in his repertoire, including those of Mozart, Beethoven, Liszt, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Medtner, Rachmaninoff, Bartók, Stravinsky, Prokofiev and Gerhard.

Tozer recorded with the Chandos label, beginning his recording career with the works of Medtner. He was regarded as a "superb recitalist" and had the ability to improvise, transpose "instantly" and reduce an orchestral score to a piano score at sight. Tozer won numerous awards and much recognition worldwide, but suffered comparative neglect in Australia, during the last years of his life.

Mstislav Leopoldovich Rostropovich, KBE (Russian: Мстисла́в Леопо́льдович Ростропо́вич, Mstislav Leopol'dovič Rostropovič, pronounced [rəstrɐˈpɔvʲɪtɕ]; March 27, 1927 – April 27, 2007), was a Soviet and Russian cellist and conductor. He was married to the soprano Galina Vishnevskaya. He is widely considered to have been the greatest cellist of the second half of the 20th century, and one of the greatest of all time. In addition to his outstanding interpretations and technique, he was well known for both inspiring and commissioning new works which enlarged the cello repertoire more than any cellist before or since. He gave the premieres of over 100 pieces, forming long-standing friendships and artistic partnerships with composers including Dmitri Shostakovich, Sergei Prokofiev, Henri Dutilleux, Witold Lutoslawski, Alfred Schnittke, Andreas Makris and especially Benjamin Britten.

Rostropovich was internationally recognized as a staunch advocate of human rights, and was awarded the 1974 Award of the International League of Human Rights.

Dimitris Sgouros (Greek: Δημήτρης Σγούρος; born 30 August 1969) is a Greek classical pianist. He began playing the piano at a young age, and received formal training in Athens, London, and New York. Widely acclaimed for his prodigious musical talent as a boy, Sgouros is one of the world's leading concert pianists. Arthur Rubinstein remarked that he had produced "the best playing I have ever heard."

Sgouros was born on 30 August 1969 in Athens, Greece, the son of Sotirios and Marianthi Sgouros. There was no notable record of musical talent in his family. He began playing the piano at a young age and gave his first public performance at the age of seven. At the age of eight, he entered the Athens Conservatoire, studying under Maria Herogiorgiou-Sigara. Sgouros won several competitions between 1978 and 1983, including the UNICEF competition in Bulgaria (1979), a competition in Ancona, Italy (1980), and two competitions in his home city of Athens. He was also the recipient of the 1982 Leonardo da Vinci International Award.