Natalia Ricci
Resume
Australian born pianist Natalia Ricci enjoys a successful career as chamber musician, soloist and teacher, having performed and recorded internationally over the past 40 years in the USA, Canada, Scandinavia, Australia, New Zealand and throughout Europe.
Natalia has made many recordings for the BBC, ABC, Canadian, Italian, Norwegian and New Zealand national radios and has also appeared in live concert telecasts in Italy, Norway, Spain and Australia.
Natalia received her Bachelor of Music from the University of Cincinnati, USA and her Masters of Music from RNCM in the UK. Her most influential teachers over the years have been the Hungarian pianists/pedagogues Bela Siki and Gyorgy Sebok, the Czech pianist Jiri Hlinka, and the Russian pianists Sulamita Aronovsky and Tatiana Nikolayeva.
Natalia joined the permanent staff of the Sydney Conservatorium of Music in 1999 where she has taught in both the Piano and Ensemble departments. In 2009 on invitation, she took up the position of Senior Lecturer in Piano at the University of Auckland, NZ. Since her return to the Sydney Conservatorium, Natalia has been a permanent member of the Piano Unit and Coordinator for the Chamber Music program. As well as her tertiary teaching load, Natalia also has a large class of students in the pre-tertiary SCM Rising Stars program, for highly gifted young students, and in addition, teaches piano students at the Conservatorium High School. Natalia leads the Piano Division of the Open Academy at the SCM, advising on piano studies for the Rising Stars program.
Natalia is a dedicated and sought-after teacher who is frequently invited to give masterclasses here and abroad. Her students continue to enjoy outstanding successes in competitions at local, national and international level and are regularly invited to play in such venues as Carnegie Hall and the Sydney Opera House.
In the last few years her students have been major prize winners in such competitions as: The International Steps to Mastery Competition, St Petersburg, Russia, (2017) the Pearl River Kayserberg International Youth Competition China, (2017) the Lev Vlassenko Piano Competition (1st, and 2nd prizewinners, 2019 and 2017), the Val de Travers International Competition, Switzerland, (2018), the Crescendo International Music Competition, NY (2020), the Chopin in Warwel International Piano Competition (2019), The First Anhui TV Piano Competition (2017), Fifth Kawai Asia Piano Competition (2017), The NY Golden Classical Music Awards (2019), the Brussels Grand Prize Virtuoso International Music Competition (Belgium 2019) the 4th Manhattan International Music Competition, (NY 2019) the 3rd Berliner International Music Competition (2019) and the First Vienna International Music Competition (2019). Natalia’s students have also won many first prizes in the Sydney Eisteddfod including the major Kawai Piano Award, (2019) and Concerto Award (2019) as well as the KPO Concerto Competition (2017), the Theme and Variations Foundation Awards (2017 & 2018) and Emerging Artists Awards (2018 and 2019).
She is frequently invited to adjudicate at local and international piano competitions such as the Sydney Eisteddfod, Southern Highland International Competition, the preselection panels for Vlassenko and Wallace National Competition (NZ) and in 2019, was invited to sit on the jury of the Chopin in Warwel International Piano Competition in Krakow, Poland.