INTERNATIONAL VIENNA PIANO COMPETITION 2025
"Wiener Klassik"

Concert pianist, recording artist, master teacher, lecturer, and author Jura Margulis has been internationally
recognized for his compellingly communicative and emotionally charged performances, for the range of his
expressive tonal palette and his consummate transcendental virtuosity, as well as for his innovative approach
to specialized pedagogy, piano construction, repertoire, technology and pianistic tradition. Reviewers have
praised the "absolute authority" of his interpretations and the sense of "controlled obsession" he transmits
at the keyboard (Fono Forum). The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung noted that his aesthetic is both "impulsive
and contemplative." The Los Angeles Times praised his "excellent pianism" and called him "highly musical:”.
The Washington Post applauded his "titanic reserves of sheer power" and his "effortless spontaneity.”
The Fort Worth Star-Telegram called his performance "… the perfect Beethoven for the audience of our time
… sweeping lyricism … imagination, originality, and good taste pervaded every phrase." Drehpunkt Kultur,
Salzburg stated: "After the performance one fleetingly thinks of the pianists that became legends, but
comparisons are impermissible. Margulis is a master sui generis (of his own kind)."

His orchestral appearances include performances with the Russian National Orchestra at the Hollywood Bowl, the Montreal Symphony Orchestra under Charles Dutoit, the Südwestrundfunk Orchestra, the Memphis Symphony Orchestra, the National Orchestra of Venezuela, the Thailand Philharmonic Orchestra, the Prague Symphony Orchestra, the Shenzhen Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Orchestra della Svizzera Italiana. He has played in numerous festivals, including the Schleswig Holstein Musik Festival, the Berliner Festwochen at Berlin Philharmonic  Hall, the Verbier, the Lugano, and the Sommets du Classique Festivals in Switzerland, the Argerich-Beppu Music Festival in Japan, the Martha  Argerich Festival in Hamburg, and the Salzburger Festspiele in Austria. In his younger years Margulis was a laureate in more than a dozen national and international competitions, including Busoni in Italy and Guardian in Ireland. He was also a recipient of the DAAD scholarship and the esteemed Pro Europa prize awarded by the European Foundation for Culture.
AcXve as a chamber musician, Margulis is a founding member of the Margulis Piano Trio and performed with, among many others,  Dmitry Sitkovetsky, Lilya ZIlberstein, Alissa and Natalia Margulis, Alexander Buzlov, Mark Baranov, Arnold Bezuyen, the soloists of the Moscow Virtuosi, members of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and the Moscow String Quartet. He also concerXzed with Martha Argerich on one and two pianos in Germany, Switzerland, Japan, and the USA. Their next performance is schedule for 2024.
In the last decade (COVID years;-) he performed in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, St. Louis, Dallas, CincinnaX, Salt Lake City, Liale Rock, Tulsa, Carmel, AusXn, Phoenix, San Jose, Minneapolis, Memphis, and New Orleans, as well as to Frankfurt, Düsseldorf, Hamburg, Elmau, Berlin, Bologna, Bruxelles, Bayreuth, Budapest, Bangkok, Barcelona, Beijing, Paris, Cape Town, Madrid, Yerevan, Warsaw, Aix-en-Provence, Almaty, Ankara, Lugano, Jerusalem, Hong Kong, Sapporo, Seoul, Shenzhen, Salzburg, Vienna, Moscow,
St. Petersburg, Tel Aviv, Tbilisi, Thessaloniki, Tokyo, and Tallin.

Margulis has recorded ten CDs for Sony, Ars Musici, Oehms Classics, Naxos, and is featured on BMG, AvanX, and Steinway Classics, covering a wide spectrum of repertoire. These recordings have atrracted significant attention, including selection as a „reference recording" by Fono Forum, and inclusion on the "Bestenliste" of the Deutschen Schallplattenkritik (German Recording Review). His CD featuring piano transcriptions of music from Bach to Caplet (2007), received 10 out of 10 for "artistic quality" from KlassikHeute. The accompanying review stated: "not since Horowitz’s old RCA recording have I encountered a performance of Saint-Saëns’ Danse Macabre that so grippingly leaps from the stage, as here in Jura Margulis’ own transcription." The review also noted that Margulis’ own transcription of a little-known piece by André Caplet "should, like Ravel’s own transcription of his La Valse, claim a place in the repertoire of young pianists."
Klassik.com, also giving the CD its highest rating, raved that Margulis "cannot be praised enough." Margulis’ Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Berg solo CD was released in fall of 2009; All Music Guide wrote: "This CD is one of the best played, best interpreted, best programmed recitals of piano music of the year". In 2011 Margulis released a CD with the complete Liszt violin and piano duo repertoire with his sister Alissa Margulis.
In 2012 a CD with Schumann’s Dichterliebe in original version and Berg’s Seven Early Songs with tenor Arnold Bezuyen was released.

In 2013 he created the Margulis Sordino Pedal with Steingraeber & Sons, www.MSP.com announces: "The Margulis Sordino Pedal is a quantum leap for the dynamic (volume) and spectral (color) expressive palette of the modern concert grand piano." In 2014 Margulis released an all Schubert con Sordino CD on a MSP Steingraeber D-232 prototype. Fono Forum writes: "Margulis plays (Schubert) with an enthusiasm, a
sensitivity, and a creative imagination that are near incomparable." By now dozens of MSP Grand Pianos are distributed throughout institutions and concert venues worldwide. In 2015 his latest CD was released with all original transcriptions of music form Bach to Shostakovich on the MSP Steingraeber D-232 including a piano duo with Martha Argerich of Night on Bald Mountain by M. Mussorgsky, also in Margulis’ original
transcription - "… astonishing …" Piano News; "… demonic … a brilliant achievement ... " Pianiste. He is the author of (originally an online platform “The Call Project” in 1996-2008) "Pianist To Pianist” (PtoP in 2010), a collection of thoughts, observations, research, methodology, rules, exceptions, concerns, considerations, and secrets … and published it by its eponymous title in print media in 2020 by EmanoMedia, Switzerland.

Jura Margulis’s father and grandfather were significant pianists and pedagogues and methodical piano pedagogy is an integral part of his arXsXc vision. He holds master classes in the USA, Germany, Austria, Italy, Switzerland, Spain, Portugal, Poland, Hungary, Slovenia, Estonia, Armenia, Israel, Korea, Hong Kong, China, and Japan. Born in Leningrad / St. Petersburg, UDSSR, Jura Margulis was raised in West Germany, where he studied with his father, Vitaly Margulis of Kharkiv, at the MusikHochschule Freiburg. He was also a
student at the prestigious Fondazione per il Pianoforte in Cadenabbia at Lake Como in Italy. In 1994 he moved to the United States to study with maestro Leon Fleisher at the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore and made the US his home. A university professor by 30, Margulis in 2008 became the inaugural holder of the Emily J. McAllister Endowed Professorship in Piano at the J.W. Fulbright College of the University of AR State. In 2018 Jura Margulis returned to Europe following an appointment as full professor of piano and
member of the Center of Science and Research at the Music and Art University in Vienna, Austria, where he resides.