Robert Andres (Croatia/Portugal)

6th Isidor Bajic Piano Memorial Competition Jury member

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Robert Andres graduated from the Zagreb Music Academy (Croatia) and continued his studies at the St. Petersburg Conservatory, with D. A. Svetozarov, a student of the great Russian pianist Sofronitski, and in Vienna. As a Fulbright scholarship recipient, he studied at the University of Kansas with Distinguished Professor Sequeira Costa, a student of one of Liszt’s last students, Vianna da Motta, earning a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in Piano, and a Master’s degree in Musicology. He has also received valuable advice from renowned pianists, such as Pierre Sancan, Rudolf Kehrer, Claude Frank, Leonid Brumberg and Peter Katin.

Andres has performed recitals, chamber music concerts, and with orchestras in many European countries, such as Austria, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Ireland, Belgium, Cyprus, Croatia, Ukraine, Russia, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia and Portugal, and also in Venezuela and the United States, having collaborated with artists such as Zakhar Bron, Grigori Zhislin and Linda Maxey. In 1998, he was the principal guest artist of the Amadeus Piano Festival in Tulsa, Oklahoma, USA, with a return invitation from the University of Tulsa in 2004. A duo with his wife, the Irish pianist Honor O’Hea, has been active since 1995.

After teaching at the Kalamazoo College in Michigan, USA, he has since 1993 been teaching at the Madeira Conservatory – Professional School of Arts (Portugal), where he is at present a tenured professor of piano and music history and Head of the Keyboard Department. He is often invited to teach master classes, most recently in USA, Poland, Ukraine, Cyprus and Ireland, and regularly participates in juries of international competitions, such as Vianna da Motta (Portugal), Louisiana (USA), Scriabin, Luciano Gante, Barletta and AMA Calabria (Italy), Jean Francaix (France) and Evangelia Tjiarri (Cyprus).

Since 1997 he has been Managing Director of the Association of the Friends of the Conservatory, a benefit organisation with a regular international concert season. He was also the co-organizer of the 28th annual European Piano Teachers Association conference that took place in Madeira in July 2006.

Andres has contributed to a number of prestigious music journals, encyclopaedias, and magazines in various countries, including Encyclopaedia of Keyboard Instruments (Garland), New Grove Dictionary of American Music and American National Biography (OUP), and from 1995 to 2002 he was music critic and author of a weekly music page for the Jornal da Madeira. In 2001 the Scarecrow Press (USA) published his book on the beginnings of the scientific approach to piano technique. In 2008 he recorded a CD with piano works by the Madeiran composer J. V. Costa.