21st Edition, International Festival and Piano Competition "Alma Cornea Ionescu"

The Alma Cornea Ionescu festival, now in its 21st edition, has become a landmark on the cultural and educational map of Timișoara and the DKMT area (an area that includes Serbia, Hungary and the western part of Romania). Initiated as a Festival through which students studying piano in vocational schools in the region have the opportunity to get to know each other and to be able to evaluate their progress in a professional competitive framework.

Alma Cornea Ionescu has developed a lot in recent years, by the fact that musicians of international renown were brought to the jury, who greatly raised the level of exigence of the competition and held extremely valuable conferences after the competition was over. The conclusive example is even from last year's edition, when the presence of pianist and university professor George Julius Papadopoulos from Greece significantly increased the level of experience of all participants (students and teachers). For this year's edition, we want to raise the level of the event even more by bringing new personalities to the jury – in addition to Prof. George Julius Papadopoulos, we invited Natsumi Kuboyama from Japan, international Kawai artist. The financial support helps us to cover the expenses of bringing these personalities, thus providing a major opportunity for student pianists to improve their performances. We consider the project to fall under short-term sponsorships for educational programmes.

Chamber music recital, piano competition and masterclasses are spread over the six days of the festival.