Boston Metrowest
SPMF Piano Competition
Competition Jury
Constantine Finehouse
Constantine Finehouse has performed extensively in the US and abroad, including in Salzburg, Trieste, London, Ghent, Moscow, St. Petersburg and Odessa. His 2009 solo release, "Backwards Glance," interweaves works by Brahms and Richard Beaudoin. “The Bolcom Project”, made in collaboration with his American Double partner, violinist Philip Ficsor, included an Albany Records two-CD album and a national tour with concerts in Boston, New York, Denver, Santa Barbara, Spokane and at Yale University. Fanfare praised the recording as “indispensable to any serious collector with an interest in later 20th-century duo repertoire for violin and piano.” The American and European premieres of William Bolcom's Horn Trio, in collaboration with Ficsor and Steven Gross took place in the summer and fall of 2018. The work, commissioned by the group, was recorded at the Martinu Hall in Prague and released on Naxos Records in December 2021. Finehouse's recording of Bolcom’s piano solo works for Naxos saw its world-wide launch in December 2017. His new album "Rhythm and the Borrowed Past" with violinist, Daniel Kurganov, was released on Orchid Classics in November 2021, following their 2018 release "Between the Notes" on Spice Classics. Finehouse latest album with Sebastian Baverstam, duo's second release, features sonatas by Brahms and Shostakovich. During recent concert seasons Finehouse has performed at the Mozarteum (Salzburg), Miaskovsky Hall (Moscow Conservatory), Merkin Recital Hall, Weill Recital Hall (Carnegie Hall) and Jordan Hall (Boston), as well as at Harvard, Yale, and Emory universities, and St. Vincent's and Elmira colleges, among others. With degrees from Juilliard and Yale, Finehouse teaches at New England Conservatory, and serves as Visiting Artist/Faculty at Westmont College, CA.
Violinist Daniel Kurganov, praised for his “extraordinary fervor, commitment, and technical prowess” (Classics Today), has recently given recitals at venues including Merkin Hall, BargeMusic, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, and the Harvard Musical Association. He worked with the Violins of Hope project in Sion, Switzerland, performing on an instrument rescued from Auschwitz. Daniel runs a YouTube Channel with 80,000 subscribers focused on violin pedagogy and performance, and has recently given masterclasses at the Boston Conservatory, the University of Maryland, and Münster Hochschule. He is also regularly featured in The Strad, and was voted “Best of The Strad 2021.” In 2025, Daniel was a visiting instructor at Boston University, working with graduate/doctoral violin students of Bayla Keyes. Daniel’s studio albums include a 2018 debut with pianist Constantine Finehouse, world premieres by Lera Auerbach and Richard Beaudoin (Orchid Classics, 2021) and the complete Brahms Violin Sonatas on historical instruments (Hänssler Classics, 2023), which earned a 10/10 rating from Jed Distler. Born in Minsk, Belarus, and raised in Chicago, he completed his Master’s at theZurich University of the Arts under Rudolf Koelman, a protégé of Jascha Heifetz.
Daniel Kurganov
