Dana Protopopescu

Pianist Dana Protopopescu, a student of Karl Engel, made her orchestral debut at the age of 16 in Romania, her native country. She has received the Music Critics Award for Outstanding Musicians on three occasions, including most recently for the publication of her biography titled "Unforgettable Reverberations" under the Romanian publisher Romania Muzicala. 

During her career, she has worked with many renowned conductors such as Horia Andreescu, Louis Langrée and Alexander Rahbari, and has collaborated as a chamber musician with violinists Augustin Dumay, Mihaela Martin and Liviu Prunaru, as well as with cellists Frans Helmerson, Gary Hoffman, Ivan Monighetti and Maria Kliegel. She has performed in Abu-Dhabi, Barcelona, Boston, Brussels, Geneva, London, Madrid, Moscow, Montréal, Paris, Seoul and Washington D.C.

Dana Protopopescu has participated in many prestigious festivals, including the George Enescu Festival and Celibidache Festival, the Prague Festival, the Casals Festival in Spain, the Ravello Festival in Italy, the Wiltz Festival in Luxemburg, the Kfar-Blum Festival in Israel and the Arhus Festival in Denmark. In addition to her work as a performer, Dana Protopopescu has taught piano and chamber music in several masterclasses, in locations including Luxemburg, Tuscany in Italy and Chapel Hill, North Carolina USA. 

She has been a coach in the violin class of Augustin Dumay and currently works in the cello class of Gary Hoffman at the Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel in Belgium. She has also been the official pianist for the Queen Elisabeth International Music Competition many times, as well as for other international competitions such as the ARD Music Competition in Munich, the International Jean Sibelius Violin Competition in Helsinki and Naumburg International Violin Competition in New York, and for the masterclasses of Zakhar Bron, Pierre Amoyal, Igor Oistrach and many others.

Dana Protopopescu has completed several recording projects, having released the complete Beethoven Violin Sonatas and the three Grieg Sonatas with Liviu Prunaru. Throughout her career, she has also recorded many other CDs, including the complete piano works of Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy and concertos by Clara Schumann, Johann Nepomuk Hummel and Carl Maria von Weber, which won Critics Choice Awards for outstanding recordings.