Lara Melda

Biography

Melda was born in London to Turkish parents. Her sister, Melis, inspired her to start learning to play the piano. In 2010, Melda won the BBC Young Musician of the Year at the age of sixteen, performing Saint-Saëns' Piano Concerto No. 2 in the final round, with Vasily Petrenko and the BBC National Orchestra of Wales in Cardiff. The competition had an international following via television and radio broadcasts on the BBC. Since then she has also performed Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 20, as well as Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 3, with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales.

In the autumn of 2013, Melda made her debut performing at the Barbican Centre in London and also with the Britten Sinfonia in a performance of Britten's Young Apollo. Previous concerto performances have included Rachmaninoff with the Royal Northern Sinfonia and Kirill Karabits, Mozart with the Aurora Orchestra and Nicholas Collon (Kings Place) and the Grieg concerto with English Sinfonia (St John's, Smith Square). She has played recitals at the Laeiszhalle (Hamburg), Les Sommets Musicaux in Gstaad, Switzerland; the Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Festival in Germany and at Wigmore Hall.

Melda performs regularly in Turkey and made her debut at the International Music Festival (IKSV) in Istanbul in June 2011, playing the Grieg concerto with the Borusan Philharmonic. She has also been presented by the Istanbul Recitals piano series and performed at the Antalya Piano Festival and Boğaziçi University. On 24 March 2012, she received the prestigious 'Promising Young Artist' award from Kadir Has University in Istanbul.

Melda is a student at the Royal College of Music where she is a Queen Elizabeth Queen Mother Scholar. She began piano lessons with Emily Jeffrey at the age of six and currently studies with Ian Jones. Melda is also an accomplished viola player and enjoys playing chamber music on both piano and viola. In 2009 she was a finalist in the International Franz Liszt Piano Competition in Weimar, Germany.