CFA First-Year Wins Second Prize in Best Schubert Performance

Lydia Melnikov is a freshman piano performance major at the Boston University College of Fine Arts, where she studies with Gila Goldstein. She recently won second prize in her age category (17-19 years old) at the Great Composers Competition’s Best Schubert performance!

Great Composers Competition is a series of international music competitions for young performers. They organize and manage online competitions for instrumentalists (piano, strings, winds and percussion), singers (opera, sacred music, art song and musical theatre), and chamber groups.

Lydia has spent the last three summers at Interlochen Center for the Arts’s summer program, where she studied with Michael Coonrod and Robert Satterlee. Last summer she studied at the Brevard Music Festival under Douglas Weeks. She was named a Gold Medalist at the Illinois Music Teacher’s Association Sonata and Sonatina Festival in 2014, and has played in masterclasses for artists including Leonard Slatkin and Alessio Bax. Lydia has previously served as the principal pianist of the Evanston Township High School Symphony Orchestra under the direction of conductor Charles Abplanalp, and she previously studied with Ralph Neiweem at the Music Institute of Chicago in Winnetka, Illinois. Lydia made her orchestral debut in the May of 2016 playing George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, as the winner of the Evanston Township High School Concerto Competition.