2025-26 Program Book - Other - Page 45
Leonel Morales
PIANO
Professor at the Sommerakademie in Salzburg,
Alfonso X el Sabio University, Forum Musikae Higher
School of Music. Exclusive Artist of Yangtze River
Piano (China), artistic director and founder of the
María Herrero International Piano Competition
(Granada) and the Spain International Piano
Composers Competition (WFIMC) in Madrid, as well
as the Granada Music Festival “Leonel Morales and
Friends.” Since 2024, exclusive representative of the
prestigious German piano brand Grotian-Steinweg
in Spain. Leonel Morales has been an exclusive artist
with the concert agency MUSIESPAÑA for over 25
years and is also a member of the Academy of Fine
Arts of Santa Isabel de Hungría.
Born in Cuba, naturalized Spanish, and resident since 1991, Morales studied at the
University of Havana under the guidance of Maestro Frank Fernández, a student of
Víctor Merzhanov, thus inheriting and following the deepest roots of the great and
traditional Russian school. He also studied in Weimar with Maestro Jacov Latainer
and worked with Mihail Voskresensky during his time in Cuba as a selected student.
For two years, he was an assistant in the class of the late great master Aquiles Delle
Vigne at the Sommerakademie in Salzburg. Morales arrived in Spain at the age of
25 and between the ages of 26 and 28, he won first prizes in several international
competitions. He also won the Second Prize at the Santa Cecilia International
Piano Competition in Oporto, the Distinzione Prize at the Aosta International
Piano Competition, the Sommerakademie Prize at the Mozarteum in Salzburg, the
William Kapell Prize, among others.
At the age of 28, he ceased competing as his career was fully consolidated,
performing with all the major orchestras in Spain, notably his tour featuring the
complete Rachmaninoff piano concertos including the Rhapsody on a Theme of
Paganini.
Since 2018, he has been an exclusive artist in China for the Yangtze River piano
brand, performing annual concert tours in the country’s top venues such as
the Wuhan Quintai Concert Hall, Harbin Concert Hall, Shenzhen Grand Theater,
Central Conservatory of Music Beijing, Yichang Grand Theatre, and X’ian Concert
Hall, also conducting masterclasses and lectures, etc.
His two-hour masterclass held during the Shenzhen International Piano and
Orchestra Competition in 2024 reached a broadcast of over 10,000 listeners,
making it the most listened to in the history of streaming masterclasses organized
by Parsons Music.
CLASSICAL SERIES BRAHMS & ELLINGTON 45
