Biography

At the age of sixteen Lara Melda won the BBC Young Musician 2010 competition, 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 K466 and Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No.3 with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales.

Lara made her debut performing at the Barbican in London and also with the Britten Sinfonia, in a performance of Britten’s Young Apollo. Previous concerto performances have included Rachmaninov with the Royal Northern Sinfonia and Kirill Karabits (The Sage), Mozart with the Aurora Orchestra and Nicholas Collon (Kings Place), Grieg’s Piano Concerto in A minor with English Sinfonia (St John’s Smith Square) and Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No.3 with the National Youth Orchestra of New Zealand. She has played recitals at the Laeiszhalle (Hamburg), Les Sommets Musicaux in Gstaad (Switzerland), Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Festival (Germany) and at the Wigmore Hall (London).

Lara performs regularly in Turkey and made her debut at the International Music Festival 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, Bogazici University and Zorlu Center.

In 2012 she received the prestigious ‘Promising Young Artist’ award from Kadir Has University and in 2015 was voted the ‘Woman of the Year Arts Award’ by Elele-Avon and the Turkish public. In the summer of 2016 Lara graduated from the Royal College of Music, where she studied with Ian Jones, with a first class honours degree. She had begun piano lessons with Emily Jeffrey at the age of six. Lara also enjoys playing chamber music and in 2015 was a scholarship holder under the Imogen Cooper Music Trust.