Đorđe Stanetti is one of the most eminent Croatian pianists. He was born in Zagreb in 1961. After he had finished Music School in his hometown, in 1979 he began his piano studies at Hochschule fur Musik und darstellende Kunst in Vienna as the youngest student of the legendary Austrian pedagogue Bruno Seidlhofer. He finished his studies in 1983 as a scholarship holder of the Austrian Ministry of Science and continued improving his skills for four years with the Russian pianist Leonid Brumberg at the Consevatory of Vienna. During his education he was under the supervision of the three eminent pianists and pedagogues from Zagreb – Dora Gušić, Ladislav Šaban and Vladimir Krpan – who were advising him in order to help his development. Already in 1977, as a student of Zlata Gašparac at Pavao Markovac Music School, he made his début with the Zagreb Philharmonic Orchestra.
He has been present on the concert stages ever since, nourishing repertoire of all style periods and performing equally good both as a soloist and a chamber musician. He performed in almost all bigger cities of Croatia, as well as almost all bigger music centers of former Yugoslavia, Italy, Austria, Germany, Great Britain, Argentina, Switzerland, Romania and Denmark. He performed as a guest at many festivals (the Dubrovnik Summer Festival, the Music Biennale Zagreb, the Ivo Pogorelić Festival in Bad Woerishofen, the Ohrid Summer, Bemus, the Maribor Music September, the Budva City Theatre etc.), he played with conductors such as P. Dešpalj, I. Kuljerić, U. Lajovic, K. Ono, V. Čavdarski, S. Hubad, I. Gjadrov, N. Bareza, M. Letonja, M. Tarbuk, L. Pfaff and others, while as a chamber musician, he cooperated with a great number of both national and foreign eminent artists. The most outstanding was the performance with renowned Croatian singer Dunja Vejzović. In 1984 he won the International pianist competition in Udine. He is the winner of the Milka Trnina Award in 2001 for the performance of the B. Papandopulo pianist concert with the Zagreb soloists.
At the same time, he is engaged in pedagogical activities. He was the piano professor at the Functional Music School in Zagreb from 1983 to 1988 (today’s Elly Bašić Music School), at Conservatory in Neuchatel (Switzerland), and at the moment he is a professor at the Zagreb Music Academy, where he was also a head and a vice-dean. He influenced many young pianists and his students are often present on the concert stages, while a great number of them work as pedagogues and the piano accompanists at music schools as well as academies. As the member of a jury, he participated in many national and international competitions in Croatia, Slovenia, Serbia, Macedonia and China. In 2012 he received the Croatian Society of Music and Dance Pedagogues Annual Award.
