Janis Vakarelis enjoys a major international career, which has developed worldwide since he won the 1st Prize at the 1979 Queen Sofia International Piano Competition in Madrid.

He has worked with many eminent conductors including L. Maazel, C. Davis, S. Rattle, K. Masur, M. Rostropovitch, V. Ashkenazy, Y. Menuhin, C. Eschenbach, M. Janowski, N. Marriner. The orchestras with which he has worked include Leipzig Gewandhaus, Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Staatskapelle Dresden, Orchestre de Paris, City of Birmingham Symphony, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Philharmonia, St.Martin-in-the-Fields, Orchestre National de France, Wiener Symphoniker, RAI Torino, Dresden Philharmonic. He has also appeared at the following International Festivals: London Proms, Schleswig-Holstein, Spoleto, Brescia-Bergamo, Echternach, Sintra, Brno, Enescu, and the Gstaad Festival.

Janis Vakarelis has recorded extensively over the years for RCA (Brahms, Prokofiev), ASV (Brahms), RPO Records (Liszt, Prokofiev, Gershwin), which earned him extraordinary reviews in Gramophone, Classical Music and Diapason.

Janis Vakarelis is equally comfortable as a concerto performer, chamber musician and festival director: he has worked with artists like Y. Bashmet, S. Isserlis,H. Schiff, V. Spivakov, A. Dumay, M. Maisky, M. Portal, Ensemble Wien, Berlin Philharmonic Quartet, Fine Arts Quartet. Janis is Artistic Director of the Nafplion International Music Festival which he founded in Greece in 1991.

The President of Greece presented him with the Order of the Golden Phoenix for his services to music.

2014/2015
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