The last two courses were simply amazing ... the teachers, the atmosphere, the people, the place and of course the music make it something special. Seriously, thanks a lot for gifting me with an opportunity to live something like that. 
Thank you so much for a fabulous, inspiring and utterly delicious week! I really feel that I have come away ready to perform in front of an audience, which is what I set out to do.
Castelfranc was just a WONDERFUL experience for me and for my music.
The time at Castelfranc was magical. I have returned to the piano with so many new ideas and new skills. Most important to me, though, is the renewal of the passion for the piano I seemed to have lost many years ago when other responsibilities and activities took over my life. The course helped me to reconnect.
Alon Goldstein - Course IAlon Goldstein is a pianist with a powerful gift for communication and his artistry has touched audiences and critics alike throughout the United States, Europe, and Israel. He has been hailed for his original and compelling recitals in major music centers here and abroad and for performances as soloist with such major North American orchestras as those of Baltimore, Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, St. Louis, San Francisco, Seattle and Vancouver, among others. In 2008, he was enthusiastically received when he was heard with Hebert Blomstedt and the Israel Philharmonic in Beethoven Piano Concerto No. 1, the same concerto he played the year before in his return engagement with the Philadelphia Orchestra.
Admired for his musical intelligence and warmth of personality, Alon's artistic vision and innovative programming have brought him to the forefront of his generation. His commitment to the music of young Israeli composers has resulted in the commission of a piano concerto from Avner Dorman whose works will be performed by the New York Philharmonic and San Francisco Symphony, among others. Goldstein has longstanding relationships with the Seattle Chamber Music Festival, the Phillips Collection in Washington, DC, the Dame Myra Hess Memorial Concert Series in Chicago, the Dayton Philharmonic and the Rockford Symphony, among others. His recent Beethoven concerto cycle with the Rockford Symphony, which expanded the traditional concert experience to a multi-media presentation contextualizing Beethoven's life and work, resulted in unprecedented attendance and subsequent subscriptions.
The magnificent Priory at Ambialet in the Tarn Gorge is the summer school's new home. Over the years it has maintained and developed the original vision of its founders: to nurture the highest standards of music-making in idyllic surroundings...
Music at Ambialet offers accommodation in the newly restored, 11th-century Benedictine priory in the village of Ambialet, in the Gorge du Tarn.
"Students have returned year after year. Clearly this is one summer school that could become addictive"
- BBC Music Magazine
"The place, the people, the weather, the food, everything was memorable."
