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.
Martin Sturfält - Course IISwedish pianist Martin Sturfält enjoys a busy international career as a concerto soloist and recitalist, and is also a passionate chamber musician. While his repertoire includes a large number of standard works from the baroque, classical and romantic periods, Martin is also keen to promote newer music and lesser known works in his concert programmes. In December 2009 Sweden’s main classical music magazine Opus placed Martin in their New Year’s list of the most significant living Swedish musicians.
Martin Stürfalt studied at the Stockholm Royal College of Music and
at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama in London. His principal teachers
were Esther Bodin-Karpe and Stefan Bojsten in Stockholm, and Paul Roberts and
Ronan O’Hora in London. He has had considerable success in piano competitions, winning first prize in both the 1999 Swedish and the 2002 UK Yamaha competitions as well as the 2002 Malmö Nordic ‘Blüthner’ Piano Competition, the 2004 John Ogdon Prize, and the 2005 Terence Judd Award.
Martin has performed extensively throughout Scandinavia, UK and the rest of Europe, as well as in Asia and the USA. Highlights in recent years have included solo and chamber music recitals at all major venues in Sweden as well
as at London’s Purcell Room, Barbican Hall, Royal Festival Hall and Wigmore
Hall, the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam and the Palais des Beaux-Arts in
Brussels. Martin is regularly invited as a soloist with orchestras and has
appeared with the Hallé Orchestra, the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic and the Swedish Radio Symphony, collaborating with conductors such as Sir Mark Elder, Andrew Manze, Vassily Sinaisky and Alexander Vedernikov. His performances have been broadcast throughout Europe and the USA and he has made frequent television appearances. His highly praised début CD of the Wilhelm Stenhammar piano works was released by Hyperion Records in the autumn of 2008.
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."
