A musician in the making
Bernice Sammut Attard recently won the Malta Eurovision Young Musicians Competition held by PBS and will be representing Malta at Edinburgh next August. For eighteen-year-old Bernice music has been an integral part of her life. She comes from a musical family.
At the age of seven she started piano lessons with Karen Briscoe White and soon after she started taking violin lessons with Marcelline Agius, the current leader of the Malta Philharmonic Orchestra.
At the same time Bernice also managed top grades in her examinations at St Martin’s College. This success met with further success when she became the first ever Maltese to be awarded a place at one of the UK’s leading music schools, Chetham’s School of Music in Manchester, where she is at present studying both piano and violin under the guidance of Duncan Glenday and Ruth Hahn respectively. At the same time Bernice is also studying for her A Level examinations at Chetham’s.
In September she will be moving to the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland in Glasgow.
Piano playing has already taken the young Bernice to several countries in Europe as well as Russia.
Her participation in international and local competitions has also met with many successes. Apart from the recent PBS competition she was also a finalist in Chetham’s Bosendorfer competition in June 2017. She won second place in the Malta International Music Competition held in July 2017 in which she also got an ‘Honourable Mention’ prize in violin playing. She also obtained joint 3rd prize and best Maltese pianist in the Malta International Piano Competition held in October of the same year.
Bernice has had lessons and masterclasses with several professors and leading musicians, too numerous to mention here.
By age 13 she had already obtained the ABRSM Grade 8 Theory and in the same session, she was awarded the Board prize of the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music for her Grade 8 Piano exam in which she achieved ‘Distinction’.
At age 15 Bernice obtained both the Dip. ABRSM in Piano Performance in which she achieved the rare full marks in the Viva Voce component of the examination and the ATCL in Piano Performance which she passed with ‘Distinction’.
Just six months later she also achieved the ATCL in Violin Performance.
As both a pianist and a violinist Bernice already has an extensive repertoire.
Apart from participating in numerous festivals both locally and abroad Bernice has also played with several orchestras and worked with various conductors. She is a keen follower of Evgeny Kissin and Maxim Vengerov, enjoying international repute both as pianist and violinist respectively. The latter, performed in Malta to a standing ovation at the recent Malta International Music Festival held at the Mediterranean Conference (April 2018).
Bernice is also a keen linguist. Apart from being fluent in both Maltese and English she has studied Italian and French and is currently pursuing German at advanced level.