AAF-catalogue-2018

2017
Several important competitions took place in 2017.
The Van Cliburn Competition was won by Korean pianist Yekwon Sunwoo, who had
already collected seven other first prizes at international competitions, among which the
William Kapell (2012), Sendai, the Vendome Prize and the International German Piano
Award in Frankfurt, and in 2010 he had been finalist at the Queen Elisabeth Competition.
The Audience Award at the Cliburn went to the only female finalist: Rachel Cheung from
Hong Kong. Her great musical talent had already been acknowledged 14 years earlier at
the Horowitz Competition in Kiev. In 2009 she had been finalist in Leeds. After the
Cliburn, she won another award in Paris. The first prize of the Arthur Rubinstein
Competition went to the young Polish pianist Szymon Nehring (22), who had also been in
the finals of the 2015 Chopin Competition in Warsaw. Alexander Ullman from England
triumphed at the Liszt Competition in Utrecht. He had already won the Liszt Competition
in Budapest in 2011. Second prize winner of the 2016 Budapest Liszt Competition, Sergey
Belyavskiy, received the Press Prize in Utrecht.
May and August/September were the busiest months, in terms of piano competitions:
parallel to the Cliburn, the Beethoven Competition was held in Vienna. They were
preceded by the international piano competition in Montreal which overlapped with the
Rubinstein. In August, pianists travelled to Vevey (Switzerland) for the Clara Haskil
Competition, while others went to Helsinki (Maj Lind Competition), Munich (ARD) or
Bolzano. The Busoni Competition finished with the victory of Ivan Krpan (Croatia, 20),
who thus continued the long row of successes by former winners of the competition for
young pianists in Ettlingen.
There was much more in 2017: the Top of the World Competition in Tromsø was won by
Dmitry Shishkin. At the Verbier Festival, people could attend the competition for the
Vendome Prize (former laureates Boris Giltburg, Denis Kozhukin and Yekwon Sunwoo,
but no winner this time, in spite of an excellent field of participants). No first prize either
in Tbilisi. In China, two major competitions were held: in Shenzhen (Concerto
Competition) and in Zhuhai (Mozart Competition). In Bonn, Alberto Ferro took first prize
and the Audience Prize at the Telekom Beethoven Competition.
Hundreds of young aspiring pianists had applied for all these competitions and had gone
through the preselection process, which sometimes included live auditions. Several
brandnew competitions emerged, such as the ones in St. Priest (France), Vigo (Spain),
Orbetello (Italy), Kiev (Ukraine), the Transylvanian Competition in Braşov (Roumania)
and the Shigeru Kawai Competition in Japan. The Naumburg Competition was also for
piano again in 2017. The organizers of the Malta International Music Festival came up
with new competitions across Europe and in China and Japan, offering high prize money.
It affected other competitions, some of which could not attract as many contestants as
before. Incidentally, a competition was even cancelled due to insufficient applicants.
Competitions can bring great musicians together, not only participants and jury members:
famous violinist Kyung Wha Chung came to Germany and attended the award ceremony
and prize winners’ concert of the Chopin Competition in Darmstadt!
6 | Piano Competitions Worldwide 2018