AAF-2025

2024

More than 250 international piano competitions took place in 2024 … Many interesting ones. In February, the first Kharkiv meets Zürich competition was organised as wonderful tribute and extension of the well-known Krainev Competition for Young Pianists which was held 14 times in Kharkiv (Ukraine). Many youngsters from a school assisted and got very inspired. A special Junior Jury was formed, as was also done at the Arthur Rubinstein Competition in Tel Aviv (2023) as well as in Istanbul and at the Concours Géza Anda. At the same time, the Classic Piano competition took place in Dubai. The participants were pianists who had been selected at one of 14 international pre-competitions plus a few others who had been granted special admission. Andrey Gugnin took the staggering first prize in the value of 150,000 Euros. In 2016, he had also won the Sydney Competition and in 2023 the International German Piano Award. In May, the Montreal competition was won by Jaeden Izik-Dzurko who went on to be the winner of the Leeds competition in October as well! He thus succeeded to collect five first prizes almost in a row (after having been 1 st in Barcelona, Hilton Head and Santander in 2022). In Leeds, there was a strong desire to have at least one female contestant among the finalists. At other competitions, this was generously fulfilled by an all-female final round in Finale Ligure (Italy), Villafranca (Italy) and the Gurwitz competition (San Antonio, USA). In June, many had looked forward to the presence of Martha Argerich as jury member at the Concours Géza Anda. She had just travelled back to Europe from Japan and had her 83 rd birthday during the competition in Zürich. The level of performances was so impressive that it was hard to make decisions as to who might not pass to the next round. Mikhail Pletnev conducted the Mozart concertos and Paavo Järvi the orchestra in the final round. Ilya Shmukler was declared winner of this 16 th edition of the Géza Anda Competition. One week later, the 18 th Gina Bachauer Competition started, for which 333 pianists had applied. Ilya Shmukler had also been accepted there as one of the contestants, but after Zürich he withdrew from the Bachauer. Youl Sun took the first prize in Salt Lake City. In August, Piano Cleveland celebrated the 50 th anniversary of the Cleveland International Piano Competition which had started in the 1970s as the Robert Casadesus Competition. The pianists enjoyed some truly innovative events. Highlight was the finals with the Cleveland Orchestra, won by James Zijian Wei. Just before the finals, the AAF Conference was held which had attracted some 80 organisers of other competitions from around the world. In September, Roman Lopatynskyi became winner of the Enescu competition. In China, the Xiamen IPC was back again, taking place just before the Hamamatsu Competition. Around 640 pianists had applied for Hamamatsu. There was an even slightly higher record number of applicants for the Busoni Competition! For the first time in 33 years, Hamamatsu had a Japanese winner and for the first time female: Manami Suzuki. At the same time in November, Andrey Gugnin handed over the Int’l German Piano Award to this year’s winner Magdalene Ho from Malaysia, who had also won the Clara Haskil competition in 2023.

Alink-Argerich Foundation 2025