Rachel Cheung
Almost since its inception more than a half-century again, the quadrennial Cliburn International Piano Competition — founded by (and named after) the legendary Fort Worth maestro Van Cliburn, who wowed the world with his interpretation of Tchaikovsky so impressively, he won a Russian-based contest at the height of the Cold War — has been a crown jewel in the world of classical music. It has also focused a lot of attention on North Texas as an arts hub, which ain’t a bad thing.
This morning, the Cliburn Foundation announced the names of the 30 finalists for the 15th competition, which will take place this summer. Nearly 300 pianists submitted applications, and 141 auditioned live in five cities from Budapest to Seoul. Sixteen nations are represented (including, of course, Russia) by the contestants, who will range in age from 18 to 30 (as of the final day of the competition). Nine women and 21 men will compete.
Cliburn died 0n Feb. 27, 2013, just as the 14th festival was about to announce its competitors, making this year basically the first to be finalized entirely after the gay maestro’s death.
Philipp Scheucher
Here are the competitors. The competition will span May 25–June at Bass Performance Hall.
Martin James Bartlett, United Kingdom, age 20
Sergey Belyavskiy, Russia, 23
Alina Bercu, Romania, 27
Kenneth Broberg, United States, 23
Luigi Carroccia, Italy, 25
Han Chen, Taiwan, 25
Rachel Cheung, Hong Kong, 25
Yury Favorin, Russia, 30
Madoka Fukami, Japan, 28
Mehdi Ghazi, Algeria/Canada, 28
Caterina Grewe, Germany, 29
Luigi Carroccia
Daniel Hsu, United States, 19
Alyosha Jurinic, Croatia, 28
Nikolay Khozyainov, Russia, 24
Dasol Kim, South Korea, 28
Honggi Kim, South Korea, 25
Su Yeon Kim, South Korea, 23
Julia Kociuban, Poland, 25
Rachel Kudo, United States, 30
EunAe Lee, South Korea, 29
Ilya Maximov, Russia, 30
Aloysha Jurinic
Sun-A Park, United States, 29
Leonardo Pierdomenico, Italy, 24
Philipp Scheucher, Austria, 24
Ilya Shmukler, Russia, 22
Yutong Sun, China, 21
Yekwon Sunwoo, South Korea, 28
Georgy Tchaidze, Russia, 29
Tristan Teo, Canada, 20
Tony Yike Yang, Canada, 18
