2016 Sydney International Piano Competition
The Sydney International Piano Competition is on again this year from July 6-23.
Artistic Director, Piers Lane AO has announced the list of competitors which includes three Australian pianists – Ayesha Gough from Brisbane, Daniel Le from Melbourne, and Hong Kong-born Australian Jeremy So from Sydney. The other contenders hail from 15 different nations including Kazakhstan, Italy and Russia, China, USA and Japan.
Inaugurated in 1977, the Sydney International Piano Competition has been held every four years, and this year welcomes an international field of 32 competitors who will vie for almost $200,000 in prize money and engagements that will include concerto performances with Maestro Valery Gergiev, Artistic Patron of the Competition, recital appearances in his Marinsky International Piano Festival in St Petersburg, a debut with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, an album deal with Hyperion Records, an Australian national tour and other recitals around the world.
The jury of nine comprises Chinese pianist Sa Chen, Russian born Nikolai Demidenko, British Hamish Milne, Japanese Noriko Ogawa, Serbian/Australian/Italian Mira Yevtich, American Orli Shaham, Polish Ewa Kupiec and Australians, Carl Vine and Timothy Walker.
The competition performances in Sydney will feature the Goldner Quartet, the UK violinist Tasmin Little and the Sydney Symphony Orchestra performing with the pianists.
The other 29 competitors include: Philipp Scheucher (Austria), Jianing Kong (China), Ming Xie (China), Moye Chen (China), Yinfei Wang (China), Aljoša Jurinić (Croatia), Lukas Vondracek (Czech Republic), Emanuel Rimoldi (Italy), Leonardo Colafelice (Italy), Akihiro Sakiya (Japan), Oxana Shevchenko (Kazakhstan), Chi Ho Han (Korea), David Jae-Weon Huh (Korea), Ha Gyu Tae (Korea), Jinhyung Park (Korea), Woo-Gil Park (Korea), Alexei Melnikov (Russia), Andrey Gugnin (Russia), Arseny Tarasevich-Nikolaev (Russia), Ilya Rashkovskiy (Russia), Sergey Belyavskiy (Russia), Martin Malmgren (Sweden), Roman Lopatynskyi (Ukraine), Fantee Jones (USA), Kenneth Broberg (USA), Larry Weng (USA), Lindsay Garritson (USA), Rachel Naomi Kudo (USA/Japan) and Quang Hong Luu (Vietnam). They will be expected to perform Australian works as part of their repertoire.
