June 7, 2009
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE - (amended June 10, 2009, please see
errata statement below)
THIRTEENTH VAN CLIBURN INTERNATIONAL PIANO COMPETITION WINNERS
ANNOUNCED
NOBUYUKI TSUJII OF JAPAN AND
HAOCHEN ZHANG OF CHINA TIE FOR NANCY LEE AND PERRY R. BASS GOLD
MEDAL
SILVER MEDAL GOES TO YEOL EUM SON OF SOUTH
KOREA
JUNE 7, 2009, FORT WORTH, TEXAS--Tonight, the
Van Cliburn Foundation announced the winners of the Thirteenth Van
Cliburn International Piano Competition. The announcement, made by
Van Cliburn during the Awards Ceremony at the Nancy Lee and Perry
R. Bass Performance Hall in Fort Worth, Texas, was the culmination
of seventeen exciting days of extraordinary music making.
The 2009 Cliburn winners are:
Nancy Lee and Perry R. Bass Gold Medalists (tie for
first):
Mr. Nobuyuki Tsujii, 20 (Japan)
Mr. Haochen Zhang, 19 (China)
The First Prize includes the Nancy Lee and Perry R. Bass Gold
Medal; a cash award of $20,000; international and national concert
tours for the three seasons following the competition, coordinated
by the Van Cliburn Foundation in conjunction with IMG Artists
Europe; a CD recording on the harmonia mundi usa label; performance
attire provided by Neiman Marcus; and a contribution toward
domestic and international air travel on American Airlines during
the three-year tour.
Mr. Tsujii and Mr. Zhang were the two youngest pianists in the
2009 Competition.
The last time that the Cliburn Competition awarded a tie for the
gold medal was in 2001, to Stanislav Ioudenitch and Olga Kern.
Silver Medalist:
Ms. Yeol Eum Son, 23 (South Korea)
The Second Prize includes a silver medal; a cash award of
$20,000; U.S. concert tours and career management for the three
concert seasons following the competition; and a CD recording on
the harmonia mundi usa label.
The Crystal Award was not awarded this year.
Finalists (in alphabetical order):
Mr. Evgeni Bozhanov, 25 (Bulgaria)
Ms. Mariangela Vacatello, 27 (Italy)
Ms. Di Wu, 24 (China)
All finalists receive a cash award of $10,000 and U.S. concert
tours and career management for the three concert seasons following
the competition.
Additional awards given to pianists at the Thirteenth Van
Cliburn International Piano Competition included:
Semifinalists: $5,000 each
Mr. Ran Dank, 27 (Israel)
Mr. Alessandro Deljavan, 22 (Italy)
Ms. Kyu Yeon Kim, 23 (South Korea)
Mr. Eduard Kunz, 28 (Russia)
Ms. Andrea Lam, 27 (Australia)
Mr. Michail Lifits, 26 (Germany)
Steven De Groote Memorial Award for the Best Performances of
Chamber Music: $3,000 each
Mr. Evgeni Bozhanov, 25 (Bulgaria)
Ms. Yeol Eum Son, 23 (South Korea)
Beverley Taylor Smith Award for the Best Performance of a New
Work: $5,000
Mr. Nobuyuki Tsujii, 20 (Japan)
*John Giordano Jury Chairman Discretionary Award:
$4,000
Mr. Alessandro Deljavan, 22 (Italy)
*Raymond E. Buck Jury Discretionary Award: $4,000
Mr. Lukas Vondracek, 22 (Czech Republic)
Jury Discretionary Award: $4,000
Mr. Eduard Kunz, 28 (Russia)
Awarded by the Neal Steffen Memorial Foundation.
Winners' Engagements
The six winners of the Thirteenth Van Cliburn International
Piano Competition will share more than 300 concert engagements
throughout the United States during the three seasons following the
competition, coordinated by the Van Cliburn Foundation. The gold
medalist will also be awarded concerts in Europe, Asia, and other
international territories through IMG Artists (Europe). Presenters
who have already offered engagements include the Rochester
Philharmonic and the Colorado, Dallas, San Diego, and Utah Symphony
Orchestras, as well as noted recital series presenters in Boston,
Houston, Seattle, and Washington, D.C.
Among the concert engagements the gold medal winners will share
are performances at the Aspen Music Festival, and at London's
prestigious Queen Elizabeth Hall in March 2010 (arranged by IMG
Artists).
The Live Webcast
The entire Thirteenth Van Cliburn International Piano Competition
was streamed in real time to tens of thousands of viewers
worldwide. Hosted by Jade Simmons, pianist and arts advocate, along
with co-hosts Shields-Collins Bray, the Cliburn's artistic director
of special programs and Steve Cumming, radio broadcaster and
competition announcer, the www.cliburn.tv website offered the most
expansive coverage of any competition to date. Viewers enjoyed
backstage coverage of rehearsals, as well as performances,
competitor vignettes, symposia delivered by members of the press,
jury, foreign diplomats, and Maestro James Conlon, blogs, numerous
short features on the Foundation's history, an online audience vote
(nonbinding), and streaming commentary. The website offered
unlimited access to viewers around the world.
As of June 6, the webcast player has received 231,265 visits
from people in 132 countries. The most viewed performance was
Evgeni Bozhanov's Final Round recital.
Internet Vote
Held during each round of the competition, the audience vote
allowed viewers to weigh their opinions against the jury's. Online
voting did not influence the outcome of each round, but the
audience favorites were recognized during the Awards Ceremony.
Viewers' selections were as follows:
WINNERS:
Ms. Mariangela Vacatello - 23.9%
Mr. Nobuyuki Tsujii - 22.6%
Ms. Yeol Eum Son - 15.9%
FINALISTS:
Nobuyuki Tsujii - 12.6%
Evgeni Bozhanov - 12.5%
Di Wu - 10.5%
Haochen Zhang - 10.2%
Mariangela Vacatello - 9.8%
Yeol Eum Son - 9.4%
During the Semifinal Round, online audiences picked the very same
six pianists who advanced to the finals.
SEMIFINALISTS:
Stephen Beus - 6.5%
Nobuyuki Tsujii - 6.0%
Spencer Myer - 5.9%
Eduard Kunz - 5.5%
Di Wu - 5.3%
Mariangela Vacatello - 5.3%
Lukas Vondracek - 5.0%
Zhang Zuo - 5.0%
Andrea Lam - 4.7%
Vassilis Varvaresos - 4.7%
Evgeni Bozhanov - 4.6%
Haochen Zhang - 4.4%
The seven--marked in bold--were also chosen by the jury and
advanced to the semifinals.
Cliburn Competition Blog
The Cliburn 2009 posted blogs in English, Chinese, Japanese, and
Korean. Contributing writers included Ken Iisaka and Mari
Yoshihara, Patricia Tsai, Yanxinjia Chen, Hyo-won Lee, Mike Winter,
and Michael Hawley. Mr. Iisaka and Mr. Hawley, former competitors
in the Cliburn's International Piano Competition for Outstanding
Amateurs, and Mr. Winter, a music journalist and former orchestra
manager, blogged in English; Ms. Yoshihara, a professor of American
Studies at the University of Hawaii and Ms. Tsai, who reports for
the Dallas Chinese Daily, blogged in Chinese; Ms. Chen, a music
student at the New England Conservatory, blogged in Japanese; Ms.
Lee, a reporter for the Korea Times, blogged in Korean. The blogs
will remain archived on the Foundation's website and available for
viewing following the competition.
Cliburn 50th Anniversary Documentary
A documentary film combining footage from the 2009 Competition and
scenes from earlier Peabody and Emmy Award-winning Cliburn
documentaries will be produced for national (PBS) and international
distribution in the near future in honor of the Cliburn
Competition's 50th anniversary. The 50th anniversary documentary
will be available for purchase along with past documentaries
following the broadcast.
Radio Broadcasts
One of two concerti by each of the three medalists will be
broadcast nationally in full by American Public Media's Performance
Today, and worldwide by the European Broadcasting Union.
Winners' Biographies
Evgeni Bozhanov, 24 (Bulgaria)
Evgeni Bozhanov was born in Rousse, Bulgaria, and made his
orchestral debut with his hometown orchestra at age twelve.
Currently pursuing post-graduate studies at the Robert Schumann
Musikhochschule in Duesseldorf, Germany, he earned top prizes at
both the 2008 Casagrande (Terni, Italy), and Sviatoslav Richter
(Moscow, Russia) competitions. Also first-prize winner at the Carl
Beckstein Competition in 2006, he has performed in several major
concert halls in Germany and looks forward to a tour of Italian
cities.
Yeol Eum Son, 23 (South Korea)
Yeol Eum Son has performed with the Israel, New York, Seoul, and
Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestras, among other noted orchestras.
Third-prize winner of the 2005 Arthur Rubinstein International
Piano Competition, Ms. Son has made debuts at several international
music festivals, including the Beethoven Easter Festival in Warsaw,
the Rheingau Festival in Germany, and the Bowdoin Festival in the
United States. She currently studies at the Hochschule für Musik
und Theater in Hannover, Germany, and has recorded a CD of Chopin
etudes for Universal Music in Korea.
Nobuyuki Tsujii, 20 (Japan) Nobuyuki Tsujii's performance
credits include the Japan Philharmonic Orchestra, Orchestre des
Concerts Lamoureux, Slovak Philharmonic Orchestra, and Tokyo
Symphony Orchestra. At the age of twelve, he made noted recital
debuts at Tokyo's Suntory Hall and Carnegie Hall's Weill Recital
Hall. An acclaimed debut album released by Avex classics in 2007
led to a fifteen-city tour of Japan and a second CD featuring
Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 2, released in 2008. Blind since
birth, Mr. Tsujii states his firm belief that "there are no
barriers in the field of music." He participates in the performer's
program at the Ueno Gakuen College of Music in Tokyo.
Mariangela Vacatello, 27 (Italy)
Born in Naples to a musical family, Mariangela Vacatello made her
official debut in Milan with the Pomeriggi Musicali Orchestra when
she was fourteen. At seventeen, she was second-prize winner of the
1999 Liszt Piano Competition (Utrecht, Netherlands), and in 2005
she was awarded the same distinction at the Busoni Competition
(Italy). Ms. Vacatello has performed in Italy's most renowned
concert halls and festivals. Recent international engagements
include recitals at Brussels' Palais des Beaux Arts, London's
Wigmore Hall, the Montpellier Festival and Salle Cortot in France,
and extensive tours throughout Mexico and South Africa. She is a
graduate of both the Piano Academy "Incontri col Maestro" in Imola,
Italy, and of London's Royal Academy of Music.
Di Wu, 24, (China)
Recently singled out by Musical America as a young artist to watch,
Di Wu made her orchestral debut with the Beijing Symphony at age
fourteen. She is currently enrolled in Juilliard's artist diploma
program and has performed with the National, New Jersey, and
Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestras, and twice with the New York Pops
Orchestra at Carnegie Hall. International engagements include
recitals at the Busoni International Piano Festival in Italy and at
Germany's Klavier Festival Ruhr, as well as at the Musée d'Orsay in
Paris. Winner of Juilliard's 2009 William Petschek Award, Ms. Wu
will make her Alice Tully Hall recital debut at Lincoln Center in
May 2009.
Haochen Zhang, 19 (China)
The youngest participant in the 2009 Cliburn Competition, Haochen
Zhang gave his debut recital at the Shanghai Music Hall at the age
of five, performing all of Bach's two-part inventions, as well as
sonatas by Haydn and Mozart. He performed with orchestra at age
six, and moved to the United States at fifteen to attend the Curtis
Institute of Music. First- prize winner of the 2007 China
International Piano Competition, Mr. Zhang has performed with the
China National Symphony Orchestra, Krakow State Philharmonic, New
Jersey Symphony Orchestra, Philadelphia Orchestra, and the Shanghai
Symphony Orchestra, and has concertized throughout Asia, Europe,
and the United States. He also excels at ping pong and enjoys
writing poetry.
Thirteenth Van Cliburn International Piano
Competition
A total of 225 pianists from around the world applied to the
Thirteenth Van Cliburn International Piano Competition. Following
an extensive screening process, the applications were whittled down
to just over 150 pianists (representing thirty-seven countries).
These pianists were invited to participate in the worldwide
Screening Audition Recitals held in Shanghai, China; Hannover,
Germany; St. Petersburg, Russia; Lugano, Switzerland; and in the
United States in New York, New York and Fort Worth, Texas during
January and February 2009, from which the thirty pianists were
selected to compete. The screening recitals, free and open to the
public, were presided over by a five-member jury who are also
members of the Cliburn 2009 competition jury.
On March 1, the thirty pianists (thirteen women and seventeen
men ranging in age from nineteen to thirty) selected to compete
were announced. (One competitor was forced to withdraw just prior
to the competition due to an injury, resulting in a final
competitor pool of twenty-nine.) Fourteen countries were
represented by competitors at the Cliburn 2009: Australia,
Bulgaria, Canada, China, Czech Republic, Germany, Greece, Israel,
Italy, Japan, Korea, Russia, Ukraine, and the United States.
During the Cliburn 2009, twenty-nine pianists performed
fifty-minute solo recitals in the Preliminary Round, from which
twelve advanced to the Semifinal Round. During the second round,
each pianist performed a sixty-minute solo recital featuring one of
the winning contemporary pieces from the Foundation's third
American Composers Invitational, and a piano quintet with the
Takács Quartet, one of the world's premier string quartets. The six
pianists selected to advance to Final Round performed fifty- minute
solo recitals and two concerti with the Fort Worth Symphony
Orchestra, led by Maestro James Conlon, one of classical music's
preeminent conductors and music director of the Los Angeles Opera,
the Ravinia Festival, and the Cincinnati May Festival.
Jurors of the Thirteenth Competition
The Thirteenth Van Cliburn International Piano Competition Jury
consisted of eleven respected artists and experts in the classical
music world: Maestro John Giordano, chairman, music director
emeritus of the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra, music director of
the Corpus Christi Symphony Orchestra, and distinguished fellow in
music at TCU; Marcello Abbado, former director of the Milan
Conservatory and founder of Milan's Symphonic Orchestra Verdi;
Dmitri Alexeev, pianist; Michel Beroff, pianist, conductor, and
faculty member of the Paris Conservatoire; Hung-Kuan Chen, chairman
of the Shanghai Conservatory piano department and director of its
International Piano Academy; Richard Dyer, writer, lecturer, and
former chief music critic for the Boston Globe; Joseph Kalichstein,
first chamber music adviser to the Kennedy Center and founding
member of the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio; Yoheved Kaplinsky,
chair of the piano department at the Juilliard School in New York
and professor of piano at TCU; Jürgen Meyer-Josten, former head of
music of Bavarian Radio in Munich, and director of the
International Music Competition of the Broadcasting Companies of
Germany in Munich; Menahem Pressler, pianist and founder of the
Beaux Arts Trio, and Tadeusz Strugala, conductor, and professor at
Poland's Krakow Music Academy.
Press Information
Photos of all twenty-nine competitors from the competition are
available for download at http://picasaweb.google.com/van
cliburnfoundation on the Foundation's website at www.cliburn.or
g.
ExxonMobil is the Principal Corporate Sponsor of the Van Cliburn
Foundation. American Airlines, Bank of America, City of Fort Worth,
J.P.Morgan, Star-Telegram, Steinway & Sons, and XTO Energy Inc.
are Official Corporate Sponsors, and RadioShack is the Cliburn's
Corporate Sponsor. Official Sponsors are the Amon G. Carter
Foundation, Arts Council of Fort Worth and Tarrant County, Beaumont
Foundation of America, the Burnett Foundation, the Sid W.
Richardson Foundation, and the T. Boone Pickens Foundation. Star-
Telegram is the principal media partner and WRR 101.1 FM is the
official radio station of Cliburn Concerts.
Contact
Sevan Melikyan, Dir. of Marketing and P.R.
Email: sevan@cliburn.org
Cell: 682.564.5613
National Public Relations:
Laura Grant
Email: Laura@Grant-Communications.com
Cell: 917.359.7319
Errata Statement: This release has been amended on June 10, 2009
to reflect the correct receipients of the John Giordano Jury
Chairman Discretionary Award (Mr. Alessandro Deljavan) and the
Raymond E. Buck Jury Discretionary Award (Mr. Lukas Vondracek).
