The 16th Henryk Wieniawski Violin Competition finished this week, with the €50,000 first prize going to the young Japanese violinist Hina Maeda. Second prize went to Meruert Karmenova from Kazakhstan, while Qingzhu Weng was awarded third prize.
A total of six contestants made it to the final round of the contest, which is held in Poznań, Poland. The six finalists all performed two pieces – the Brahms Violin Concerto, and the Second Violin Concerto by the Polish violinist and composer Henryk Wieniawski. The Poznań Philharmonic Orchestra provided the accompaniment, with Łukasz Borowicz conducting.
Augustin Dumay, President of the Jury, is happy with the way the competition went and says: 'Our goal in the 16th International Henryk Wieniawski Violin Competition was clearly not to try to highlight the ‘violin champions of the week in Poznań’ but rather to discover young musicians, sensitive, intelligent, refined, with a strong personality, whom we would like to listen on and on for years.'
The three winners of the Wieniawski Competition will now head off on a world tour, playing a total of 60 concerts in 20 countries across five continents.
The prize-winners' concert will be live-streamed in Poznań on Friday, 21 October at pm, and you can watch it via the Competition's official YouTube page.
The Wieniawski Competition takes place every four years: the next one will take place in 2026. Previous winners have included Ginette Neveu who won in 1935, at the age of 15. The legendary Russian violinist David Oistrakh was runner-up that year.
Photos: Leszek Zadón / Fresh Frame
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