The piano gold medal at this year’s International Tchaikovsky Competition has been awarded to Russian pianist Daniil Trifonov, aged 20 (left).
Trifonov performed Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 and Chopin’s First Piano Concerto in the final round of the competition, which took place 27-30 June in Moscow.
Second and third place went to two South Koreans: Yeol Eum Son and Seong Jin Cho respectively.
Conductor Valery Gergiev was the chairman of the 2011 competition’s organising committee and the judges for the piano category included the pianists Yefim Bronfman, Barry Douglas and Peter Donohoe.
Pianist and conductor Vladimir Ashkenazy was also on the jury before having to drop out due to an infection.
For the first time this year the competition was shown online via ‘webcasts’ and the organisers used Twitter and facebook to post the latest news from the event.
Barry Douglas has been tweeting throughout the competition. Following the announcement of the winners he wrote ‘A great result here in Moscow. I have looked scoldingly at the agents and organizers so they are careful with these young pianists.’
The winner of the cello gold medal was Armenian cellist Narek Hakhnazaryan (below) while in the violin category no first prize was given. Instead the silver medal was shared by Russian Sergey Dogadin and Itamar Zorman from Israel.
The female and male vocal categories were won by two South Koreans, soprano Sun Young Seo and bass Jong Min Park.
The International Tchaikovsky Competition runs every four years and was first held in 1958.
Elizabeth Davis