Queen Elisabeth Competition winners announced

Belgium’s grand dame of the music competition scene has announced its winners for 2016. Some 82 pianists were selected to compete in the first round of the competition, quickly whittled down to 24 who made it through to the semi-finals, followed by 12 finalists who competed at Brussels Centre for Fine Arts with the National Orchestra of Belgium, conducted by Marin Alsop.

QEC has the potential to launch winners into the classical stratosphere. Past winners include Leonid Kogan, Leon Fleisher, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Jaime Laredo, Malcolm Frager, Elisabeth Leonskaja, Mitsuko Uchida, Ray Chen and Miriam Fried. In January 2016, QEIMC received a record 300 applications.

The laureates concert will take place on 6 June with the fourth, fifth and sixth laureates performing with deFilharmonie and conducted by Thierry Fischer, at Brussels Centre for Fine Arts (Palais des Beaux-Arts).

The closing concert with take place on 9 June with the first, second and third prize winners, with Brussels Philharmonic and conducted by Stéphane Denève, also at Brussels Centre for Fine Arts.

First Prize : Queen Elisabeth International Grand Prize: Lukáš Vondráček
Second Prize: Henry Kramer
Third Prize: Alexander Beyer
Fourth Prize: Chi Ho Han
Fifth Prize: Aljoša Jurinić
Sixth Prize: Alberto Ferro

The six unranked laureates in alphabetical order are Atsushi Imada; Yoonji Kim; Kana Okada; Dmitry Shishkin; Hans H. Suh; and Larry Weng.

Watch and listen to the 2016 winning performances on the QEC website. In 2017 the competition will hold a brand new strand for cello, full details are now online.

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