Back

Harbin, a great musical crossroads, is back

Competitions

 

First major competition in China holds its 2023 edition

The 5th edition of the biennial Alice and Eleonore Schoenfeld edition in Harbin, northern China, brought about a host of events to this United Nations City of Music. Beginning with the unveiling and inauguration of a statue of Alice and Eleonore Schoenfeld by Russian sculptor Andrei Kovalchuk and a Gala opening concert at Harbin Concert Hall, the competition was presented in the categories Violin, Cello and Chamber Music. The organizers followed through with their promise not to cancel, but rather to delay the competition originally planned in 2020, and reinvited all candidates who had passed the preliminary selection three years ago. This proved a difficult task after such a long time, but the competitors were more than grateful for the new opportunity given, and the results of the contests were outstanding.
At the end of the competition, a seminar brought outstanding personalities to the stage and provided yet another great networking opportunity for Harbin: Under the Title "Chances and changes- the cultural mission of international music competitions", Christopher Russell, Daniela Rodriguez, Alexander Markov, Artistic Director Suli Xue, Frankie C. Hui, Tisa Ho and many others shared valuable insights about their work experiences to a large audience at the 2nd Schoenfeld Deans & Arts Leaders´ Summit.
 

Violin and Cello Winners ©WFIMC

Jury and Guests ©WFIMC

Deans and Arts Leaders´Summit ©WFIMC

Prizes

Chamber Music

First Prize : Trio Chagall, Basel (Edoardo Grieco, Francesco Massimino, Lorenzo Nguyen)
Second Prize : Amatis Trio, Amsterdam (Lea Hausmann, Samuel Shepherd, Menghie Han)
Third Prize : Trio Consonance, Paris (Ryo Kojima, Jérémy Garbarg, Kojiro Okada)
Fourth Prize : Urban Piano Quartet (Monika Darzinkeviciute / Bergen, Meruert Karmenova/ Brussels, Clément Holvoet / Paris, Kacper Nowak/ Brussels)
 
𝗩𝗶𝗼𝗹𝗶𝗻
First Prize : Jung Min Choi 崔郑敏, Tokyo
Second Prize : Xiyue Wu 吴喜悦,Shanghai
Third Prize : Songao Wu 吴松澳, Salzburg
 
𝗖𝗲𝗹𝗹𝗼
First Prize : Jérémy Garbarg, Paris
Second Prize : Jiaxun Yao, New York
Third Prize : Ivan Sendetskiy, Boston

Artists:
(Gala) Harbin Symphony Orchestra/ Christopher Russell, Conductor
(Final) Harbin Symphony Orchestra / Johnny M. Poon, Conductor
 
Participants of the Summit
 
Yandi Yang, Xincao Li, Wei He, Johnny M. Poon. Guangxian Chen, Christopher Russell, Qiuhong Teng, Meng Zhang, Tisa ho, Sisi Ye, Daniela Campadello-Rodriguez, Karolina Kaźmierczak, Alexander Markov, Liwei Qin, Jie Bu, Ting Chen, Haihong Yang, Suli Xue, Frankie C. Hui, Chungsheng He, Sung-hae Jeon, Dongge Gao, Bo Qu, Daiwei Bu, Yuanju Liu, Lime Xu

September 6, 2023 saw the official inauguration of a new monument at the Harbin Concert Hall: together with their namesake competition, it brought along a great opportunity to highlight the significance that these two outstanding musicians have brought to the northeastern Chinese city.
Born in Maribor (in what was the Kingdom of Yugoslavia at the time) in the 1920s, the Schoenfeld sisters grew up in Berlin and came to prominence at a young age. After the Second World War, they emigrated to the United States, where they settled in Los Angeles and restarted their performing career. At the same time, they began to teach at the University of Southern California, alongside iconic artists such as Jascha Heifetz, Gregor Piatigorksy and William Primrose.
A distinctive feature of the Schoenfeld sisters ́ careers was their interest in China. Following the visits of Isaac Stern and Yehudi Menuhin in 1979, the sisters began to travel to China as well, establishing many contacts while performing and teaching in Shanghai, Beijing and other cities. Theyalso invited countless Chinese students to the US and later helped them build their careers. One of them was the Chineseviolinist Suli Xue, who came to study with Alice Schoenfeld in 1986 and later went on to become a member of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Today, Xue is also Artistic Director of the Schoenfeld International String Competition. He was instrumental in bringing the competition to his hometown Harbin, thus making it part of a growing number of musical institutions of this Chinese “City of Music”, a title the city received from the United Nations in 2010.

 

©WFIMC 2023