Schumann Competition announces 2024 winners

Born in Daqing, China, tenor Zhuohan Sun is currently studying art song interpretation at the Karlsruhe University of Music in Germany. His work as a singer has included a passion for this style, and he has won accolades for his interpretation. He won the Special Prize and Audience Award at the 2021 International Robert Schumann VIDEO Competition, and Gold Prize at the first International Singing Competition for Chinese Art Songs in 2018.

In 2017 Zhuohan Sun was invited by the National Ballet of China to sing Mahler’s song cycle, Das Lied von der Erde at Beijing’s Heaven Bridge Theater.

Sun is a graduate of the Shanghai Conservatory of Music, and was a 2018 prize winner at the Mozarteum Summer Academy in Salzburg.

Vincent Ong was born in Penang, Malaysia in 2001. He developed his passion for classical music and started studying piano in Penang at the age of four. Vincent Ong has been actively taking part in concerts, piano competitions, master classes and music festivals. He is privileged to be under the tutelage of the renowned Malaysian pianist & composer, Maestro Ng Chong Lim, and Prof. Natalia Trull of the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory, Russia. He also had the opportunity to take part in masterclasses with great pianists including Boris Berman, Christopher Hinterhuber, Boris Slutsky, Li Ming-Qiang, Ilana Vered, Hee-Sung Joo, Fulvio Turissini and Chun-Chieh Yen.

The special prize for the best song accompaniment went to Diego Mallen, 30 years old and born in Mexico City. 

The jury did not award a first prize to the female singers, but instead awarded a second prize and – ex aequo – two third prizes. The competition ends on Sunday evening with the big prizewinners' concert, which takes place at 7 p.m. in the "Neue Welt" concert and ballroom.

This year´s competition featured 43 female singers, 27 male singers and 56 pianists from 27 nations. There were also 46 song accompanists. 

The first prize is worth 10,000 euros and a gold medal, the second prize is worth 7,500 euros and a silver medal, and the third prize is worth 5,000 euros and a bronze medal. The best song accompanist receives 3,000 euros.

Category Piano

Prizes:
1st Prize: Vincent Ong, Berlin

2nd Prize (ex aequo): Rei Harada (18), Tokyo /  Ryusei Horiuchi, Tokyo

Jury:
Thomas Synofzik(Chair), Jozef De Beenhouwer, Boris Bloch, Dana Ciocarlie, Jean-Jacques Dünki, Susanne Grützmann, Yves Henry, Heike-Angela Moser, Peter Rösel, Kalle Randalu

Category Voice 

Female

Prizes:
1st Prize: Not awarded
2nd Prize: Elisabeth Birgmeier, Munich
3rd Prize (ex aequo): Paulina Bielarczyk, Dresden / Emma Roberts, London

Male
Prizes:
1st Prize: Zhuohan Sun (31), Karlsruhe
2nd Prize(ex aequo): Jakob Ewert, Munich and Emil Greiter(23), Würzburg
3rd prize: Not awarded

Jury:
Thomas Synofzik(Chair), Bodil Arnesen, Olaf Bär, Bernarda Fink, Gabriele Fontana, Christina Högman, Gotthold Schwarz, Mitsuko Shirai, Semion Skigin, Scot Weir

The International Robert Schumann Competition was initiated 100 years after Schumann’s death in 1956. On this occasion a large music festival — in those days still pan-German — was held in Zwickau, the city of the composer’s birth, and his reconstructed birthplace was officially opened as Schumann Museum and Archive. Simultaneously young pianists and singers competed with each other for the best Schumann interpretation in Berlin. Later on the award winners appeared at laureate concerts in Zwickau.

The constellation was similar in 1960 — the year of the 150th anniversary of Robert Schumann’s birth — when the second Schumann Competition in the categories voice and string quartet was held in Berlin followed by a further Schumann Festival in Zwickau. It was not until the third competition that this music event finally moved to Zwickau. Since then the two categories piano and singing have been set. However, the venues varied within the city of Zwickau, including the chamber music hall of the Robert Schumann House, the former Varieté Lindenhof, the idyllically situated Schwanenschloss, which does not exist anymore, as well as the Cathedral Parish Hall. Nowadays the competition takes place in the Robert Schumann Conservatory and in the art nouveau ambience of the Concert House and Ballroom ‚Neue Welt‘. 

The list of award winners include names enjoying international reputation such as the pianists Peter Rösel, Nelly Akopian, Dina Joffe, Dezső Ránki, Balázs Szokolay, Yves Henry, Eric Le Sage, Dana Ciocarlie and Florian Noack or singers such as Siegfried Lorenz, Mitsuko Shirai, Edith Wiens, Mary Ann Hart, Matthias Görne, Britta Schwarz, Bodil Arnesen, Annette Dasch, Anna Lucia Richter and Mauro Peter. Meanwhile a number of these winners join the competition’s jury, thus guaranteeing the artistic continuity of the Robert Schumann Competition.

©︎ WFIMC 2024