Photo Ralph Lauer
Yekwon Sunwoo of South Korea performs with conductor Leonard Slatkin and the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra during the Final Round of the Fifteenth Van Cliburn International Piano Competition held at Bass Performance Hall in 2017.
The diamond year of the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition is already off to a monumental start.
A record-breaking 388 applications came through for the 2022 event — the "largest and most diverse in the organization’s 60-year history," according to The Cliburn. The number marks a 34% increase over the last edition in 2017.
Pianists hail from 51 countries, the most representation coming from China (77), South Korea (60), the U.S. (51), and Russia (43). Applicants range between the ages of 18 to 31 (as of competition dates) and include 277 men, 110 women, and one non-binary individual.
“Following the vision of Van Cliburn, the Cliburn Competition serves two mandates: to constantly grow the international fanbase for classical music and to discover and support the best-of-the-best young pianists,” Jacques Marquis, president and CEO, said in a statement. “This excellent application response is a testament to the art form’s vibrancy; it is our job now to manage the selection process carefully, as our experts determine the 30 who will be invited to Fort Worth in June. With this level of geographic representation and, particularly, after the global challenges of the past two years, the competition will be a truly extraordinary celebration of the resiliency of the human spirit and of the power of music.”
Next year's competition not only marks the organization's 60th anniversary but also the return of the live event since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Seventy-two pianists will be selected to participate in screening auditions at TCU's PepsiCo Recital Hall on March 6 – 12, the first time screening auditions will take place in Fort Worth. The 25-minute recitals will be free and open to the public.
Then, on March 30, The Cliburn will announce the 30 competitors selected for the competition on June 2 – 18.
More information is available here.
