Seventeen young violinists out of the 60 competitors who participated in the First Round received the most votes from the Jury and advanced to the Second Round of the Violin Section in the 2020 George Enescu International Competition: Hans Christian Aavik (Estonia), Takamori Arai (Japan), Justina Auskelyte (Lithuania), Maria-Alexandra Bobeico (Romania), Gennaro Cardaropoli (Italy), Ho-Hsuan Feng (Taiwan), Elvin Hoxha Ganiyev (Turkey/Azerbaijan), Nakyung Kang (South Korea), Jeewon Kim (South Korea), Karolina Nowotczyńska (Poland), Tassilo Probst (Germany), Tomotaka Seki (Japan), Valentin Serban (Romania), Alican Süner (Turkey), Mayu Tokuda (Japan), Ayaka Uchio (Japan) and Jaewon Wee (South Korea).
Due to the quality of the performances, the jury decided to select 17 competitors instead of 12, and let the Second Round be the tie-breaker. The First Round of the 2020 George Enescu International Competition’s Violin Section was held online between September 5 and 9. The results were announced online by the President of the Jury in a video posted on the Competition’s website on Thursday, September 10. The international jury of the 2020 Enescu Violin Competition is led by Dmitry Sitkovetsky and comprised of Remus Azoiței, Koichiro Harada, Silvia Marcovici, Mihaela Martin, Igor Petrushevski, Eduard Schmieder, and Krzysztof Wegrzyn.
In the announcement published on the Competition’s website, Dmitry Sitkovetsky, President of the Violin Jury, declared: “In the last five days my colleagues – the members of the Jury – and myself listened to 60 talented violinists from 21 countries who recorded their First Round repertoire – works of Bach, Mozart, and Paganini. I would like to congratulate all of the participants for their admirable efforts in these unusual circumstances. Their love and enthusiasm for music were very evident. Bravo! I would also like to thank my fellow jury members for their efforts to stay fair and generous in their votes. And so instead of the 12 candidates, we decided to advance 17 violinists to the Second Round. We will have a better chance to get to know their talents and musical personalities in a wider choice of the repertoire.”
The Second Round (eliminatory) of the Enescu Violin Competition will run between September 11 and 13. The recordings will be available for the general public on the Competition’s website https://www.festivalenescu.ro/en/ starting on September 11, 7:00 AM GMT |10:00 AM EEST (Romania). The results of the Second Round will be announced by the President of the Jury on the Competition’s website on September 14, 2020, at 5:00 PM GMT | 8:00 PM EEST (Romania).
The competitors who qualify in the Second Round will participate in the Semifinal of the Competition, which will take place on May 17, 2021, at the Romanian Athenaeum, in Bucharest. The Violin Final will take place on Monday, May 19, 2021, at 3:00 PM GMT | 6:00 PM EEST (Romania), with the George Enescu Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by maestro Wilson Hermanto.
It is for the first time in the history of the Enescu Competition when the first two rounds of the instruments sections are held online, as the only way to safely organize the Competition amid the escalation of pandemic worldwide. To create a bond between musicians and spectators, the platform provides three buttons through which viewers can virtually applaud, choosing the intensity and form of their praise. Spectators can also send messages to young musicians to encourage them. Access to the 2020 Enescu Competition online content during this period is free. The full program is at this link: https://www.festivalenescu.ro/en/program/.
The message of this year’s edition is Beauty in Life. Therefore, faced with the worldwide pandemic, the 2020 George Enescu International Competition challenges us to prove that we all have the power to reinvent ourselves while embracing equally beauty and life.
George Enescu Competition is an international platform for launching the future world-class musicians and for promoting the compositions of the great Romanian composer to the new generation of artists. It is thus a natural extension of the George Enescu Festival, the most important cultural event organized in Romania. The Competition has four sections – violin, cello, piano, and composition – and it ranks in the top five classical music competitions worldwide.
