2020 Enescu Competition Announces the 3 Winners of the Composition Section

The 2020 George Enescu International Competition announced on Sunday, September 20, the 3 winners of the Composition section: Karlo Margetic, a 33 years old New Zealand musician, is the winner of the 2020 Enescu Competition’s  Composition Section in the Symphonic Music category, with his work An Axe for the Frozen Sea, and Youngjae Cho (30 years old) from South Korea won in the Chamber Music category with his work entitled Shattered Surfaces. The Composition Section introduced a new prize in this edition, worth 5,000 euros, for Originality. The winner for Originality is Marc Migó Cortés (27 years old) from Spain, with his work 4 SONGS IN RED.

At this year’s edition of the Enescu Competition, 21 competitors from 13 countries entered the Composition section with 26 works. The youngest competitor was Eden Lonsdale, 24, from the United Kingdom. Candidates could opt for symphonic music or chamber music, provided that the duration of the scores submitted for any of the categories was between 10 and 30 minutes, and that the participating works were new, without being performed in public previously.

The Jury of the Composition Section was led by Zygmunt Krauze (president) and comprised of Tim Benjamin, Dan Dediu, Bernard Cavanna, Adrian Iorgulescu, Peter Ruzicka, Hubert Stuppner, and Cornel Ţăranu.

The selection process of the submitted works took place between September 1-15, 2020. All scores were sent to the Jury in electronic format, marked with the motto and title of each work and without the names of the composers, this being a procedure meant to ensure objectivity and equidistance. Each member of the jury analyzed each work separately.

The results were announced by the President of the Jury, Zygmunt Krauze, in a video posted on the Competition’s website on Sunday, September 20. He declared: “I would like to thank all the young participants who submitted their works, for the effort to compose them and present this way their artistic level. Thanks also to the members of the Jury. Honoring the name of the great Romanian composer George Enescu, I want to say that it is an important moment, for me and for all of you as well, to participate in this great event which is the Competition – an essential part of the fantastic Festival named after George Enescu. “

The prizes offered in this edition for the Composition section are the Prize for the Symphonic Music category – 10.000 euros, the Prize for Chamber Music – 7.000 euros, and also a new prize, for Originality, of 5.000 euros. The winning work in the Composition Section of the 2020 Enescu Competition will be performed in the Opening Gala of the Enescu Competition 2021.

Remarkable composers such as Sakai Kenji (Japan), Lan-Chee Lam (Hong Kong), Alexandru-Ștefan Murariu and Dan Dediu (Romania), Oliver Waespi (Switzerland), Krisztina Megyeri (Hungary), and many others have participated in the George Enescu International Competition over time and saw their careers soar on the international stage afterwards.

The message of this year’s edition is Beauty in Life, and 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.