Eight young pianists representing 7 countries, out of the 13 competitors who participated in the Second Round, received the most votes from the Jury and advanced to the Semifinal of the Piano Section in the 2020 George Enescu International Competition: Jack Campbell (United Kingdom), Salih Can Gevrek (Turkey), Nikolai Kuznetsov (Russia), Hoyel Lee (South Korea), Adela Liculescu (Romania), Yeon-Min Park (South Korea), Chun Lam U (Hong Kong) and Marcin Wieczorek (Poland).
The Second Round of the 2020 George Enescu International Competition’s Piano Section was held online between September 17 and 19. The results were announced by the President of the Jury in a video posted on the Competition’s website on Sunday, September 20. In her message, Cristina Ortiz, President of the Piano Jury and laureate of the 1967 Enescu Competition, stated: “Congratulation to all candidates for rising above such unusual circumstances. Moreover, for the way they prepared and presented their recorded performances this time for the Second Round. The level is very high, so I thank my colleagues on the jury for their generosity, since, instead of 6, it was decided that 8 pianists should be promoted to the Semifinals in May 2021, in Bucharest.”
The international jury of the 2020 Enescu Piano Competition is led by Cristina Ortiz and comprised of Dana Borșan, Hyoung-Joon Chang, Philippe Dinkel, Peter Jablonski, Andrei Pisarev, Roland Pöntinen, Josu de Solaun, and Zhe Tang.
The competitors will participate in the Semifinal of the Piano Competition, which will take place on May 21, 2021, at the Romanian Athenaeum, in Bucharest. The Piano Final will take place on Sunday, May 23, 2021, at 3:00 PM GMT | 6:00 PM EEST (Romania), with the George Enescu Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by maestro John Axelrod.
It is for the first time in the history of the Enescu Competition when the first two rounds of the instruments sections were held online. To create a bond between musicians and spectators, the platform provided three buttons through which viewers could virtually applaud, choosing the intensity and form of their praise. Spectators could also send messages to young musicians to encourage them. Access to the 2020 Enescu Competition online content during this period was 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.
