The specialist jury of the 2016 George Enescu International Competition has selected 174 young artists to compete, organisers announced.
The short-listed young artists will be competing on the stage of the Romanian Athenaeum in Bucharest, September 3-25.
“This is the first time that the Enescu competition short lists the contestants because of very many applications: 317 young artists from 48 countries have applied to compete in the 2016 edition, up 40 percent from 2014,” the organisers say in a press statement released on Wednesday.
The selected artists hail from Germany, South Korea, Italy, Spain, France, Croatia, Russia, Ukraine, Moldova, Greece, Lithuania, Latvia, Argentine, the Czech Republic, China, Thailand, the US, Canada, Turkey, Australia, New Zealand, Taiwan and Japan. There are also 12 young artists from Romania.
The George Enescu competition jury is made up of internationally acclaimed musicians and music professors, including violinists Pierre Amoyal and Silvia Marcovici, violoncellists Natalia Gutman, David Geringas and Arto Noras as well as pianists Peter Donohoe, Dana Borsan and Andrei Sitarev.
The names of the short-listed contestants are posted on the www.festivalenescu.ro web site, by violin, violoncello and piano sections.
All the applications for the composition competition have been submitted for assessment, with the winners to be unveiled on September 3, the opening day of the festival.
The prize pool of the competition is 115,000 euros. Adding up to the money are two special prizes: a two-year scholarship to the famous Barenboim Academy of Berlin for the best ranked Romanian contestant in the violin section, while the winner of the section will participate as a guest artist in the iPalpiti Festival of International Laureates 2017, Los Angeles.
The competition has a new concept this year. For 22 days, September 3-25, the public is invited to the Romanian Athenaeum to listen to and encourage the competing young artists on their path to becoming the world’s biggest musicians.
The young contesters will be joined by renowned musicians, members of the jury, former winners and the winners of the 2014 edition, in a series of 19 extraordinary recitals and orchestra concerts.
Tickets and passes are available for purchase at Eventim stores.
