Jie Chen, an 18-year-old teenager from Canton province in China who resides in Philadelphia, rose to the top of a global field to become the First Prize winner of the second International Piano-e-Competition in Minneapolis, MN, which culminated on June 5.

Chen’s final performances included Brahms’ Quartet No. 3 in C Minor, Op. 60, and Rachmaninoff’s Concerto No. 2 in C Minor, Op. 18. In presenting the prize at Orchestra Hall in Minneapolis, competition founder, president and executive director Alex Braginsky praised her for standing out in a large field of extremely talented competitors from around the world.

Inesa Sinkevych of Israel, Yung Wook Yoo of South Korea, Hanna Shybayeva of Belarus and Tatiana Kolesova and Denis Evstioukhine of Russia were the five other finalists who emerged from the Piano-e-Competition’s earlier rounds.

Jie Chen with judge Sontraud Speidel

During the finals, competitors performed on a Yamaha CFIIIS concert grand piano. But what makes the competition completely unique is the earlier rounds. Based upon performance recordings, 60 artists were invited to live screening auditions in December 2003 in Hamamatsu, Japan; Paris, France; Los Angeles, CA and New York, NY. The contestants’ audition performances were digitally videotaped and recorded as MIDI data on a Yamaha Disklavier® concert grand piano at each of the respective audition sites.

In early January 2004, twenty four final contestants were selected by a six-member screening panel who judged the performances using a Disklavier and a large video screen at Sundin Hall at Hamline University in St. Paul, where the Recital and Final Rounds later took place. This is the first time in the history of piano competitions that a screening round was successfully completed with the “live” contestants not actually present.

In addition to a cash award of $25,000, as First Prize winner, Chen received a Yamaha Disklavier DC3A grand piano, a Spring 2005 New York City Debut Recital at Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center sponsored by Yamaha Corporation of America, a CD issued on the Ten Thousand Lakes label, a Yamaha PianoSoft™ recording for the Yamaha Disklavier piano and engagements with the Dame Myra Hess Memorial Concert in Chicago, IL; the Minnesota Orchestra; the Schubert Club and the Richmond Symphony Orchestra.

(L to R) Back row: Liqing Yang, Dmitri Bashkirov, Dr. Alex Braginsky (President & Artist Director Piano-e-Competition), Dubravka Tomšic, Gyorgy Sandor. (L to R) Front row: Ruth Laredo, Menahem Pressler (Jury Chair) and Sontraud Speidel

Chen’s accomplishments include winning the Grand Prize at the 2004 Missouri Southern International Piano Competition, First Prize at the 2003 Fifth Piano Arts of Wisconsin National Concerto Competition and Third Prize at the 2003 ‘Sanremo Classico’ International Piano Competition, Italy.

This year’s jury for the Recital and Final Rounds was chaired by Menahem Pressler of the United States, and included Dmitri Bashkirov of Russia, Ruth Laredo and Gyorgy Sandor of the U.S., Sontraud Speidel of Germany, Dubravka Tomšic of Slovenia and Liqing Yang of China.

In the inaugural Piano-e-Competition in 2002, American Mei-Ting Sun took top honors. The biennial event is distinguished for both its quality and its technical sophistication; international authority Gustav Alink ranked the 2002 inaugural International Piano-e-Competition among the top 30 piano competitions in the world in his book Piano Competitions Worldwide.

In addition, the general public can down-load and hear the audition, recital and final round performances as MIDI files on their own computers from the Piano-e-Competition home page. In the final round of the 2002 competition, acclaimed pianist Yefim Bronfam even participated as a remote “e-judge” from Tokyo, Japan using this method.

The event, organized by Minneapolis-based Musicians in Debut International, was sponsored by Hamline University, the Grand Hotel Minneapolis, Minnesota Public Radio and Yamaha Corporation of America, with participation by Orchestra Hall in Minneapolis, The Rosalyra Quartet, The Schubert Club and The Minnesota Orchestra, conducted by Mark Russell Smith.

For more information about the International Piano-e-Competition, visit www.piano-e-competition.com.

 

 

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