Zurich Festival: The 2018 Concours Géza Anda - A challenge and an opportunity for exceptional young pianists

The 14th Concours Géza Anda, to be held from 3 to 12 June 2018 in Zurich and Winterthur, will this year be held as part of the Zurich Festival. Internationally renowned artists will make up the Jury, which will be chaired by the German pianist and conductor Christian Zacharias. He will be joined in his deliberations by the pianists Andrea Bonatta (I), Peter Lang (A), Prof. Dr Robert Levin (USA), Aleksander Madzar (SER) and Alexei Volodin (RUS), and by Nathalie Wappler (CH), Programme Director of MDR.

120 pianists from 23 countries auditioned to participate in the Concours. After consulting their video submissions, 40 of them were invited to take part in the First Round in Zurich. They come from countries as diverse as Armenia, China, Germany, England, Estonia, Italy, Japan, Norway, Austria, Russia, Spain, South Korea, Ukraine, Hungary and the USA.

Hortense Anda-Bührle, the widow of the Hungarian-Swiss pianist Géza Anda, founded the Concours in Zurich in 1979, in memory of her husband. Over the course of the past 39 years, the Concours has established itself as one of the most challenging competitions on the international piano scene. Thanks to its long-established network and partnerships, the 2018 prize winners can expect not just money prizes to the tune of CHF 70,000.-, but also numerous concert engagements as part of their prize. It was especially important to Hortense Anda-Bührle that young pianists should be enabled to grow into their profession, and be given the opportunity to nurture their career carefully. Former Géza Anda prize winners - such as Dénes Várjon, Pietro De Maria, Alexei Volodin, Varvara Nepomnyashchaya, Dasol Kim and Andrew Tyson - have followed up their success in Zurich with performances in concert halls all over the world, and they also hold important teaching positions at leading conservatories.

All four rounds of the Concours are open to the public. The six semi-finalists will perform in the Mozart Round on the weekend of 9/10 June 2018 in the Stadthaus in Winterthur, accompanied by the Musikkollegium Winterthur under the direction of Theodor Guschlbauer. The Final Concert and Award Ceremony will be held at 7 p.m. on Tuesday 12 June 2018 in theTonhalle-Maag in Zurich, where the three finalists will be accompanied by the Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra conducted by Christian Zacharias. They will perform piano concertos chosen from works by Beethoven, Schumann, Chopin, Liszt, Tchaikovsky and Bartók.

The Concours can be watched as a live video stream on the Internet from the Second Round onwards (6 June). Swiss Radio SRF2 will record the Final Concert and broadcast it live.

For more information and the results of the competition, please go to: www.geza-anda.ch - https://de-de.facebook.com/concoursgezaanda/

Contact: Géza Anda-Stiftung, Bleicherweg 18, 8002 Zürich - info@geza-anda.ch / Tel. +41 44 205 14 23

- Cross reference: Picture is available at AP Images (http://www.apimages.com) -