Violinists compete for chance to shine

The China Conservatory of Music announced that the Global Music Education League Violin Competition will take place in Beijing from Nov 3 to Nov 13, with Wang Liguang serving as the president of the competition and violinist Huang Bin as the jury chairman.

Competitors, aged between 16 and 30, will participate in five rounds of competition. The winner of the first prize will be awarded $100,000, a gold medal and a three-year touring contract with a major international artist management company.

"Competitions are great opportunities for classically trained musicians, especially young people. They are platforms on which musicians display themselves, meet people and can be seen by more audiences," says Huang, who has won major international violin competitions and is now the director of the orchestral instrument department of the China Conservatory of Music.

She notes that applicants will submit online videos of their playing works by Bach, Mozart and Paganini, and 20 to 24 competitors selected for the first round of the competition will perform music works from different eras, including one music piece written by Chinese violinist and composer Ma Sicong (1912-87).

Six competitors will enter the first phase of the final round of the competition, performing a Mozart violin concerto with the Orchestra Academia China, and then three finalists will play with the orchestra composed of musicians from the Philadelphia Orchestra and Orchestra Academia China under the baton of US conductor Tristan Rais-Sherman in the second phase of the final round.

The competition will be co-organized by the Philadelphia Orchestra, one of the most popular Western symphony orchestras among Chinese classical music lovers.

In 1973, the Philadelphia Orchestra was invited by then US president Richard Nixon to visit China in the wake of his historic trip a year earlier.

Led by its musical director Eugene Ormandy, the Philadelphia Orchestra became the first US orchestra to perform in China since the founding of New China in 1949.

According to Wang, president of China Conservatory of Music, the music school has collaborated with the Philadelphia Orchestra, launching the inaugural China International Music Competition in 2019.

"The long friendship between the Philadelphia Orchestra and China will be celebrated again with this violin competition. We are very excited to participate again so that we can keep providing more training and development opportunities for these young musicians," says Ryan Fleur, executive director of the Philadelphia Orchestra Association, in Beijing.

Workshops and master classes will also be held during the violin competition.

The violin competition, according to Wang, is the second competition launched under the Global Music Education League after the piano competition in 2019.

The Global Music Education League is a global nongovernmental and nonprofit academic organization established in September 2017 in Beijing, initiated by Wang, a prominent contemporary Chinese composer, and co-founded by 30 leading music institutions from North America, Europe and Asia. Now, the league has 85 member institutions in total.

"Young musicians benefit from working with world-class orchestras and conductors. The competition will be a platform for launching the great musicians of the future," says Wang.