A few hours ago, the Van Cliburn Foundation e-mailed a list of the 30 pianists who have been selected to perform in this summer’s 14th Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, and just as I promised you last week, I’m bringing you their names. To avoid confusion, I’m printing their surnames in all caps, with their countries of origin in parentheses.
• Luca BURATTO (Italy)
• Sean CHEN (USA)
• Alexei CHERNOV (Russia)
• Sara DANESHPOUR (USA)
• Alessandro DELJAVAN (Italy)
• DONG Fei-Fei (China)
• François DUMONT (France)
• Yuri FAVORIN (Russia)
• Lindsay GARRITSON (USA)
• Jayson GILLHAM (Australia)
• Giuseppe GRECO (Italy)
• HUANG Ruoyu (China)
• Claire HUANGCI (USA)
• Vadym KHOLODENKO (Ukraine)
• Nikolai KHOZYAINOV (Russia)
• Marcin KOZIAK (Poland)
• LIN Kuan-Ting (Taiwan)
• Steven LIN (USA)
• Alex MCDONALD (USA)
• Gustavo MIRANDA-BERNALES (Chile)
• Nikita MNDOYANTS (Russia)
• Oleksandr POLIYKOV (Ukraine)
• Beatrice RANA (Italy)
• Tomoki SAKATA (Japan)
• Scipione SANGIOVANNI (Italy)
• SUH Hyung-min (South Korea)
• Alessandro TAVERNA (Italy)
• YUAN Jie (China)
• YouYou ZHANG (USA)
• Eric ZUBER (USA)
Another impressive showing by the Italians with six entrants, while the Chinese, surprisingly, have only three. Some of the finalists above played at the Fort Worth screening recitals two weeks ago; you can read my thoughts here, here, and here and get a fix on what I thought of the successful auditioners, as well as which pianists I felt deserved to make the cut. (To be fair, some of them are young enough to have a chance in 2017.) Two names I’m glad to see out of those who didn’t audition here: Alessandro Deljavan, who impressed me when he played at the 2009 Van Cliburn (he was eliminated in the prelims), and Sara Daneshpour, whom I liked a lot when she auditioned at the Fort Worth screening recitals in 2009 (she didn’t make the competition that year). We’ve got a comments space below, readers. Who will you be eagerly awaiting to hear in this summer’s competition? Who did you think should have been selected? Share your thoughts.
