The South Korean musician receives a cash prize of €25,000

jiyounglim

Ji Young Lim, winner of the 2015 Queen Elisabeth Competition in Belgium

Ji Young Lim has won the 2015 Queen Elisabeth Competition in Belgium - this year devoted to the violin. She receives a cash prize of €25,000, concert performancs and the loan of the ‘Huggins’ Stradivarius by the Nippon Music Foundation for a period of four years.

The South Korean violinist received third prize at the International Violin Competition of Indianapolis last year and has previously won prizes at the Montreal, Henri Marteau and Euroasia competitions.

Following six days of finals during which 12 candidates performed with the National Orchestra of Belgium conducted by Marin Alsop, second prize went to Oleksii Semenenko from Ukraine, third prize to William Hagen from the US, fourth prize to Tobias Feldmann from Germany, fifth prize to Stephen Waarts from the US and sixth prize to Fumika Mohri from Japan.

The remaining unranked finalists were Bomsori Kim, Ji Yoon Lee, Thomas Reif, Kenneth Renshaw, Xiao Wang and William Ching-Yi Wei.

2014 Menuhin Competition winner Stephen Waarts also won the VRT-Prize and the Musiq'3 Prize of the RTBF, both voted for by the public.

The Queen Elisabeth Competition has helped to launch the careers of a number of outstanding violinists, including David Oistrakh in 1937, Jamie Laredo in 1959, Miriam Fried in 1971, Vadim Repin in 1989, Nikolaj Znaider in 1997 and Ray Chen in 2009. 2012’s winner was Russian violinist Andrey Baranov .

For further information visit the Competition website.

Photo: Queen Elisabeth Competition

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