The Polish contest awarded its €30,000 top prize to 20-year-old Veriko Tchumburidze two weeks ago

Wieniawski

The 15th International Henryk Wieniawski Violin Competition has released its jury scores for all four live rounds. The Polish contest, which awarded its €30,000 top prize to 20-year-old Veriko Tchumburidze two weeks ago, has followed the lead set by the Shanghai Isaac Stern Violin Competition earlier this year, which also released its jury scores in the interests of total transparency.

The Wieniawski finals scoreboard reveals a good deal of discrepancy among the jury marks. Although seven of the voting musicians awarded first place to Tchumburidze, four of the panellists ranked joint second prize winner Bomsori Kim in first place and awarded far lower rankings to Tchumburidze. Indeed, in the third round the jury was split evenly as to whether to allow Tchumburidze to progress to the finals at all.

wieniawskifinalscores1

Jury chair Maxim Vengerov, who attended all preliminary selection rounds, abstained from voting in the finals, as his student Maria WŠ‚oszczowska was among the seven selected violinists.  The remaining jurors were Krzysztof Penderecki, Alena Baeva, Zakhar Bron, Bartosz BryŠ‚a, Ilya Gringolts, Dong-Suk Kang, Konstanty Andrzej Kulka, Marios Papadopoulos, Mayumi Seiler, Kyoko Takezawa, Akiko Tatsumi, Vera Tsu and Peter Zazofsky.

Read the scores in detail below:

Results - Stage 1

Results - Stage 2

Results - Stage 3

Final Round

This year’s results were marred somewhat by jury member Zakhar Bron, who took to a Polish radio station to express his opinion that ‘many of the decisions by the jury were mistaken’. The violinist continued: ‘Two, maybe three, of the finalists are very good musicians, but the remainder should not have made it to that stage in the competition.’

Second prize was shared between 25-year-old Bomsori Kim from South Korea and 22-year-old Seiji Okamoto from Japan, who each received €20,000.

Fourth and fifth prizes, each worth €10,000, went to 26-year-old Luke Hsu from the United States and 25-year-old Richard Lin from Taiwan/United States respectively, while sixth and seventh prizes, each worth €5,000, went to 25-year-old Maria WŠ‚oszczowska from Poland and 21-year-old Ryosuke Suho from Japan.

For full details visit the Wieniawski Violin Competition website.

Read: 15th International Wieniawski Violin Competition announces 52 candidates

Read: 2016 International Wieniawski Violin Competition names 7 finalists

Read: Veriko Tchumburidze wins International Wieniawski Violin Competition 2016