Trio Archai took home the $20,000 first prize
Trio Archai has won first prize and $20,000 in the Schoenfeld International String Competition’s chamber music division. The ensemble also won the prize for the best performance of a work by Beethoven, worth $2,000.
The Berlinsky Quartet received the $10,000 second prize, Mila Quartet the $5,000 third prize, Trio Havisham the $3,000 fourth prize and Trio Azura the $2,000 fifth prize.
The final round took place on 21 and 22 July in the Harbin Grand Theater in Harbin, China. The ensembles performed a Classical work, one movement of a Romantic work and one movement of a chamber work from either the 20th century or composed after 1950.
Trio Archai comprises Spanish pianist Mar Valor, 25, German violinist Ayla Sahin, 26, and Irish cellist Finn Mannion, 23. The group was formed in Switzerland during the musicians’ studies at the Basel Academy of Music. It won the 2024 Royal Overseas League Competition, was selected as Britten Pears Young Artists for the 2025/26 season, and is also a laureate of the Orpheus Swiss Chamber Music Competition. The group has performed at Wigmore Hall and appeared at festivals including Schaffhausen Klassik, the Swiss Chamber Music Festival and Whittington Music Festival. In 2025, the musicians joined Thomas Adès’s class at IMS Prussia Cove.
Since 2023, the group has been studying with Claudio Martínez Mehner in Basel, and has also received mentorship from Patricia Kopatchinskaja, Alina Ibragimova, Robert Levin, Jonathan Brown, Danjulo Ishizaka and Rainer Schmidt. The musicians are members of European Chamber Music Academy and ChamberStudio London.
The jury of the 2025 chamber division was led by Wei He and Li Sheng, and also included Alasdair Tait, Natalia Pavlutskaya, Sergey Antonov, Xenia Jankovic, James Cuddeford, Anne Gastinel and Lina Yu.
The competition is organised with the support from the Harbin Municipal Government and the Harbin Modern Culture & Tourism Investment Group Co., the sponsor partner of this year’s competition. It was founded by sisters Alice and Eleonore Schoenfeld, who in the 1980s were among the first internationally recognised musicians to visit Communist China following the establishment of formal diplomatic relations with the US. More than a hundred Chinese string students studying abroad received scholarship support on their recommendation.
Read: Finalists announced for the Schoenfeld International String Competition
Read: Postcard from France: Bordeaux International String Quartet Competition
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