A number of the violinists are prize winners from other international competitions
The Queen Elisabeth Competition in Belgium – which this year is devoted to violin – has announced the names of the 12 candidates who will progress to the finals, taking place from May 25 to 30. Each violinist will perform at the Brussels Centre for Fine Arts with the National Orchestra of Belgium conducted by Marin Alsop. The laureates will be ranked at the end of the evening on Saturday 30 May.
Among the finalists are several recent winners of other international competitions – including 2014 Menuhin Competition Senior Division winner Stephen Waarts (pictured), 2012 Menuhin Competition Senior Division winner Kenneth Renshaw, 2013 David Oistrakh Interntional Violin Competition Senior Division winner and 2015 Windsor String Competition winner Ji-Yoon Lee, and 2012 Joseph Joachim International Violin Competition Hannover finalist Bomsori Kim.
The 12 finalists are:
Tobias Feldmann, Germany
William Hagen, United States
Bomsori Kim, South Korea
Ji-Yoon Lee, South Korea
Ji Young Lim, South Korea
Fumika Mohri, Japan
Thomas Reif, Germany
Kenneth Renshaw, United States
Oleksii Semenenko, Ukraine
Stephen Waarts, United States/Holland
Xiao Wang, China
William Ching-Yi Wei, Taiwan
Chaired by Arie Van Lysebeth, the 2015 jury comprises Pierre Amoyal , Patrice Fontanarosa, Daniel Hope, Nai-Yuan Hu, Dong-Suk Kang, Nam Yun Kim, Mihaela Martin, Natalia Prischepenko, Marco Rizzi, Akiko Suwanai and Gilbert Varga.
The 2015 first laureate will receive a prize of €25,000 and the loan of the ‘Huggins’ Stradivarius violin by the Nippon Music Foundation for a period of four years.
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.
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