The competition’s finals are taking place today and tomorrow, and we’ll bring you the results on Monday. Here’s all you need to know until then!

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Competitors from the 2024 Ilona Fehér International Violin Competition’s second round

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On 4 July, the contestants of the the Ilona Fehér International Violin Competition arrived in Budapest, Hungary, to perform in three competition rounds. The final of these began today with the group 1 (contestants under the age of 15) finals. The finalists of group 2 (aged 15 to 22) will perform tomorrow, 13 July. All finals are being held at the Solti Hall at the Liszt Academy in Budapest. Here’s what you need to know before we reveal the final results on Monday 15 July!

In the group 1 finals, which happened earlier today, the performers were: Hana Hoshino (Japan), Sheng Fangyuan (China), Constantin Stefan Cristian (Romania) and Kimia Corke (Switzerland). Hoshino and Sheng performed Mozart’s G major Violin Concerto, Cristian performed ’Winter’ from Vivaldi’s Four Seasons and Corke played ‘Summer’ from Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. They were accompanied by the Anima Musicae Chamber Orchestra and performed without a conductor.  

The group 2 finalists will also be performing conductorless with the Anima Musicae Chamber Orchestra, on 13 July. The finalists are: Tao-Yuan Hsiao (Taiwan), Sofiia Plakhtsinska (Ukraine), Maksym Synytskyi (Ukraine), Leonhard Baumgartner (Austria) and Salvatore Di Lorenzo (Italy). They will play complete concertos from a specific list including works by Haydn and Mozart. 

The contestants are competiting for a total prize fund of €10,000. 

The president of the jury is violinist Shlomo Mintz. He is joined on the jury by Alissa Margulis, Andreas Vierziger, Dmitry Sitkovetsky, Dora Schwarzberg, András Keller, Magdalena Ursu György Pauk, Peter Herresthal, Qian Zhou and competition co-founder Barnabás Kelemen.

Stay tuned for the results on Monday!

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