Russian violinist Andrey Baranov has won first prize at the Queen Elisabeth Competition in Brussels. The 26-year-old received €25,000 and the loan of the Nippon Music Foundation's 1708 'Huggins' Stradivari for three years. The second prize went to 20-year-old Tatsuki Narita from Japan. Hyun Su Shin, 24, from South Korea, took third prize. The fourth, fifth and sixth prizes were awarded respectively to Esther Yoo, 17, from the US, Yu-Chien Tseng, also 17, from Taiwan, and Artiom Shishkov, 28, from Belarus.

Baranov studied at the Rimsky-Korsakov Conservatoire under Vladimir Ovcharek and Pavel Popov, before going on to study at the Lausanne Conservatoire under Pierre Amoyal, whose assistant he became in 2009. Baranov's programme in the final round featured Prokofiev's Violin Sonata no.2, the compulsory work – Kenji Sakai's Violin Concerto – and Shostakovich's Violin Concerto no.1.

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