Violinist.com: Applications Open for Shanghai Isaac Stern International Violin Competition 2018, with $100,000 top prize
Violinist.com
By Laurie Niles
The Shanghai Isaac Stern International Violin Competition is accepting applications for its second-ever competition, which will take place in late summer 2018 in Shanghai, offering considerable prizes including top prize of $100,000.
This year the competition lowered its eligibility age from 18 to 16, with a top age of 32. Applications are due Jan. 31, 2018. Click here for the application. The competition will take place Aug. 8– Sept. 1, 2018.
Mayu Kishima, first prize winner in the Shanghai Isaac Stern International Violin Competition 2016
Repertoire requirements will focus on the musical over the virtuosic, including string quartet music; sonatas and Kreisler’s works; and a Mozart concerto with originally improvised cadenza. Participants also will be required to learn a newly-written violin concerto, La Joie de la Souffrance by Chinese composer Qigang Chen. The concerto will be premiered Oct. 29 by violinist Maxim Vengerov at the closing gala concert of the 20th Beijing Music Festival, with the China Philharmonic conducted by Long Yu. Based on a Chinese melody dating from the Tang Dynasty, the concerto was co-commissioned by the Beijing Music Festival, Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse and New Jersey Symphony Orchestra.
The jury for the SISIVC 2018 will be co-chaired by conductor David Stern, son of Isaac Stern, and Vera Tsu Weiling, who is professor of violin at both Shanghai and Beijing Conservatories. Other members of the jury will include Lina Yu; Siqing Lu; Maxim Vengerov; Augustin Dumay; Zakhar Bron; Dora Schwarzberg; Daniel Heifetz; Weigang Li; Philip Setzer; Glenn Dicterow and Sreten Krstic; Martin Campbell-White and Emmanuel Hondré. Contestants will be required to clarify if there is any immediate family or pupil relationship with any jury member upon arrival.
Winners in the 2016 competition included first prize winner Mayu Kishima of Japan, with Sergei Dogadin of Russia coming in second and Serena Huang of the United States third.