The grant is intended to provide an award to the Ukrainian musician who will receive the highest award in the final of the competition.
Currently, three Ukrainians are competing in the semifinals of the Horowitz Competition. Today it will become clear which of them will compete in the final for the first, second and third prizes of the competition, which amount to $20,000, $10,000 and $5,000 thousand, respectively. The final audition will take place tomorrow, at 7 pm, at the National Philharmonic of Ukraine, accompanied by the Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Vitaliy Protasov.
Among the six participants, the finalists will be selected by a distinguished jury of prominent teachers and chamber musicians from the US, the UK, France, Italy, Poland, and Ukraine. Dmytro Choni, who is 23, Oleksandr Leonov, 20, and Stanislav Guminiuk, 25, are competing for the final round of the competition. Their rivals are from China, South Korea, and Belarus.
This year, 31 contestants from 13 countries expressed their desire to take part in the International Competition for Young Pianists in Memory of Volodymyr Horowitz – Ukraine, Belarus, Georgia, Russia, France, Turkey, Israel, Austria, Norway, China, South Korea, Mexico, and Japan.
The International Competition for Young Pianists in Memory of Volodymyr Horowitz, founded in 1995, is the only competition in Ukraine that has been a member of the European Union of Music Competitions for Youth (EMCY) and the World Federation of International Music Competitions (WFIMC) since 2004, which are equal in their status to such organizations as the International Olympic Committee, FIFA, UNESCO or WHO.
Over the years, 1,270 young musicians from 35 countries have taken part in the competitions. Some of the latest achievements of the competition winners are the victories of our countrymen: Vadym Kholodenko at the XIV Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, USA (for the first time in the history of the competition, a Ukrainian won the first place and received a Gold Medal), and Antoniy Baryshevskyi at the XIV Arthur Rubinstein International Piano Master Competition, Israel (first prize, Gold Medal) and Roman Lopatynskyi at the 60th Ferruccio Busoni International Piano Competition, Italy – 2015 (the third prize, Bronze Medal and Audience Award).