Australians audition for International Piano eCompetition
The Piano e-Competition is an annual event conducted by the University of Minnesota’s School of Music in partnership with Yamaha.
This is an international classical piano competition open to performers up to the age of 35.
Of the 56 world finalists, 3 were selected from Australia.
These gifted performers were Kevin Chow 21 and Hannah Shin 18, studying at Melbourne Conservatorium of Music, and Alex Yau from the Sydney Conservatorium. They presented around a 20 minute repertoire of contrasting styles, including Beethoven, Chopin, Debussy, Liszt and Rachmaninoff. Quite the virtuosos!
The auditions were held on February 15th 2018 at the new Yamaha Premium Piano Centre on a Yamaha DCFX Concert Grand Piano.
What made these auditions unique is that they were recorded live utilising Yamaha’s proprietary Disklavier technology. Through this amazing technology, the competitor's recorded performances and captured video are able to be synced together.
This enables the performances to be replicated on any Disklavier, note for note, pedal for pedal, with every phrase and nuance captured exactly as the original performance.
The Virtual Auditions made at the Disklavier/Video Recording will be recreated in Davis Concert Hall, University of Alaska Fairbanks. Contestants do not need to travel to Alaska for this portion of the competition! In May, if successful, 3 finalists will be invited to perform with orchestra for a first prize of $30,000.
We wish our Aussie performers all the best in this competitive world arena.