Yamaha Education News

Yamaha-Chetham's Piano Competition applauds young talent

Photo: Winners of the upper school award with the judges. L-R: Murray McLachlan, Ghiyas Ali, Emmanuel Charlabalopoulos (highly commended), Susanna Foster (winner) and Bryce Morrison

Yamaha was pleased to support the first Chetham's Piano Competition, which took place at Chetham's School of Music, manchester, and gave players the chance to perform on Yamaha's flagship hand-crafted concert grand piano, the CFIIIS - the instrument of choice of many top international pianists and competition entrants. The idea was to give pupils of all ages within Chetham's the opportunity to play on an instrument used on the world competition stage and to perform in front of a panel of judges with some prize money in the offering. The judging panel consisted of Bryce Morrison, a distinguished pianist, teacher and writer/critic for some of the leading piano publications, alongside Bill C Martin (Yamaha's education liaison manager) and Ghiyas Ali (piano regional sales manager).

The idea of the competition was to create a relaxed environment where some of the UK's most promising young pianists could benefit from the competition experience and receive some valuable feedback on their playing, to help them take it to the next level.

The competition lasted for most of the day and was divided into three age categories: lower, middle and upper school. A total of 27 pianists were heard, each performing a 10-15 minute programme of their own choices of repertoire. An amazing display of talent was on show, including some incredibly commanding and sensitive performances with extremely virtuosic brilliance from the pianists, some as young as eight years old!

This was a real insight into the quality of teaching at Chetham's and the enormous amount of work each pupil puts in to achieve the high standard of playing heard on the day. Central to the organisation of the competition was Chetham's head of keyboard, Murray McLachlan, who announced the winners from each category at the end of the day and presented them with a cheque for the prize money.

The winners were:
Upper School:
Winner: Susanna Foster (£100); Highly commended: Emmanuel Charalabopoulos (£20)

Middle School:
Winner: Cason Kang (£80); Highly commended: Mathis Picard (£20)

Lower School:
Winner: Yuan Fan Yang (£60); Highly commended; Jackie Campbell (£20)

The competition was a great success and the piano was highly praised throughout the day, with everyone remarking how well it came across.

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(posted 23/6/09)