Russians win in the Horowitz Competition

A few steps away from the Kyiv fan-zone (with its noisy entertainment and thousands of buffs), the philharmonic society showed an entirely different world. Over the past two weeks it has held the auditions of the participants of the Ninth International Competition for Young Pianists in Memory of Vladimir Horowitz in intermediate and senior groups and the results have been announced.

Twelve laureates of this year’s Horowitz Competition include six Russians, four Ukrainians, a Chinese, and a Georgian. The winners of the intermediate and senior groups are Russians, 16-year-old Aleksandr Kutuzov and 24-year-old Aleksandr Sinchuk.

Apart from the participants from Ukraine, Russia, and China, who were the most numerous in the contest (respectively, 22, 18, and 14 persons) young pianists also came to Kyiv from Latvia, Lithuania, Azerbaijan, Georgia, South Korea, France, Italy, the US, Belarus, Japan, and Canada.

As for the winner in the intermediate group, there seemed to be no doubts from the very beginning. After the Chopin Moscow State Music College student Aleksandr Kutuzov’s performance in the first round, when he played Bach, Beethoven, Chopin and A Morning in Forest by our compatriot Ihor Shamo, the audience after stormy ovations started whispering, “he is the winner!” And they proved to be right, after all. Rumors might spread in the milieu of the connoisseurs of classic music with the same dynamics as in more prosaic circles, for there was not an inch of room at Kutuzov’s auditions of the 2nd and 3rd rounds.

“I cannot go for milk and bread myself – my young assistants do this for me, but I practically rush to the Horowitz Competitions,” an elderly dame sitting next to me says self-ironically, “Today I have come specially to listen to Kutuzov. This is the power of art that demands sacrifice.”