Birmingham International Piano Competition winners announced

The final of the Birmingham International Piano Competition (BIPC) took place on Sunday (3 July), and the competition celebrated it’s first winners in it's new home Royal Birmingham Conservatoire after a two-year hiatus.

The competition’s first prize was won by Manchester-based Russian pianist Maxim Kinasov, with the second prize going to Gabrielė Sutkutė from Lithuania, Yuxuan Zhao from China taking the third prize and Irish-German pianist Clara Isabella Siegle coming in fourth.

The four pianists were chosen during last month’s second round, and each performed a forty-minute public recital. Kinasov’s programme of Bach, Brahms and Prokofiev impressed the jury which included pianists Martino Tirimo, Carole Presland and Philip Edward Fisher.

Born in Moscow, Maxim Kinasov studied at Moscow’s Tchaikovsky Conservatoire before moving to the UK to complete his Master of Music in Performance degree at the Royal Northern College of Music (RNCM), winning the RNCM Gold Medal in 2018.

His other accolades include Second Prize at the International Gian Battista Viotti Piano Competition and at the Delia Steinberg International Piano Competition, and Grand Prix at the 2014 International Chopin Roma Piano Competition and at the 2013 International Konstantin Igumnov Piano Competition for Young Pianists. He also won First Prize at the Cantù International Piano and Orchestra Competition.

As well as being selected as a Kirckman Concert Society Artist for 2019-20 he made his solo debut at Wigmore Hall in October 2019.

 BIPC was founded in 1979 by Miss Gladys Lily Brant to encourage young pianists to continue their studies and forge a career because Brant herself had been unable to pursue a promising career due to financial barriers. The event was rebranded as Birmingham International Piano Competition in 2017. Previous competition winners can be found here.

You can find out more about the Birmingham International Piano Competition here.