International Telekom Beethoven Competition begins

The International Telekom Beethoven Competition Bonn 2021 started on Thursday (2 December), with a Welcome Concert at Deutsche Telekom's headquarters in Beethoven’s birthplace: the German city of Bonn.

Hosted by Kornelia Bittmann, the Welcome Concert introduced this year’s 18 participants from a total of 11 nations and featured performances by Cunmo Yin, the first prize winner of the last edition of the competition in 2019.

Participants were preselected by Professor Pavel Gililov, the competition’s artistic director, as well as Jingge Yan, lecturer at the Mozarteum Salzburg and former first prize winner at the competition and Jinsang Lee, member of the Beethoven Trio Bonn and professor at Seoul’s Korea National University of Arts.

Held every two years since 2005, the competition focuses on the piano music of Ludwig van Beethoven. In the competition’s four rounds, young pianists will perform for an international jury chaired by Jury President, pianist and Professor Pavel Gililov. You can find a full list of the 2021 jurors here.

In-person attendance for the first three rounds of the competition is free. The competition will also be livestreamed worldwide on the competition’s website. The online audience can vote for their favourites during the first two rounds with the online voting result be included in the jury’s considerations as an independent vote.

This online audience will also determine the winner of the Deutsche Telekom StreamOn Beethoven Award in the semi-final. As well as receiving €1,000, the prize-winner will attend a piano recital at Deutsche Telekom AG's representative office in the German capital.

The winner of the Beethoven-Haus-Prize will be chosen by the semi-final’s in-person audience. The winner will receive €1,000 and a bronze bust of Beethoven by Naoum Aronson, as well as an invitation to a piano recital in the chamber music hall of the Beethoven-Haus Bonn.

In Friday’s Chamber Music Final (10 December) the three finalists will perform one of Beethoven's piano trios with members of the Beethoven Trio Bonn, and in the Orchestra Final on Saturday (11 December), the finalists will perform a Beethoven piano concerto with the Beethoven Orchestra Bonn under Hans Graf.

More information about this week’s competition can be found at the International Telekom Beethoven Competition website.