Winners of Hastings International Piano Concerto Competition announced

The 17^th edition of the Hastings International Piano Concerto Competition concluded earlier this month, with Curtis Phill Hsu crowned as winner of the Sophia Guo First Prize. Hsu’s performance of Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in B flat minor Op.23 won him a cash prize of £15,000 plus The Hastings Fellowship, an artist development and professional coaching package supported by Arts Council England that gives opportunities to start and sustain professional careers in the creative industries. As top prize winner he will also perform in concerts in Hastings and London with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.

Hsu was also awarded the competition’s £2,500 Sussex Prize for the best performance in the semi-finals, and jointly with second prize winner Harmony Zhu, took home the Festival d’Auvers-sur-Oise Prize, which offers an engagement at the French festival’s 2025 edition.

This year’s competition welcomed around 40 young concert pianists aged between 16 and 30 to the White Rock Theatre in Hastings to take part in qualifying rounds before a jury chaired by jury president and competition artistic director Professor Vanessa Latarche which included pianist an professor Eleanor Wong, former BBC Symphony Orchestra & Chorus and BBC Singers director Paul Hughes and pianists Fran Cruz Plaza, Piotr Paleczny, Pascal Escande and Norman Krieger.

Following preliminary rounds, 10 semi-finalists performed with the Southbank Sinfonia, 5 of whom were chose to compete in the final round alongside the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra (RPO) conducted by Rory MacDonald. The RPO chose Harmony Zhu as their orchestral prize winner, while the £3,000 third prize went to Chengyao Zhou, who also took home the Hastings Prize for the best performance of the competition’s mandatory piece; a new commission by Lera Auerbach. The fourth prize of £1,500 was given to Derek Wang and the £1,000 fifth prize went to Hyelim Kim.