Yunchan Lim wins Van Cliburn International Piano Competition
Florence Lockheart
Monday, June 20, 2022
The 18-year-old South Korean pianist is the youngest winner of the gold medal in the competition's 60-year history
The winners of the Sixteenth Van Cliburn International Piano Competition were announced on Saturday night at Fort Worth’s Bass Performance Hall in Texas USA. The competition’s gold medal was awarded to 18-year-old South Korean pianist Yunchan Lim.
Lim receives a cash prize of $100,000 and promotional package as well as three years of career management, international concert tours with performance attire provided by Neiman Marcus and a Steinway Recording Prize Studio Album. He also won the Award for the Best Performance of a New Work ($5,000).
Jury chair Marin Alsop said: ‘All finalists showed exceptional musicality and artistry, yet Yunchan stood out among them. Throughout these last three weeks, but particularly his spectacular performance of Rachmaninov's third piano concerto showed that even at the age of 18 he already exhibits exceptional depth and dazzling technique.’
The silver medal ($50,000) was awarded to Russian competitor Anna Geniushene and the bronze medal went to Ukrainian pianist Dmytro Choni. The remaining three finalists, Uladzislau Khandohi, Ilya Shmukler and Clayton Stephenson, will receive cash awards of $10,000 each.
To show the competition’s solidarity with the Ukrainian people, the Ukrainian National Anthem was performed in the Awards Ceremony by Kyiv-born 2013 Cliburn gold medallist Vadym Kholodenko.
This year’s webcast broke the competition’s streaming records with an online audience of over 9 million. Viewers of the competition on medici.tv also voted to award Lim the Carla and Kelly Thompson Audience Award ($2,500).
A native of Siheung, Lim currently studies at the Korea National University of Arts. His career took off when he won second prize at the Cleveland International Piano Competition for Young Artists in 2018 at age 14. He also won the third prize and the audience prize, at the Cooper International Competition in the same year. He was also the youngest to win Korea’s IsangYun International Competition at age 15.
The sixteenth edition of the Cliburn Competition took place June 2–18, 2022. Having been postponed from 2021 (a first in the Cliburn’s 60-year history), the competition saw a record-breaking number of applications, with 30 chosen to compete.
You can find out more about the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition here.
