This year's winners of the Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy Competition of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation have been announced
Press release from 01/14/2012
Students from Berlin and Freiburg have won this year's Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy Competition organised by the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation. The prizewinners' concert will take place on Sunday at the Konzerthaus am Gendarmenmarkt.
This year's Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy Prize for violin was won by Sarah Christian, a student at the Hanns Eisler School of Music in Berlin. She also received the "Chamber Music Prize of the Freunde Junger Musiker Deutschland e.V." The Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy Prize in the organ category was won by Sebastian Küchler-Blessing from the Freiburg University of Music. On the last two days of the competition, 14 participants in the violin category and 10 participants in the organ category competed to win this prize, which is awarded annually by the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation in cooperation with Germany's state music academies.
Iva Miletic from the Folkwang University of the Arts in Essen won the "Scholarship of the Federal President for the Promotion of Young Musicians", which is also awarded as part of the competition, in the violin category. In the organ category, this prize went to Nathan Laube from the State University of Music and the Arts in Stuttgart.
The prize in both subjects was awarded to violinist Christina Brabetz from the Detmold University of Music and organist Konstantin Esterl from the Berlin University of the Arts.
The prizewinners will perform works by Bach, Mendelssohn Bartholdy and Messiaen, among others, in tomorrow's final concert of the competition (15 January 2012, 8 pm) in the Great Hall of the Konzerthaus am Gendarmenmarkt. The prizes will be awarded during this concert.
The Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy Prize was established in 1878 as a scholarship "for the training of talented and ambitious musicians" and is the oldest competition for classical music in Germany. The occasion was the donation of the composer's autographs and archive by his heirs to the Royal Library, now the Berlin State Library. The Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation regards this obligation to the Mendelssohn Bartholdy family as "Prussian cultural heritage" and resumed the tradition of awarding the prize in 1963. The Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy Competition was organised for the last time in its current form. From next year, it will be merged with the university competition of the 23 recognised German music academies and will be held under the name "Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy University Competition of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation and the German Music Academies". The competition will have an artistic director and will be organised in four categories (two solo categories, ensemble and composition), in which first and second prizes will also be awarded. The Prize of the Friends of Young Musicians will be retained and will follow on from Competition Subject III (Ensemble).