Mihály Berecz Wins the Kissingen Piano Olympics

MTI-Hungary Today 2023.10.11.

Mihály Berecz playing the piano

26-year-old Mihály Berecz has won first place at the 2023 Kissingen Piano Olympics (Kissinger Klavier Olymp). The members of the jury, who were impressed by Mihály Berecz’s technical knowledge, wit, and structured and conscious interpretations, highlighted the young artist’s high degree of musicality and sense of style.

Young musicians from five different countries qualified for the finals of the competition. The runner-up was France’s Mirabelle Kajenjeri, while the third place winner and the audience prize winner was Japan’s Miyu Shindo.

Fact

The Kissingen Piano Olympics delineates the core goals as follows: With the Kissingen Piano Olympics, the festival season traditionally gets an autumnal encore the first weekend in October. The competition was launched in 2003, and will be held for the 21st time in 2023. The aim of the given competition is to discover the next generation of pianists. Every year, six highly talented young pianists aged 27 or younger are invited to Bad Kissingen to perform a solo recital of their own choice in the magnificent Rossini Hall – named after the Italian composer who had taken a cure there in 1856 – and a joint final concert in the Max Littmann Hall, one of the best concert halls in the world. The participants have all already won competitions at home and abroad and are at the beginning of a promising career.

The final concert was recorded by Radio Bavaria and will be broadcasted by BR-Klassik in the afternoon of October 21 and Deutschlandfunk Kultur in the evening of October 27.

Among other prizes, the winners of the competition will be invited to perform at next year’s Kissingen Summer Classical Music Festival. Founded in 1986, the event, held in Bad Kissingen, Germany, has previously featured premieres of works by composers such as Poland’s Kristof Penderecki and France’s Jean Francaix, and performances by artists such as Soviet pianist Sviatoslav Richter, Italian opera singer Cecilia Bartoli, and Chinese pianist Lang Lang.

Photo: Mihály Berecz/ Facebook

Born in Budapest in 1997, Mihály Berecz studied music from the age of seven. Zoltán Kocsis, Tamás Vásáry, and the American pianist Malcolm Bilson were among those who took notice of his piano playing and individual voice at an early age.

In 2017, he was awarded first prize at the Debut Berlin and the second Manhattan Music Competition; in 2018, he won the Harriet Cohen Bach Prize at the Royal Academy of Music in London. In 2021, he was awarded the Liszt-Bartók Special Prize at the Géza Anda Competition in Zurich, and in the same year he was awarded the Junior Prima Prize. Together with violinist Eriko Nagayama, he was awarded the Aoyama Music Foundation’s Baroque Saar Prize in Japan in 2023.

He completed part of his studies at the Royal Academy of Music in London with distinction. He is currently a student at the Hochschule für Musik Hanns Eisler Berlin, where he holds a Master’s degree in piano. Since January of last year, he has been a teacher in the Department of Chamber Music of the Liszt Ferenc Academy of Music.

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Via: MTI, kissingersommer.de; Featured photo: Mihály Berecz/ Facebook