Stéphanie Huang received audience award from Klara and Canvas | Queen Elisabeth Competition Cello 2022

Outcome Queen Elisabeth Cello Competition 2022

On Saturday the 4th of June 2022, the annual Queen Elisabeth Competition came to an end. Besides violin, piano and voice, the first edition for cello took place in 2017. And now, after the corona period, we had another competition in full force, with an audience and a field of fantastic participants. 152 musicians (between 18 and 31 years old) applied, of whom 68 were selected for the first round: 20 women and 48 men of 26 different nationalities, including four Dutch, seven French, nine Germans, ten Koreans and twelve Americans. Also four Russians and one Ukrainian. 

And 1 Belgian candidate, Stéphanie Huang who has a link with the Koninklijk Conservatorium Brussel. She obtained her Bachelor's degree in the class of Jeroen Reuling and Olsi Leka. After that she continued her studies at the Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel, also under the direction of Jeroen Reuling. 
Stéphanie Huang, however, ended up among the non-ranked laureates. But her performance of Jörg Widmann's imposed work and Antonín Dvořák's cello concerto in b minor, opus 104, charmed the Belgian public and she was awarded the audience prize by the listeners of Klara and the viewers of Canvas.

Connection between the Queen Elisabeth Competition and KCB

It had been a long time since the Koninklijk Conservatorium Brussel had been represented in the competition. The last musicians to hold the honour were Liebrecht Vanbeckevoort, piano, who became laureate in 2007, and Yossif Ivanov, violin in 2005. Today Yossif Ivanov is also a violin professor at the KCB.

But there has also always been a link between the Brussels conservatoires and the Queen Elisabeth Competition. Until 2011, the concert hall of the Brussels Conservatoires was the competition's base for organising the selections and semi-finals. Because the hall was no longer adequate, especially for the video recordings, it was decided to move to Flagey.

Queen Elisabeth Cello Competition 2022 won by Hayoung Choi

The Six of 2022 was undoubtedly a nice added value in order to give young musicians a chance to take part in the entire competition. Representatives of the KCB were Jacob Van Durme, student in Jeroen Reuling's course, and Gave Jehaes, student in Olsi Leka's course. 

And last but not least, we saw daily in various reports how our ex-colleague Luc Mathay had to steer the ins and outs of the Muziekkapel Koningin Elisabeth in the right direction. As a support and advisor, he ensured that the candidates had an efficient and pleasant stay.

It is worth mentioning that the Queen Elisabeth Competition was won by the South Korean Hayoung Choi. The second prize went to the Chinese Yibai Chen; the third prize to the Estonian Marcel Johannes Kits; the fourth prize to the Ukrainian Oleksiy Shadrin; the fifth prize to the Serbian Petar Pejčić and finally the sixth prize to the Canadian Bryan Cheng.