From May 28-31, Cambridge will host the 13^th Boston International Piano Competition at the Longy School of Music, 27 Garden Street. From morning until evening, 42 extraordinary pianists — 21 men and 21 women from all over the world—will compete.  The pianists will be playing on the newly redesigned Bösendorfer 280VC (Vienna Concert) grand piano, the flagship of the series, provided by Falcetti Pianos, who recently opened a beautiful new showroom and recital hall in Newton Lower Falls. Only a limited number of the extraordinary 280VC have made their way to the United States, and the competition is fortunate to have one available next week. Bösendorfer pianos are famous for a darker, warmer, more “singing” sound. The re-engineered 280VC features a two-part molded Austrian maple rim structure designed to provide superior stability, greater sustain, projection and tonal depth.

The competition will start at the same time as Harvard Commencements this year, at 9 a.m. on Thursday morning, May 28. Local concert pianists Roberto Poli and Sergey Schepkin will kick off Thursday and Friday morning with masterclasses, sharing their pianistic expertise with the contestants. These masterclasses are free and open to the public, and the repertoire is listed on the website. 

The competition begins at 12:15 on Thursday on the stage of the iconic Pickman Hall, adjudicated by a 5-member jury panel of well-known local pianists: Michael Lewin, Jonathan Bass, Yukiko Sekino, Hugh Hinton and Isabella Li. On the menu for the audience are the giants of the pianistic repertoire: Chopin, Beethoven, Ravel, Mozart, Bach, Brahms, Scarlatti, Debussy, Haydn and Liszt, alongside composers who are not household names: Kapustin, Glass, Granados among others. Falcetti Pianos sponsors the 1st prize winner, who besides the prize money also has the opportunity to play in a future solo recital in Boston. All winners receive cash prizes, and prizes are also given for the best baroque, classical, romantic and modern performances, as well as for an audience award. The competition is split into Silver and Gold Stream (30- versus 60-minute repertoire). What is unique and exciting this year is the high number of women who chose the Gold Stream, which has traditionally been dominated by the men. Eleven out of the 27 Gold Stream contestants this year are women. Good luck, ladies!

By Friday evening the list of 42 will be winnowed to 21 and by Sunday to just five competitors, each of whom will play a 30-minute final round. For a detailed schedule click HERE.

This is the largest piano competition in Boston, and it has been held every other year since 2001. The 2024 winner, Jeff Li, a California resident, will play a solo recital of Chopin, Bach, alongside several other composers, on Sunday at noon in Pickman Hall. Past winners hailed from Japan (2019), Ireland and Jakarta (tie in 2017) France (2015), Germany (2013) and Spain (2011). This year competitors represent Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, with the majority coming from the U.S. In previous years contestants came from Hong Kong, Indonesia, Latvia, Russia, Brazil, Venezuela and Cuba. Many of this year ’s participants were born outside the U.S., including Singapore, China, Japan and Belize.

A Piano Festival will run concurrently on Saturday morning starting at 9:30 a.m. The competition is hosted by the Boston Piano Amateurs Association, and its founder, Robert Finley, will play in the Festival, alongside ten other pianists. Finley is one of several first-prize competition winners participating in the Festival, and he has been a soloist with a number of orchestras, including the Boston Civic Symphony, as well as the Ft. Worth and Brockton Symphony Orchestras. Richard Einhorn won the Boston Piano Competition in 2003 and played the Schumann Piano Concerto with the Newton Symphony, and Robert Berkowitz won the San Diego Piano Competition in 2016 and played the Mendelssohn Piano Concerto in A minor with the California Chamber Orchestra.

Contestants of the Boston International Piano Competition need to have amateurs status and be over the age of 30. Seven of the contestants list their day jobs as physicians, with another four involved in health care related careers. Two work in healing or protecting the environment. Twelve work in I.T., and another five in engineering. Three are teachers. Contestants work in such diverse fields as artificial intelligence and self-driving cars. There is also a writer and a waiter.

Their shared passion for music fuels the endless hours devoted each week to perfecting their competition repertoire. Therefore high on the priority list is the availability of practice rooms during the competition, and all six designated practice rooms at Longy feature grand pianos. Most of the competitors started playing piano at the tender age of four, five or six, and some have studied with such famous teachers like the recently deceased Seymour Bernstein, Ya-Fei Chuang, and Malcolm Bilson. Many of the contestants have won prizes at other piano competitions, and have performed in recital halls all over the world. Besides solo piano, many of the participants also play chamber music. The world of amateur piano competitors is cohesive, and many of the contestants have participated in the Boston Competition or in other competitions in some prior years, such as Paris, Warsaw, San Diego, St. Petersburg/Russia, and at the prestigious Van Cliburn Competition in Texas, which inspired a movie entitled “They Came to Play.” [HERE]

For their preliminary rounds, competitors overwhelmingly chose Chopin and Bach, followed by Beethoven, Ravel, Debussy and Prokofiev, Liszt, Scarlatti, Brahms, Haydn and many others, including a number of obscure composers. Competitors ’ repertoires and biographies are posted on the competition website via a link to the program book, alongside the links for the daily competition and festival livestreams. [HERE].

Sunday morning starts with the piano marathon, where contestants who did not advance get a final chance to take the stage and play, with feedback from esteemed teacher Tim McFarland. Following the winner ’s recital at noon, contestants have a chance to attend a feedback session with the jurors, and the final competition round commences at 2:45 p.m. The awards ceremony will take place sometime after 6 PM. Besides Falcetti Pianos, who have been the lead sponsor for the competition since 2022, current and past sponsors include M.Steinert & Sons, the Foundation for Performing Chinese Arts, the BSO, Longy School of Music and NEPTA (New England Piano Teachers Association).

Pickman Hall is just blocks from Harvard University in Cambridge. It is an intimate performance space with seating capacity for 260 people. Its superb acoustics made it also home to Celebrity Series events, where many world-famous pianists have performed, including most recently Daniil Trifonov, Beatrice Rana, Martin Helmchen, Conrad Tao, Mao Fujita and Alexander Malofeen. The competition organizers are grateful to the Longy staff. Past Longy faculty include Nadia Boulanger, Victor Rosenbaum and Peter Serkin.

Sibylle Barrasso is a long time piano student of Robert Poli. She has played in piano competitions in Pickman Hall and Chicago, is on the board of directors of the Boston Piano Amateurs Association and has played for audiences in the Boston Symphony Cafe since 2010.