German-based young Turkish classical pianist Elif Şahin and her counterpart won the top prize at this year’s Hugo Wolf International Competition for Lied in Germany, news agencies reported this week.
The duo made up of Şahin and soprano Annelie Sophie Müller came in first among the 12 finalists in the 2010 competition’s finals, held from Sept. 14 to 19 at the State College of Music and Performing Arts in Stuttgart.
Şahin and Müller, who are both studying at the Stuttgart State College of Music, were selected for the finals from among 114 entrants in this year’s competition, whose jury was chaired by famous German mezzo-soprano Brigitte Fassbaender, the Anatolia news agency reported.
Austrian soprano Birgid Steinberger, Dutch bass-baritone Robert Holl, Swiss baritone Kurt Widmer and pianists Wolfram Rieger from Germany and Graham Johnson from Britain were the other members of the judging panel.
The Şahin-Muller pair won a cash prize of 20,000 euros and was invited to give a concert at the Stuttgart-based International Hugo Wolf Academy, which is organizing the competition.
Held every three years, the Hugo Wolf International Competition for the Art of Lied is dedicated to a different composer in each edition. This year’s competition was dedicated to Robert Schumann, Hugo Wolf and Gustav Mahler, all of whom have an anniversary in 2010.
The competition is aimed at “discovering and promoting young Lied artists — singers and pianists — as well as arousing the interest of a new audience into Lied as an art form,” as the organizers put it on the academy’s website, www.hugo-wolf-akademie.de.
, 24 September 2010