PARTICIPANTS of the CLEVELAND INTERNATIONAL PIANO COMPETITION 2013 NAMED

31 Pianists have been named to participate in the Cleveland International Piano Competition 2013 that takes place from 30 July to 11 August 2013.This competition, formerly known as the Robert Casadesus Piano Competition, takes place every two years, sometimes coinciding with the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition as in this summer. 

The pianists and their nationalities are as follows:

Zherard Aymonche (Russia)

Beatrice Berrut (Switzerland)

Shih-Wei Chen (Taiwan)

Alessandro Deljavan (Italy)

Fei-Fei Dong (China)

Francois Dumont (France)

Miao Huang (Germany)

Ruoyu Huang (China)

Oskar Jezior (Poland)

Wenbin Jin (China)

Stanislav Khristenko (Russia)

Ben Kim (USA)

Jin Uk Kim (South Korea)

Julia Kociuban (Poland)

Nino Kotrikadze (Georgia)

Henry Kramer (USA)

Quang Hong Luu (Vietnam)

Maria Mazo (Russia)

Andrejs Osokins (Latvia)

Oleksandr Poliykov (Ukraine)

Ben Shoeman (South Africa)

Konstantin Shamray (Russia)

Meng Sheng Shen (Taiwan)

Cahill Smith (USA)

Jiayan Sun (China)

Arseny Tarasevich-Nikolaev (Russia)

Annika Treutler (Germany)

Qi Xu (China)

Gehui Xu (China)

Pavel Yeletsky (Belarus)

Kwan Yi (USA)

There are 5 pianists who will be playing in both the Van Cliburn and Cleveland piano competitions this year. They are Alessandro Deljavan, Fei-Fei Dong, Francois Dumont, Ruoyu Huang and Oleksandr Poliykov. For the record, no pianist has ever won the 1st prize in both competitions, although several have come quite close. They include:

Philippe Bianconi:  1st (CIPC 1981), 2nd (VC, 1985)

Benedetto Lupo: 2nd (CIPC 1985), 3rd (VC, 1989)

Antonio Pompa-Baldi: 1st (CIPC 1999, Silver (VC, 2001)

Roberto Plano: 1st (CIPC, 2001), Finalist (VC, 2005) and

Chu-Fang Huang: 1st (CIPC, 2005), Finalist (VC, 2005)

Laureates of Cleveland & Van Cliburn
(From L): Bianconi, Lupo, Pompa-Baldi, Plano & Huang.
There is a strong Italian connection in both competitions.
Could this be Alessandro Deljavan's year?  

The distribution of the nationalities of the pianists shows a preponderance of Russian and ex-Soviet bloc nations (11 pianists, including 2 from Poland) and China (8 pianists, including 2 from Taiwan). There are only 3 American pianists, as opposed to 8 in the Van Cliburn. Strangely, there are no Japanese pianists among this lot. True to form, United Kingdom has no representative whatsoever. One pianist, Stanislav Khristenko, had placed 3rd in the 2005 competition. Will he be rewarded this time around? 

There are four rounds of performances, including a piano concerto finale for four pianists with The Cleveland Orchestra. The top prize is USD 50,000, a figure that has only been matched by the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition this year.