MADELINE ROYCROFT
It’s National Youth Week in Australia, which means we’re joining in to celebrate people aged 12-25. In the classical music world, ‘young’ usually means ‘under 40’, so we’re taking this fleeting opportunity to celebrate musicians who are actually really young (by definition of the Australian government, that is).
Now, we’re all aware of the fabulous young talent brimming in our Australian cities, so this list is honing in on superstars across the globe who fall into the category of ‘not quite child prodigy, not quite seasoned professional’.
8. Sheku Kanneh-Mason (United Kingdom)
Sixteen-year-old cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason is a finalist in BBC Four’s Young Musician 2016, a competition in which his older sister Isata also took place in 2014. Alongside his brother Braimah, Sheku has performed with the Chineke! BME Orchestra and also plays with his siblings in the ever-so-imaginatively titled Kanneh-Mason Piano Trio. Sheku won the Nottingham Young Musician of the Year Competition when he was just 12 years old, and currently holds a Junior Scholarship to the Royal Academy of Music. Did we mention he’s still in high school?
7. Valeria Curti (Switzerland)
Representing the under-represented double reed family, Valeria Curti is a 20-year-old bassoonist from Switzerland. Valeria rose to prominence in 2013 when she won the Young Artist’s Award at the Muri International Competition for Oboe and Bassoon, and has since gone on to take out first prize at the International Double Reed Society’s most recent Young Artist Competition in Tokyo.
6. Josh Rogan (Australia)
Okay, this was supposed to be international but it’d be rude not to include a little slice of home here. Who better to represent the ‘land down under’ than Josh Rogan, 25-year-old trumpeter extraordinaire from Melbourne? Josh has worked casually with the symphony orchestras of Melbourne, Adelaide and Tasmania, and completed a short contract with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra in 2015. Josh is currently making his international mark in the United States, studying on full scholarship at the Colburn School of Music in Los Angeles. Josh’s orchestral future looks bright; it’s still early in the year and he has already been invited to work with the LA Philharmonic (they are conducted by Dudamel, FYI).
5. Charlotte Barbour-Condini
London’s Charlotte Barbour-Condini was born in 1996 and in the past two decades has established herself as a leading young muso. In 2012 she became the first recorder player ever to reach the BBC Young Musician competition concerto finals. She entered the Junior Royal Academy of Music on a scholarship, and has played with groups from the London Chamber Orchestra to the Skipton Camerata. Charlotte has been recognised across numerous awards including the JRAM Woodwind Prize and Rickmansworth, Beckenham, East London and Godalming Young Musician awards. Oh, and she also plays piano sometimes.
4. Jun Hwi Cho (South Korea)
Born in 1996, South Korean pianist Jun Hwi Cho began his piano studies at the modest age of nine. A current student of the Juilliard School, his resume is laden with first prizes across eight different piano competitions, to be exact – the most notable being the 2014 New York International Piano Competition. The 19-year-old’s international concert career is off to a promising start, having already performed as a soloist with orchestras both in the U.S. and in South Korea.
3. Yu-Chien Tseng (Taiwan)
At only 21 years of age, Taiwanese violinist Yu-Chien ‘Benny’ Tseng already has a stellar resume of performances with the Philadelphia Orchestra, the National Orchestra of Belgium and the Symphony Orchestras of Navarre, Singapore and Taipei. In 2015, he won second prize at the esteemed International Tchaikovsky Competition – a feat which becomes even more impressive when you learn that no first prize was awarded that year (a quick lurk of the laureates’ history suggests that this is not uncommon). Even before the Tchaikovsky cred, Benny was an inveterate competition winner, strutting his stuff at the Pablo Sarasate International Violin Competition in 2009, the Premio Paganini International Violin Competition in 2010, and in the violin category of the Queen Elisabeth Competition in 2012.
2. Eivind Holtsmark Ringstad (Norway)
Born in 1994, Eivend Ringstad began playing the violin at age 5, moving to viola at 14. His career went international in 2012 after he won… wait for it… the Eurovision Young Musicians Competition (yaaas). He has since received some of Norway’s most prestigious music awards and performed with the Copenhagen Philharmonic and Bergen Philharmonic Orchestras, and as a soloist with the Oslo Philharmonic and the Norwegian Radio Orchestras. He has recently been awarded the 2016 Borletti-Buitoni Trust Fellowship (a grant of over £20,000), so the year ahead is looking pretty exciting for this young fellow.
1. Stephen Waarts (USA)
Twenty-year-old Stephen Waarts is already basking in worldwide fame after his success at the 2014 Menuhin Violin Competition, a contest that helped forge the careers of international artists such as Ray Chen and Julia Fischer. Before that, Stephen won first prizes at the 2013 Young Concert Artists International Auditions and the 2011 International Louis Spohr Competition for Young Violinists (the latter when he was only 15). He graduated from both high school and the Pre-College Division of the San Fran Conservatorium when he was only 14, and is currently studying at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. He has appeared as a soloist with orchestras in the U.S., Canada, Russia, Germany, Norway and Spain. However, my favourite fact about this guy is that he is also an accomplished mathematician, and has won numerous national mathematics contests in America. Bless!
Featured image Zhang via Flickr, CC2.0.
