Hanover's Joseph Joachim Violin Competition Announces 2024 Participants

Taking place in Hanover in September 2024, the competition offers €30,000 to its winner alongside a host of other prizes

The twelfth edition of the Joseph Joachim Violin Competition will take place in Hanover, Germany between September 16 and 28, 2024. The competition is run by the Stiftung Niedersachsen and takes place every three years.

Open to violinists born between September 29, 1991, and September 16, 2008, the competition has released the list of participants:

• Leonhard Baumgartner, 17, Austria, Austria
• Angela Chan, 27, Hong Kong, USA
• Jacques Forestier, 19, Canada, Canada
• Nicholas Hammel, 23, USA, USA
• Yeyeong Jenny Jin, 20, South Korea, USA
• Gáspár Kelemen, 16, Hungary, Hungary
• Gaeun Kim, 16, South Korea, South Korea
• Alexander Won-Ho Kim, 31, South Korea, Germany
• Hyein Koo, 23, South Korea, USA
• Maria Lundina, 23, Russia, Russia
• Jason Moon, 24, USA, USA
• Yukari Ohno, 29, Japan, Austria
• Eunjoong Park, 23, South Korea, South Korea
• Kyumin Park, 27, South Korea, Germany
• Tami Pohjola, 27, Finland, Finland
• Jake Dongyoung Shim, 22, South Korea, South Korea
• Louisa Staples, 24, Great Britain, Germany
• Hannah Tam, 18, Hong Kong, USA
• Rina Tanaka, 21, Japan, Japan
• Saki Tozawa, 23, Japan, Germany
• Alexandra Weissbecker, 22, Germany, Germany
• Claire Wells, 23, USA, Germany
• Xunyue Zhang, 20, China, Germany
• Meng Zou, 21, China, Singapur

A significant amount of prize money is available: the winner will receive €30,000, while each finalist will receive €10,000. There are several other prizes, including several concert engagements, the 3-year loan of a violin by Giovanni Battista Guadagnini from the Fritz Behrens Foundation, and a 2,000 Euro Audience Award.

Additionally, the Warner Classics label will select one person from all participants whose debut album it will communicate and market internationally, while G. Henle Verlag will award a music voucher worth 2,000 Euro to the finalists.

For the pre-selection stage, applicants will need to prepare the third and fourth movements of Bartók's Sonata for solo violin, Sz 117 (to be played from memory), as well as a complete work for violin and piano by Franz Schubert (played from the score).

For the pre-selection, five jurors have been recruited who share a long-standing connection to Hanover and the partner orchestra, the NDR Radiophilharmonie: Oliver Kipp, Anna Lewis, Kathrin Rabus, Reynard Rott, and Friederike Starkloff.

A complete list of repertoire required for the competition can be found here. It includes a newly commissioned work by composer Enno Poppe.

The finalists will perform with the NDR Radiophilharmonie under the direction of Stephan Zilias, while the semi-final round will include performances with the Munich Chamber Orchestra and the Kuss Quartet.

At the 2024 edition, the competition's jury will comprise Juliane Banse (chair), as well as violinists Ana Chumachenco, Lorenza Borrani, Ning Feng, Liza Ferschtman, Gerhard Schuld, violist Kim Kashkashian, pianist Robert Levin, and conductor Stephan Zilias. At the 2021 edition, rules around the jury were updated, and now it is standard practice to include a number of musicians who are not violinists.