Prize Winners Announced at Germany's Ton & Erklärung Cello Competition

The Hanover-based Ton & Erklärung Cello Competition recently drew to a close, with 15 young cellists competing for the top prize. Those who made it to the final round got the opportunity to play with the NDR Radio Philharmonic and conductor Hossein Pishkar.

In addition to the prize money, young German cellist Lionel Martin will receive a number of concert engagements during the 2022/23 season, as well as the opportunity to give the premiere of a new work commissioned specially for him.

Martin was born in Tübingen in 2003 and is currently a student of Thomas Grossenbacher at the Zürich University of the Arts. He has performed as a soloist with a number of orchestras, including the Stuttgart Philharmonic and the Heidelberg Symphony Orchestra. Additionally, he has been a scholarship holder at the Anne-Sophie Mutter Foundation from 2017 onward and has toured with Mutter's Virtuosi in South America and Europe.

The competition's runner-ups were 23-year-old Joel Blido (Second Prize) and 22-year-old Moritz Huemer (Third Prize).

The jury was comprised of Daniel Müller-Schott, Prof. Maximilian Hornung, Dr. Eleonore Büning, and Bettina Taheri-Zacher.

"Lionel Martin convinced the jury with the seriousness of his cello playing," said cellist Daniel Müller-Schott, the chairman of the jury. "His introductions were inspirational and underscored his quest for personal interpretation. In the finale, he succeeded in powerfully portraying the multi-layered facets of the diabolically grotesque abysses of Shostakovich's Cello Concerto No. 1."