Prizewinners Announced at the 2024 Hamamatsu International Piano Competition

Manami Suzuki became the first Japanese pianist and the first woman to win the competition

22-year-old pianist Manami Suzuki has achieved a clean sweep at the Hamamatsu International Piano Competition 2024, winning not only First Prize but also the Chamber Music Prize and the Audience Prize. She is also the first Japanese pianist and the first woman to win the competition.

87 pianists took part in the competition, and Suzuki was pronounced the winner following her performance of Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 3 with the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra and conductor Toshiaki Umeda.

Suzuki will receive ¥4,000,000 (approximately $26,400 USD), a concert tour of Japan, a recording on Orchid Classics, a recital at King’s Place, London in January 2026 thanks to Ikon Arts Management, and further concerts in Paris and Warsaw in the season ahead.

Second Prize went to Jonas Aumiller of Germany, while Third Prize went to Kaito Kobayashi of Japan. JJ Jun Li Bui (Canada), Korkmaz Can Sağlam (Turkey), and Robert Bily (Czech Republic) came fourth, fifth, and sixth respectively, with Bily also receiving the prize for the best performance of the commissioned work.

A postgraduate student at the Tokyo College of Music, Manami Suzuki was the winner of the 92nd Music Competition of Japan and the Iwatani Prize (audience award). She also won the 47th PTNA Piano Competition Special Grand Prix and Audience Award in 2023. A scholarship winner of the Argerich Arts Foundation, she has studied with Inagaki Chikako, Sato Yoshiaki, Ishii Rie, Nakada Mizuho, and Ishii Katsunori.

"This is a huge honor for me," Suzuki said. "I watched the 10th Hamamatsu Piano Competition on YouTube in 2018 and knew I wanted to enter it one day. I was also hugely inspired by the film based on Riku Onda’s wonderful book Honeybees and Distant Thunder, a fictional tale about a Japanese piano competition (newly-available translated into English). It is quite overwhelming to win but I just want to carry on as before, practising my favorite composers — Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert — and playing as sincerely as I can."

"Following the strict rules of the competition duly upheld, my colleagues of the Jury were not permitted to confer between [ourselves] about any of the competitors, so it was a wonderful surprise to discover that we had voted the first Japanese prize winner, who has now become the first woman to win," said Noriko Ogawa, chair of the jury.

"The Hamamatsu Piano Competition is above all a wonderful showcase for the famous piano makers of Hamamatsu, the home of the manufacturers of Yamaha and Kawai pianos. With the choice of three instruments, Manami Suzuki selected the new Steinway which is held at Act City’s concert hall. This was also the first time Steinway won the Competition!"

You can watch Suzuki's performance below.