BREAKING | Local Italian Violinist Awarded 1st Prize at 2021 Paganini Competition

20-year-old Giuseppe Gibboni from Italy has been awarded first prize at the 2021 Paganini International Violin Competition in Genoa, Italy

The second prize was awarded to 16-year-old Nurie Chung from South Korea and joint third prizes were awarded to 22-year-old Lara Boschkor from Germany and 25-year-old Ava Bahari from Sweden.

This year’s Final Round was streamed LIVE here on The Violin Channel and is available now for playback.

A graduate of the Martucci of Salerno Conservatory, in Italy, and former student of Salvatore Accardo and Pavel Berman, Giuseppe Gibboni currently studies with Pierre Amoyal at the Mozarteum University, he has previously been awarded major prizes at the Kogan, Postacchini, Enescu, and Valsesia International Violin Competitions.

He will receive €30,000 "Premio Paganini" (Paganini Award), two years of representation by the Utopia Media Agency, in Shanghai, plus more than 15 performance opportunities, including solo engagements with the Carlo Felice Theater Foundation, Orchestra of Tuscany, Lithuanian National Philharmonic, Cremonese, Stradivari Foundation, Paganini Genova Festival, and the Carro Paganiniano Festival.

He will also receive the highly distinguished and rare honor to give a performance on the 1743 "Il Cannone" Guarneri del Gesù violin — once the prized violin of Nicolo Paganini, himself.

Open to violinists of any nationality between the ages of 15 and 31, the competition was founded in 1954 with the goal of creating an international competition that would bring great prestige to the City of Genoa — as well as provide a venue for the discovery of new, exceptionally-talented, young violinists.

Regarded among the most important violin accolades in the world, former "Premio Paganini" winners include Gyorgy Pauk, Salvatore Accardo, Gidon Kremer, Ilya Grubert, Leonidas Kavakos, Ilya Gringolts, Sayaka Shoji, Ning Feng, and VC Young Artists Inmo Yang and Kevin Zhu.

The 2021 jury comprises Sergei Krylov (President), Pietro Borgonovo, Pierangelo Conte, Francesca Dego, Stephanie Gonley, Aiman Mussakhajayeva, Christoph Poppen, Jacobs Soelberg, and Pavel Vernikov.

Any jury member who has taught a candidate, either privately or publicly within the preceding two years of the competition’s commencement, will be required to remove themselves from all discussions regarding the competitor and will refrain from submitting any votes for that candidate.