Pianist Park Jae-hong Wins the First in the 63^rd Busoni Piano Competition

Pianist Park Jae-hong became the 1st prize winner of the 63rd Busoni Piano Competition that closed on 03 Sept. 21(local time) in Bolzano, Italy. Park is currently in his senior year in the undergraduate program of the Department of Instrumental Music in the School of Music.

The piece Park played for the final round was S. Rachmaninov Concerto No. 3. In addition to the 1st prize, Park also enjoyed the glory of seizing the Special Prize for the Best Performance of a Piece by Busoni, Special Prize for the Best Performance of Chamber Music, Alice Tartarotti Prize, and Keyboard Career Development Prize. With his achievement, Park strengthened the K-Arts’s status as an arts institution of the world, for it was first to win after the one by Mun Chloe Jiyeong, also an alumna of the School of Music, in 2015. Mun was the first Korean and Asian pianist to win in the contest at that time.

Organized by the Busoni-Gustav Mahler Foundation, the Busoni Piano Competition commemorates every other year the world-renowned pianist and composer Ferruccio Busoni (1866-1924) from Italy since 1949. Many prominent pianists around the world were the winners of this contest, which includes Martha Argerich (1st prize winner in 1957), Garrick Ohlsson (1st prize winner in 1966), and Richard Goode (2nd prize winner in 1966). For this year’s contest, 93 of the 506 applicants went through the preliminary round online last November, and 33 finalists competed in the end.