- Halvorsen
- Benjamin Britten
- viola da gamba
- Pietro Metastasio
- Janáček: Pohádka
- Band of Her Majesty's Royal Marines Plymouth
- Nina Pissareva Zymbalist
- Addis Ababa
Misha Kaploukhii
The UK's Newbury Spring Festival announces the winner of the 2024 Sheepdrove Piano Competition
The annual Sheepdrove Piano Competition - held during Newbury Spring Festival in the UK (11-25 May 2024) - has been won by Misha Kaploukhii from Russia, a student from the Royal College of Music in London.
The second prize of GBP 1500 was won by Kasparas Mikuzis, a student at the Royal Academy of Music.
The GBP 750 third prize was won by Yuxuan Zhao who studies at the Royal Northern College of Music.
Max Artemenko from Trinity Laban Conservatoire won the fourth prize of GBP 500.
The Robert Turnbull Piano Foundation winners were Angeliki Giannopoulou from the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland and Xizong Chen from the Royal Northern College of Music.
The competition, which is open to current students at the UK's eight major music colleges, does not charge an entry fee to participants and this year it celebrated Fryderyck Chopin's one-hundred-and-fiftieth anniversary. After a private first round with just the panel in attendance, the final was held before an audience on Sunday 19 May 2024 at the Sheepdrove Eco Centre in Lambourn, Berkshire.
This year's judges were: Rupert Christiansen: music critic, writer and director of the Robert Turnbull Piano Foundation, Mark Eynon: (director of the Newbury Spring Festival, Russian pianist Mikhail Kazakevich: professor of piano at the Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music & Dance, Clare Taylor: founder and CEO of City Music Foundation and Elena Vorotko: artistic director of The Keyboard Charitable Trust.
Born in 2002, Misha Kaploukhii is an alumnus of the Moscow Gnessin College of Music. He is currently studying at the Royal College of Music and is an ABRSM award holder, studying for a Bachelor of Music with Ian Jones. He has also received a full scholarship from the Royal College of Music for two years of postgraduate studies.
Misha Kaploukhii
Kaploukhii has also taken lessons and masterclasses with Dmitri Bashkirov, Imogen Cooper, Konstantin Lifschitz, Jerome Lowenthal and Claudio Martínez Mehner.
His performances with orchestras around the world include debuts in Cadogan Hall playing Rachmaninov's First Concerto with YMSO and James Blair, Liszt's Second Concerto with the RCM Symphony Orchestra and Adrian Partington, and a very recent performance of Rachmaninov's Fourth Concerto performed with the Albion Orchestra.
As a soloist he has performed a wide range of solo and chamber repertoire in London venues such as St Mary's Perivale, St James Piccadilly and the Razumovsky Academy.
Kaploukhii has also recently won prizes at the RCM Concerto Competition, International Ettlingen Piano Competition and the Chappel Medal Competition.
Alongside the GBP 3000 Sheepdrove Competition prize money, Kaploukhii also gave a lunchtime recital on Monday 20 May 2024 at Newbury Corn Exchange, part of Newbury Spring Festival's young artist recital series. He also won the audience prize of GBP 250.
Mark Eynon, Festival Director, commented:
It has been an honour to host some of the best students from the UK's conservatoires in such a beautiful space. As ever, we witnessed piano playing of incredible standard, and the judges felt that Misha's performance was particularly impressive this year.
We are proud to continue the policy of always providing travel, subsistence and accommodation expenses for all competitors, and all four finalists have left with a financial prize. I am forever grateful to the Sheepdrove Trust for their continued generous support for the competition as we celebrate its fifteenth year.
Posted 27 May 2024 by Keith Bramich
