As international as music is, national pride can still be felt at the world’s leading piano competitions.
When Van Cliburn won gold at the inaugural International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow in 1958 — during the height of the Cold War — there were headlines around the globe. Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev embraced the 23-year-old Texan, and Cliburn returned to a ticker-tape parade in New York City, the only time that honor has been accorded to a classical musician in the U.S.
Now, there has been a different turn of pianistic nationalism at the contest established by and named after Cliburn — namely, that an American has yet to take first prize in the 21st century.
When the 2025 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition concluded on Saturday, June 7, the gold medal went to Aristo Sham, 29, who was born in Hong Kong (when it was still a British colony) and is now a Chinese national.
Silver went to Vitaly Starikov, 30, a dual citizen of Israel and Russia, and bronze went to Evren Ozel, 26, the sole American on the podium.
The previous Cliburn gold medalists this century have been Stanislav Ioudenitch (hailing from Uzbekistan) and Olga Kern (Russia) in 2001, Alexander Kobrin (Russia) in 2005, Nobuyuki Tsujii (Japan) and Haochen Zhang (China) in 2009, Vadym Kholodenko (Ukraine) in 2013, Yekwon Sunwoo (South Korea) in 2017, and Yunchan Lim (South Korea) in 2022.
The Cliburn takes place every four years, but the pandemic postponed the scheduled 2021 event to 2022. This year’s contest, only three years after the last one, has put us back on the original timeline.
This year’s winner, Sham, had something of a leg up when you consider how his official Cliburn biography starts. “I was enveloped in the environment of the piano even before I was born,” he says, explaining that his mother taught piano in their Hong Kong home. Sham started taking lessons at age 3, was concertizing at 10, and attended college in the U.S., studying in the dual-degree program at Harvard University and New England Conservatory and later earning an artist diploma from The Juilliard School.
Sham previously won first prize at the Ettlingen International Piano Competition, the Gina Bachauer International Junior Piano Competition, and the Monte Carlo Music Masters. He has appeared as a soloist with the London Symphony Orchestra under Simon Rattle, the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra under Edo de Waart, and the English Chamber Orchestra under the late Raymond Leppard.
At the Cliburn, Sham’s preliminary-round program included works by J.S. Bach (as transcribed by Ferruccio Busoni) and Maurice Ravel. For the quarterfinals, he played Beethoven’s “Hammerklavier” Sonata. The semifinals and finals saw him soloing in Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 23, Felix Mendelssohn’s Piano Concerto No. 1, and Brahms’s Piano Concerto No. 2.
Although the Cliburn tends to favor the standard warhorses when it comes to contestants’ choice of repertoire, there were a couple of exceptions to this “rule.” And in the preliminary round, there was a short compulsory new piece, Rachtime, commissioned from pianist and composer Gabriela Montero.
In the finals, with the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra and conductor Marin Alsop, competitors performed one concerto from a curated list and a second free-choice concerto.
Sham has an all-embracing outlook that informs his artistry. “All art is essentially the chemical reaction between the stimuli of the world and the artist, and music is no exception,” he says in his Cliburn bio. “I try to take in everything that happens around me and seek out diverse and juxtaposing experiences; I believe this is an integral part of my artistic being, which is the source of my music-making and hopefully reflected in my playing.”
The free Cliburn livestreams, which in 2022 garnered over 60 million views across 177 countries, are a testament to the popularity and importance of the competition.
There were 340 pianists from 45 countries and regions who applied to the 2025 contest; 28 were invited to compete between May 21 and June 7 for fame and about $2 million in prizes.
This year’s finalists (not counting the three medal winners) were Carter Johnson, 28 (Canada/U.S.); Philipp Lynov, 26 (Russia); and Angel Stanislav Wang, 22 (U.S.).
The semifinalists not advancing to the finals were Piotr Alexewicz, 25 (Poland); Jonas Aumiller, 26 (Germany); Yangrui Cai, 24 (China); Elia Cecino, 23 (Italy); Yanjun Chen, 23 (China); and Chaeyoung Park, 27 (South Korea).
During the quarterfinals, there was a dramatic episode when competitor Xiaofu Ju waited for a long time while sitting at the piano not playing. He then got up and walked out, withdrawing from the contest and citing medical reasons.
In other international piano news in recent days, the Queen Elisabeth Competition in Brussels named Nikola Meeuwsen as first-prize winner, with Wataru Hisasue taking second and Valère Burnon in third.
