Since 1998, the Dr Hermann Büttner Piano Competition has been organised annually by the lawyer after whom it is named. Since 2017, this prestigious competition, which aims to promote young musicians, has been sponsored by the Adler Büttner Foundation. The required instrument combinations vary, but this year saw a first, as wind players had never before taken part in the competition. Twelve duos had registered for this competition for duos featuring a piano and a woodwind instrument; ten actually went on to compete. For the first round, a sonata by Paul Hindemith was compulsory; works from the Romantic or Impressionist periods were also required. Of the ten duos in the first round, the jury selected four to proceed to the second round. Here, the inclusion of a contemporary work was compulsory. All four duos in the second round will receive prizes and will perform part of their competition repertoire at the winners’ concert, which will take place on Friday 26 June from 7.30 pm in the Velte Hall at Gottesaue Castle. Admission is free, offering the chance to experience a diverse range of chamber music for woodwinds and piano that is otherwise rarely heard.
A special prize of 2,000 euros has been awarded to Tobias Reuter (flute, in Pirmin Grehl’s class) and Yuxin Dai (piano), who studies with Saule Tatubaeva and Roberto Domingos. They will perform PLAY! by Diana Rotaru at the concert. Two second prizes, each worth 3,000 euros, were awarded. They go to two duos featuring students from Juri Vallentin’s oboe class. Elodie Kamenov, performing alongside Yifei Li from Momo Kodama’s piano class, will play a sonata for English horn and piano by Carlo Yvon in the concert. Loriane Ribadeau-Dumas, who also studies contemporary music with Juri Vallentin and Michael Höfele, will perform Paul Hindemith’s oboe sonata and ‘Poem’ by Marina Dranishnikova with her piano partner Jaehee Jeong (who studies chamber music with Roberto Domingos and piano with Kalle Randalu).
The first prize of 6,000 euros goes to the duo comprising Mateus Távora (bassoon, class of David Tomàs-Realp) and Hinako Fujimoto (piano, class of Roberto Domingos). At the prize-winners’ concert, this duo will perform Camille Saint-Saëns’s bassoon sonata and the concert piece “Souvenir de Donizetti” by James Waterson.
The jury, chaired by Dr Hermann Büttner, consisted exclusively of female experts who are not members of the Karlsruhe University of Music: the pianist and NDR journalist Annette Yang, the pianist Prof. Carmen Piazzini, and Clara Andrada de la Calle, principal flautist of the hr Symphony Orchestra and the Chamber Orchestra of Europe.