South Korean cellist Jung A Kim won the €50,000 first prize
The finals of the Classic Cello International Competition took place on 6 April at London’s Royal College of Music. The finalists performed with the Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Tomàs Grau.
South Korean cellist Jung A Kim, 14, won first prize, worth €50,000. She also received the Florian Leonhard Fellowship Prize, which entails a two-year loan of a fine old Italian cello provided by the Florian Leonhard Fellowship.
South Korean Yi Joon Park received the €30,000 second prize and Armenian Artyom Ioanisyan won the €20,000 third prize. The top three prize winners also received prizes from Larsen Strings.
The €10,000 fourth prize went to Italian Francesco Stefanelli, the €8,000 fifth prize to Armenian Mikayel Voskanyan and €5,000 sixth prize to South Korean Vesper Park. The seventh, eighth and ninth prizes each worth €2,000, were awarded to Canadian Elliot Sloss, American Noah Lee and Armenian Hayk Sukiasyan respectively.
Jung A Kim is currently a student at the Korea National Institute for the Gifted in Arts, where she studies with Kangho Lee and Noeul Park. She has won first prize at the International Dotzauer Competition, David Popper International Cello Competition, National Artists Competition and Manhattan Competition. At the age of eleven in 2023, she won first prize and four special prizes at the 2023 Tchaikovsky Competition for Young Musicians.
She has appeared as a soloist with orchestras including the KBS Symphony Orchestra, Korean Chamber Orchestra and the Moscow State Symphony Orchestra. Recent performances include the K-Classic Genius Concert in Belgium, an invitation concert by the Korean Cultural Center in Hungary, the 1000th The House Concert at Lotte Concert Hall and the 12th International Chamber Music Festival in Shanghai.
The 2026 jury comprised Dorran Alibaud, Deborah Borda, Alexander Chaushian, Angela Dixon, Kathryn Enticott, Michael Haefliger, Ursula Haselböck, Paul Hughes, Florian Leonhard, Julian Lloyd Webber and James Williams.
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