Each year the Ruhr Piano Festival honours artists whose life’s work is closely connected with the Ruhr Piano Festival. Compensation consists in a scholarship granted by the prizewinner to a young pianist of their choice. The scholarship holder is then invited to give his or her debut recital the following year.
For 37 years, Yaara Tal and Andreas Groethuysen have been sharing the stage as a piano duo, and they have made a total of 17 appearances at the Ruhr Piano Festival. Each one of their concerts has been a unique, special moment for the audience. The two musicians are also passionate music sleuths who love to unearth rare manuscripts; more often than not, they conceive special, unique recital programmes for the Festival. Thus, in 1998 they honored Max Reger’s 125th birthday; in 2008 they reflected the Festival’s focus on Schubert in their programming, followed by a selection of Wagner arrangements for the 2013 annual theme “Transcriptions and Paraphrases”. They responded to the Festival’s French focus in 2018 with a recital of works by Gouvy, Saint-Saëns, and Debussy. In 1997 in Bochum, their first appearance at the Festival had been moderated by the preeminent German music critic of the day, the late Joachim Kaiser; since then, Andreas Groethuysen has often introduced the works himself with knowledgeable, entertaining comments.
Thanks to this outstanding piano duo, we have heard many familiar works in rare versions: for instance, Mendelssohn’s 1st Symphony and the Octet with the Leipzig String Quartet in 2009; Bach’s Goldberg Variations in a two-piano version in 2010; followed by Grieg’s Peer Gynt Suite and Strauss’s Till Eulenspiegel in 2015. On two occasions, in 2009 and 2010, Tal & Groethuysen enthusiastically participated in our Education Program’s public presentations in collaboration with children and adolescents. Last not least, they generously performed a gala benefit for our Jubilee Circle members in favor of the Ruhr Piano Festival Foundation. Yaara Tal and Andreas Groethuysen have thus never ceased to enrich our Festival with their fascinating concepts and brilliant performances. We now wish to thank and honor them with the conferral of the 2022 Ruhr Piano Festival Prize on the occasion of their performance on 8 July in Herne.
DIE BISHERIGEN 26 PREISTRÄGER: | VON DEN PREISTRÄGERN WURDEN FOLGENDE STIPENDIATEN ERNANNT: | |
Bella Davidovich | 1998 | Peter Józsa |
Daniel Barenboim | 1999 | Saleem Abboud Ashkar |
Dmitri Bashkirov † | 2000 | Denis Lossev |
Graham Johnson | 2001 | Joseph Breinl |
Leon Fleisher † | 2002 | Nicholas Angelich † |
Pierre-Laurent Aimard | 2003 | Tamara Stefanovich |
Alfred Brendel | 2004 | Tim Horton |
Pierre Boulez † | 2005 | David Fray |
Chick Corea † | 2006 | Gwilym Simcock |
Martha Argerich | 2007 | Mauricio Vallina |
Maurizio Pollini | 2008 | |
Sir András Schiff | 2009 | Juho Pohjonen |
Grigory Sokolov | 2010 | Alexander Mogilevsky |
Elisabeth Leonskaja | 2011 | Juan Pérez Floristán |
Radu Lupu † | 2012 | Martín García |
Marc-André Hamelin | 2013 | Charlie Albright |
Krystian Zimerman | 2014 | |
Hélène Grimaud | 2015 | Aidan Mikdad |
Arcardi Volodos | 2016 | Lucas Jussen |
Philip Glass gemeinsam mit Dennis Russell Davies & Maki Namekawa | 2017 | Sergei Redkin |
Elena Bashkirova | 2018 | Giuseppe Guarrera |
Michel Camilo | 2019 | A Bu |
Evgeny Kissin | 2020 | Eva Gevorgyan |
Yaara Tal & Andreas Groethuysen | 2022 |
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