At the end of 17 days of inspired music making inside the Nancy Lee and Perry R. Bass Performance Hall, the 14th Van Cliburn International Piano Competition announced its winners Sunday night from the stage.
The recipient of the Nancy Lee and Perry R. Bass Gold Medal--and the Van Cliburn Winner's Cup overall--is Vadym Kholodenko, 26, Ukraine.
"It's kind of fun for audience, for press. It's interesting to put first, second, 10th and so on. But in life, not so important," a nonplussed Kholodenko told NPR.
All the same, here is Kholodenko's unflappable performance of Prokofiev's Piano Concerto No. 3 in C Major, Op. 26 with Maestro Leonard Slatkin and the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra.
This Cliburn iteration's silver medalist, however, is none other than Classicalite favorite Beatrice Rana, 20, Italy.
"Competitions are one of the main ways for us to have a concert pianist career," the more appreciative Rana said. "Competitions can be really for everybody and accessible to everybody. I don't compete very often, but I'm glad that this year we have the opportunity to really play many times after the winning of the Cliburn."
Receiving the Van Cliburn Crystal Award is American pianist Sean Chen, age 24.
For his performance, Kholodenko will receive the following: a cash award of $50,000, sage career management (including international concert tours for the three concert seasons following the competition), studio and live recordings produced by Harmonia Mundi and performance attire provided by Neiman Marcus.
Rana and Chen will each receive a cash award of $20,000, as well as career management and recordings.
Unfortunately, neither pianist will get any threads from Neiman Marcus.
The three other Cliburn finalists--Fei-Fei Dong, 22, China; Nikita Mndoyants, 24, Russia; Tomoki Sakata, 19, Japan--will receive $10,000 cash each and management/tours for three concert seasons.
The Steven de Groote Memorial Award for the Best Performance of Chamber Music, with its own purse of $6,000, was awarded to Kholodenko. He also won the Beverley Taylor Smith Award for the Best Performance of a New Work ($5,000).
Steven Linn, 24, of the United States was declared the winner of the John Giordano Jury Discretionary Award (cash prize of $4,000), and Alessandro Deljavan, 26, of Italy garnered the same amount for his Raymond E. Buck Jury Discretionary Award.
23-year-old Claire Huangci of the United States took home $4,000, too, for an unendowed Jury Discretionary Award.
Voted on by nearly 24,000 visitors to www.cliburn.org, the 14th Van Cliburn International Piano Competition Audience Award (and $2,500) went to Beatrice Rana.
All Cliburn semi-finalists received cash awards of $5,000; preliminary round competitors received only $1,000.
Van Cliburn typically presented every award to the winners, himself. Alas, he died earlier this February at age 78 after his bout with bone cancer.
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