The jury's approach to evaluating the videos
The jury is very keen to address you all with a few lines:
Statement from the jury of 2025
Dear pianists
We, the jury of the digital preliminary round, have had a wonderful few weeks! Listening to your playing in the videos, seeing and hearing your passion for music and piano playing, encountering your ganz personal musical statement and experiencing you with your music has deeply touched and impressed us. We were also impressed by the enormous musical and pianistic development of all the pianists who took part in the competition two years ago!
We would like to thank you very much for your great commitment and for all the work behind the development of your repertoire and the recording of the video! We know exactly what this means to you. Your preparation for the competition is never in vain - you have learned and developed a lot. That is definitely your gain!
We would also like to thank your teachers and families for their fantastic support, without which our competition would not be possible!
We received 204 applications from 37 countries and 66 young pianists from 17 countries were admitted to the competition.
We would have loved to invite you all to the presence round in Kronberg - you would have deserved it! However, due to the limited time available for the auditions , it was necessary to select around 60 pianists and we wanted to do this as transparently and fairly as possible.
The approach of our evaluation We already made this clear before the competition.
The standard was particularly high in age groups IV - VII. The high level of performance meant that only a few of the participants in the intermediate round - 2 x Yes/1 x No and 1 x Yes/2 x Maybe - could be admitted due to the limited time available for the competition.
We therefore decided to admit a record number of 66 participants to the competition. In addition, we admitted more pianists from the groups with the most participants, AG IV and AG V, with a particularly high performance density, than from the other groups. Nobody from AG I, which already had few participants, was admitted.
The decisions, many of which were close, were made with great care. We are very aware of our great responsibility and know how hard it is not to see your name on the list of approved participants.
Many of you will be disappointed. But we hope that, despite your disappointment, you know how much we enjoyed your playing, how impressively you make music and how beautifully you play the piano! Don't let yourselves be put off on your way! Stay with yourselves and - above all - continue to develop yourselves musically and pianistically with enthusiasm and immerse yourselves ever deeper into the wonderful world of music with joy and curiosity! We wish you every success for the future!
Finally, we would like to congratulate all the approved participants and look forward to a lively, exciting and motivating competition with them!
Only the best to you all!
Yours
Prof. Claudia Schellenberger,
Prof. Christian A. Pohl,
Ulrike Danne-Feldmann
Dear pianists,
dear parents, dear teachers,
The jury of the digital preliminary round, consisting of Prof. Christian A. Pohl, Prof. Claudia Schellenberger and Ulrike Danne-Feldmann, takes a lot of time to ensure a well-founded and well-reasoned admission of the participants!
Each jury member receives a table with the name, date of birth, age group, repertoire and video of each applicant, which he or she processes individually with comments and ratings (yes, no, maybe). Nationality, place of residence, place of training and teacher are not known to the jury in order to prevent these factors from influencing the decision.
The number of participants is clear from the outset: only around 60 young pianists can be heard during the 2.5 days of the competition.
After viewing the videos, the results are combined to form an overall assessment: three "yes" means a clear approval, as do two "yes" and one "maybe". The videos with two "yes" and one "no" as well as one "yes" and two "maybe" are put into an intermediate round, heard again and discussed in a meeting. The final selection of around 60 approved participants is then determined.