To New Year 2023

To 2023!

On behalf of our Board of Directors, I would like to convey to all of you, participants, supporters, members and interested parties of our association and the 1st International Piano Competition for Young Pianists in Kronberg, the good wishes of our Board for a peaceful, healthy and successful 2023.

We have big tasks ahead of us, regardless of which perspective you look at it from. For example, the war in Ukraine prevents interested parties from Russia, Belarus and Ukraine from registering for our competition. We have received interested calls and mails from Peru, the USA, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Korea and China, not to mention the European reactions. Every new competition, no matter how attractively equipped and prepared, requires a certain start-up time. It is all the more disappointing for us that a war in Europe is preventing young people from competing fairly with their peers from all over the world. We wish with you that this state of affairs changes as soon as possible and that we can once again peacefully present our music together. In my last newsletter I had shared with you my thoughts on the subject of "fairness" in the evaluation. I hope we have received the approval of all of you. Equality of opportunity is the be-all and end-all of any performance comparison. Today, I would like to share with you a few more thoughts about the unusual venue of our competition: The "Casals Forum" the Kronberg Academy. What the Academy and its initiator and director Raimund Trenkler have achieved here cannot be valued highly enough. A framework for concerts, solo and chamber music has been created that is probably unique. We are united with the Kronberg Academy in our desire to give young soloists, the possible stars of tomorrow, an appropriate forum for their excellent performances. The Frankfurter General Newspaper (FAZ) wrote about the Casals Forum on New Year's Eve under the headline "The response was overwhelming" about the first impressions of artists and listeners. The audience sat in the middle of the action, the acoustics were excellent on all seats in the large concert hall. The exceptional acoustics even prompted one visitor to say: "I have never heard music like this before." We are grateful and proud to be able to be guests in this extraordinary concert hall with our prize winners' concert on April 2, 2023. We hope that the interest of the audience will also meet our expectations. With the concert halls provided by the company Bechstein with its outstandingly well-equipped practice rooms and concert halls and the extraordinary ambience of this forum, artists and listeners will find ideal conditions for our project. With this in mind, I would be delighted to welcome as many of you as possible to our piano competition and the winners' concert.