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The winners of the 2025 Ysaÿe International Violin Competition (YIMC) have been announced. The finals took place from 7 to 9 July at the Liège Philharmonic Hall in Liège, Belgium.
Junior category players performed a study or caprice for solo violin, one virtuoso piece for solo violin and the first movement of a violin concerto. In the senior category, contestants played the first movement of either a Beethoven, Schubert or Brahms sonata; a solo violin sonata by Ysaÿe; and the first movement of a concerto from a set list.
In the junior category, Singaporean violinist Yoojun Curtis Lee won the €1,000 first prize. The €500 second prize went to South Korean Jiye Kang and the €300 third prize was won jointly by South Korean Seoyun Kim and Australian Carine Suparman.
In the senior category, Italian violinist Julian Kainrath took home the €5,000 first prize, alongside a one-year loan of a fine Italian violin from Florian Leonhard Fine Violins and a solo concerto performance at Prague’s Smetana Hall. The €2,000 second prize went to Kaho Takemoto from Japan and the €1,000 third prize went to both Wei-Lin Chen from Taiwan and Ryota Higashi from Japan. The Ysaÿe Prize was won by South Korean violinist Haewon Lim.
Originally from Singapore, 13-year-old Yoojun Curtis Lee is currently a student at The Juilliard School Pre-College in New York City. He won the Gold Award at the 2023 Singapore Raffles International Music Festival Violin Solo Competition and first prize in the second category of the 2025 Leonid Kogan International Competition for Young Violinists.
Born in Merano, Italy, 20-year-old Julian Kainrath was admitted into the class of Boris Kuschnir at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Graz, Austria, at the age of twelve. Since 2023, he has studied with Marc Bouchkov at the Conservatoire Royal de Liège in Belgium. He has attended the Verbier Festival, where he took part in masterclasses with Pamela Frank, Donald Weilerstein and Kristóf Baráti, and he also studied with Ilya Gringolts at the Accademia Chigiana in Siena, Italy, and participated in the Sommerakademie Schloss Heiligenberg in Germany.
Kainrath has performed in recitals and concerto engagements across Europe and the US. Summer festival appearances include the Engadin Festival in Switzerland, Althafen Stiftung in Berlin, Tonadico Festival in Italy, Stiftskonzerte Klassik in Austria and Riviera di Ulisse Festival in Rome. In 2022 he won the International Classical Music Awards Discovery Award.
This year’s jury comprised YIMC artistic director Ashot Khachatourian, semi-final jury chairman Alexandre Feye, final jury chairman Philippe Koch, Tatiana Smouil, Kirill Troussov, Yamei Yu, Marc Bouchkov, Alissa Margulis, Anar Bramo, Kara Nam, Alexei Moshkov, Hrachya Avanesyan, Dirk Verelst, Fan Ting, Robert Stepanian and secretary of the YIMC Philippe Lehaen.
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