With its videos drawing 60 million views across 177 countries, the 2022 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition had one of the largest audiences for any classical music event in history.
The winners of that year’s competition — Yunchan Lim, 18, of South Korea; Anna Geniushene, 31, of Russia; and Dmytro Choni, 28, of Ukraine — have gone on to present international tours and acclaimed concerts.
The 2025 edition of the Cliburn is now in progress: 340 pianists from 45 countries applied to participate, with the greatest numbers coming from China, the United States, South Korea, and Italy.
From this pool, 77 pianists were selected to take part in live screening auditions, which occurred March 16–22 at PepsiCo Recital Hall in Fort Worth, Texas. Results will be announced on April 9, naming the 30 contestants who will go on to the preliminary and quarterfinal rounds (May 21–24).
That is when free livestreaming will begin on the Cliburn’s website and YouTube channel (and in China on Amadeus.tv).
The semifinal round will follow May 28 – June 1, with the finals June 3–7. Results will be announced at the awards ceremony on June 7. All events will take place in Fort Worth’s Van Cliburn Concert Hall and Bass Performance Hall.
What is it like to be a contestant? Among those who participated in this month’s screening auditions was Rachel Breen, an American pianist who now lives in Germany. She began lessons at age 10 with Sharon Mann at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and earned degrees from The Juilliard School, Yale School of Music, and Hannover’s Hochschule für Musik.
“Preparing for any performance is a balancing act of many factors,” Breen told SF Classical Voice. “Professional musicians often have a number of programs and events to consider at the same time. The busier one gets, the more necessary triage becomes. The process of learning precisely what to prioritize at which point in time is highly individual and can only be understood through experience.”
Breen’s competition resume includes wins at the Honens International Piano Competition in Calgary and the International Beethoven Piano Competition in Vienna, among others.
“Beyond preparation,” Breen said, “there are numerous factors that influence the way a jury will respond to a performance. There’s a wonderful quote from a 2011 interview with pianist Sergei Babayan: ‘When you are a jury member and the results are being announced, you very often feel like shouting, I stood among them but not of them!’”
“Competition results are by definition some sort of averaging of the individual tastes of jurors who may or may not share each other’s artistic goals. It is important to become familiar with different reasons for and ways of approaching music, but in the end, one always has to ask oneself, ‘If I do it this way, will I be saying what I believe in?’
“I think the most powerful musical voices are always voices that are profoundly honest; honesty in music allows us to experience shared humanity across time periods, cultures, races, and genders. As there are different human experiences, there are different individual voices that each human will connect to most powerfully. At this point, it becomes a matter of taste and essential disposition, but the underlying commonality between the art we love is that it reflects something deeply true about us.”
Breen has been a guest artist at numerous festivals, including the Chautauqua Institution, Sarasota Music Festival, Piano aux Jacobins, Southeastern Piano Festival, San Francisco International Piano Festival, and Beethovenfest Bonn.
Breen is practical about what so much touring and competing demands. “Aside from musical questions, an important part of every performer’s life is how to deal with … jet lag, long flights, nerves, what to wear,” she said.
“I feel lucky to have been afforded enough opportunities for performance in the past few years to feel relatively comfortable with my self-knowledge in these regards. My comfort has only developed as a result of making every type of mistake imaginable. Nowadays, my backstages are banana-peel cemeteries — [I eat them] for the [natural] beta blockers — and you’ll always hear me warming up until the very last moment.”
When it comes to selecting repertoire, Breen said, “We don’t have the chance to use words to explain to the jury why we have chosen our program or to present them with historically relevant information they may not be familiar with.”
Breen continued: “Recently, I’ve been playing a work by Renaissance composer John Bull; it’s practically unknown among pianists and follows an unusual structure which is easier to perceive if one knows to listen for it.
“This piece is the earliest keyboard work I am aware of which modulates through all 12 tonal centers. It uses a hexachord, or six-note ascending and descending scale, to outline the shifts. A large part of my preparation with this type of music is dedicated to workshopping with friends and colleagues.
“I’m very lucky to have many people in my life whom I trust deeply. Getting feedback from half a dozen trained musicians about their experience hearing a work for the first time helps me gauge what is or is not coming through and helps me decide what I might need to focus more closely on if I’d like the music to be immediately communicative.”
