Pianos in tune for Leamington Music Prize

Buy photos » The Hepplewhite Piano Trio. (s)

THE FOURTH Leamington Music Prize has been awarded to Chuen An Chern, a pianist from Taiwan and the Hepplewhite Piano Trio.

The winners were announced by Leamington Music’s Festival Director Richard Phillips after six competitors performed to the jury in the Adrian Boult Hall in Birmingham.

Chuen started to learn the piano aged four and studied at the Tainan National University of the Arts gaining her degree in 2008. She won various prizes in Taiwan and USA, before coming to Birmingham Conservatoire, where she is now studying for the Advanced Postgraduate Diploma with Malcolm Wilson, Philip Martin and David Quigley. She has won the Birmingham Conservatoire Piano Prize and other important prizes and has played Brahms’s Piano Concerto No 1 with orchestras in Birmingham.

The Hepplewhite Piano Trio, with its line-up of Amy Littlewood violin, Hetti Price cello and Fan Yu piano was formed in 2009 when they were students and the Trio now holds a Junior Fellowship at the Birmingham Conservatoire. The Trio has appeared at the Purcell Room on London’s South Bank and won a series of prizes including the Birmingham Symphony Hall Prize and the Sylvia Cleaver Chamber Music Competition. The Trio has played Triple Concertos by Beethoven and Martinu with orchestras in Birmingham and elsewhere.

Mr Phillips said: “I was delighted to award these well deserved prizes and sorry we had to eliminate four talented artists from Poland and Britain in coming to a decision. Everyone who we listened to should go on to have valuable careers as performers. I was particularly taken by the range of composers and types of music we listened to.”

This year’s winners will be presented with their cheques at a special ceremony in June and given a concert in the 2012/13 Leamington Music winter concerts season - set for November at the Bridge House Theatre in Warwick at a date to be confirmed.