II Éva Marton Singing International Competition attracts significant interest

More than 100 valid registrations for the contest (19-25 September 2016), with total prize money amounting to €42,000, arrived by the application deadline of the end of April. For the first round of the competition, women aged 18-32 and men aged 18-35 could apply by sending in a video recording of freely selected arias performed with piano or orchestral accompaniment from the Baroque and another period. The prestige of the competition is indicated by the fact that the invitation was seen not only by competitors from Hungary and beyond the borders – comprising 10% of all applicants – but artists living all over the world, too: in addition to considerable interest from Russia and the Ukraine, significant numbers of applications were received from China, Turkey, European countries and the United States. The competition secretariat will publish a notice on the decision of the qualifying round jury headed by Éva Marton by 20 May 2016.

“It is perhaps not well known that in the 140-year history of the Liszt Academy, which is anyway of considerable significance in every aspect of music, the International Éva Marton Singing Competition is the institution’s first ever competition totally developed and executed by itself. The competition has to stand its ground in the extraordinarily competitive field of the global music world, matching itself against such long-running, distinguished and high-budget events as the Operalia hallmarked by Plácido Domingo and the Queen Elisabeth Competition in Brussels. Because we are working on a fraction of the budgets of these major competitions, in essence we are building our success on the personality and reputation of Éva Marton, the originality of the image, the prestige of the Liszt Academy and our innovative communications. Since the Liszt Academy, and within this the communications team I oversee, had the honour of being tasked with the planning and organization of the Bartók World Competition and Festival, the ‘Competition of Competitions’, being staged in 2017, our international experience as regards the Éva Marton Competition gives us a much better chance of lifting the Bartók Competition into the global vanguard right from the very start,” said Imre Szabó Stein, Communications Director of the Liszt Academy and project manager of the International Éva Marton Singing Competition.

Competitors making it through to the live rounds in the autumn have to prove themselves with a performance of a Liszt song and a further seven arias. The jury for the competition includes Hungarian and international celebrities from the world of opera such as Miguel Lerín, one of the most influential managers in European opera, Vittorio Terranova, artistic director of the F. Tagliavini opera competition, Christina Scheppelmann, director of the Teatro Liceu in Barcelona, Prof. Sung Bin Kim, dean of the Faculty of Music of Daeshin University, Anatoli Goussev, professor of the La Scuola Musicale in Foro Buonaparte di Milano, Honghai Ma, professor of the Shanghai Central Music Academy, Andrea Meláth, head of the Department of Vocal and Opera Studies, Liszt Ferenc Academy of Music, and Szilveszter Ókovács, director of the Hungarian State Opera.

The Liszt Academy hosts the rounds and final (open to the public) between 19-25 September 2016. Due to live Internet streaming, the competition can be followed throughout Hungary and anywhere in the world.