The Clara Haskil Prize is awarded 25,000 Swiss francs and is one of the truly significant piano competitions. With her success Yumeka joins a list of prize winners such as Christoph Eschenbach, Dinorah Varsi, Richard Goode, Michel Dalberto, Evgeni Koroliov or even Steven Osborne, Till Fellner and Martin Helmchen, to name a few prize winners of the younger generation. The award is endowed with 25,000 Swiss francs (about 23,000 euros), and the winner will also perform at the Vevey Spring Classic in spring 2022. In addition, Yumeka Nakagawa will receive the Audience Award, worth 3,000 Swiss francs (around 2,700 euros), as well as the Coup de Coeur Special Prize, also worth 3,000 Swiss francs.
Yumeka Nakagawa, born in Düsseldorf in 2001, has been playing the piano since she was 4 years old. We first met her in 2014, when she won First Prize with 25 points at the German national competition “Jugend musiziert” and a scholarship from the Carl Bechstein Foundation. Along with Marie Sophie Hauzel, Ron Maxim Huang and Jens Scheuerbrandt, she is one of the first generation of scholarship holders of the Carl Bechstein Foundation, which was only established in December 2012. Yumeka was sponsored by us for three years and gave many wonderful performances at our scholarship concerts back then. Later, we met her again in the UK at the Purcell School of Music, which is also sponsored by our foundation. Yumeka had in the meantime moved from Barbara Szczepanska (Robert Schumann Hochschule Düsseldorf) to William Fong. She is currently studying at the Hochschule für Musik Franz Liszt Weimar with Prof. Grigory Gruzman.
We wish you all the best on your future career, dear Yumeka!