Special prizes from the Carl Bechstein Foundation
The Carl Bechstein Foundation regularly awards special prizes to particularly talented pianists who participate in the major German music competitions for children and youth.
The Carl Bechstein Foundation has worked closely with competitions for children and youth since its establishment and awarded a special prize of up to 1,000 euros to every laureate in recent years.
The most extensive cooperation is that with Jugend musiziert, a competition with a history of fifty years that is organized at regional and national levels by several musical institutions: Deutscher Tonkünstlerverband (DTKV), Verband deutscher Musikschulen (VdM), Jeunesses Musicales Deutschland (JMD) and Verband deutscher Schulmusiker (VDS). The Foundation awards talented young pianists special prizes at regional level and prizes complemented by scholarships at national level.
The German Music Council has been organizing the Deutscher Musikwettbewerb for over forty years to promote young musicians and the Carl Bechstein Foundation awards a special prize to a particularly talented pianist on recommendation of the jury.
The Foundation also awards special prizes at the ClaviCologne and the Rotary Klavierwettbewerb competitions. In the latter case, the prize goes to the best interpretation of works by composers who were in personal contact with Carl Bechstein, such as Franz Liszt, Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel.
The prizes awarded by the Carl Bechstein Foundation always include money and various performance opportunities.