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Jae Hong Park, a 17-year-old pianist from Korea, won the gold medal at the 2016 Gina Bachauer International Young Artists Piano Competition. An international panel of eight jurors awarded Park the gold medal and $15,000 after his go-big-or-go-home performance of the first movement of Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 3 with the Utah Symphony Tuesday night in Abravanel Hall.
Chaeyoung Park, 18, also of Korea, earned the silver medal and $10,000 with her elegantly buoyant performance of the finale from Prokofiev's Piano Concerto No. 3.
The bronze medal, with its accompanying $5,000 prize, went to 17-year-old Mao Fujita of Japan, who gave a lyrical performance of Rachmaninoff's Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini.
Each of the other finalists — Kaiwen Zhao, 15, of China, and Tristan Paradee, 15, of the United States — was awarded $3,000 after performing the first movements of concertos by Tchaikovsky and Schumann, respectively, with the orchestra and associate conductor Rei Hotoda. British pianist George Harliono, 15, did not reach the final round but was awarded the Sascha Gorodnitzi Foundation Judges Discretionary Prize of $1,000.
The five finalists reached the concerto round after two preliminary rounds last week at downtown Salt Lake City's Rose Wagner Performing Arts Center, where each of the 22 competitors ages 15-18 (representing seven nations) played 25- to 30-minute solo recitals of self-selected repertoire. The judges based their decisions on the cumulative quality of all performances at the competition.
Earlier this month, 14-year-old Talon Smith of California won the Bachauer Junior Piano Competition for pianists ages 11-14.