From 17 to 25 September of this year, the Fritz Kreisler Violin Competition took place in cooperation with the mdw. This was the tenth time that it had been held. It was in 1979 that the International Fritz Kreisler Society began organising this competition, which traces its roots back to a prize that Fritz Kreisler himself sponsored annually prior to 1938 for the best violin student (as determined by an internal competition) at what was then the Academy of Music in Vienna.
The final round at the Vienna Musikverein featured six violinists who played for an international jury headed by the violinist and conductor Jean Jacques Kantorow. Guido Sant’Anna from Brazil emerged as this year’s Fritz Kreisler Competition winner, while Michael Shaham from Israel and mdw student Rino Yoshimoto from Japan shared the second place ex aequo.
Rino Yoshimoto is a graduate of the mdw’s preparatory programme in violin, a former participant in the Young Masters Ensemble, and a current student of Michael Frischenschlager at the mdw and Augustin Dumay at the Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel in Belgium.
