Van Cliburn Piano Competition Gold Medal Winner

The Van Cliburn International Piano Competition
was first held in 1962 in Fort Worth, Texas. It was
created by Fort Worth area teachers in honor of
Van Cliburn, who had won the first International
Tchaikovsky Competition four years prior with
Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto and
Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3.

The Van Cliburn Competition is held every four
years (the year after the United States Presidential
elections; thus, the next competitions will
be held in 2009, 2013, and so forth). The winners
and runners-up receive substantial cash prizes,
plus concert tours at world-famous venues where
they perform pieces of their choice. This competition
now rivals the Tchaikovsky competition and is
often dubbed “the most prestigious in the world.”

The Gold Medal Winner, Haochen Zhang, will be
performing here in Wilmington as well as in
hundreds of venues across the United States
and abroad.