22-year-old Manami Suzuki becomes the first Japanese pianist to win the Hamamatsu International Piano Competition in Japan. She won not only the First Prize but also the Chamber Music Prize and Audience Prize. On behalf of the international Jury, chair Noriko Ogawa presented the awards to Suzuki after her performance of Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No.3 with the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra conducted by Toshiaki Umeda at the ACT CITY, Hamamatsu.

Suzuki will receive just over £20,000, an extensive concert tour of Japan, a recording on Orchid Classics to coincide with a recital at King’s Place, London on 23 January 2026 arranged by Ikon Arts Management and further concerts in Paris and Warsaw in the season ahead. Suzuki is supported by the Argerich Arts Foundation in Japan and is in her 1^st year of Postgraduate studies in Tokyo.

Suzuki commented: ‘This is a huge honour for me.  I watched the 10th Hamamatsu Piano Competition on YouTube in 2018 and knew I wanted to enter it one day.  I was also hugely inspired by the film based on Riku Onda’s wonderful book Honeybees and Distant Thunder, a fictional tale about a Japanese piano competition (newly available translated into English).  It is quite overwhelming to win but I just want to carry on as before, practising my favourite composers - Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert - and playing as sincerely as I can.’

Ogawa said: ‘Following the strict rules of the competition duly upheld, my colleagues of the Jury were not permitted to confer between themselves about any of the competitors, so it was a wonderful surprise to discover that we had voted the first Japanese prize winner, who has now become the first woman to win. The Hamamatsu Piano Competition is above all a wonderful showcase for the famous piano makers of Hamamatsu, the home of the manufacturers of Yamaha and Kawai pianos. With the choice of three instruments, Manami Suzuki selected the new Steinway which is held at Act City’s concert hall.  This was also the first time Steinway won the Competition!’

The distinguished international jury chaired by Ogawa featured Hortense Cartier-Bresson, Dang Thai Son, Paul Hughes, Peter Jablonski, Momo Kodama, Ewa Kupiek, Pedja Muzijevic, Ronan O’Hora, Ilya Rashkovskiy, and Akiyoshi Sako.

Other prize winners included:

2nd Prize - Jonas Aumiller (Germany)

3rd Prize - Kaito Kobayashi (Japan)

4th Prize - JJ Jun Li Bui (Canada)

5th Prize - Korkmaz Can Sağlam (Turkey)

6th Prize, Prize for best performance of Japanese new commission - Robert Bily (Czech Republic)

The 12th Hamamatsu International Piano Competition closed with the winners’ recital on Monday 25 November 2024.