7th International Competition for Young Guitarists
«Andrés Segovia» 2012 in Velbert from 6th to 9th June

The application started now.
Do not hesitate to ask questions, especially if the online application seems to make difficulties.
The specific letters of the foreign alphabets are sometimes not displayed correctly in our automatic answering mail. Do not worry, we receive them well with your application, it is only the answering mail which mixes them up. Sorry we could not yet find this stupid mistake in the program code.

In the online application you see only 3 places for pieces.
But you can submit more pieces, just click on the grey button "MORE PIECES"

Please think of the time limit:
Age group 1 must play between 13 and 15 minutes
Age group 2 must play between 17 and 20 minutes
Age group 3 must play between 13 and 15 minutes in each round

Just one week is left until the start of the application period.

In the middle of November 2011 we installed a web counter into this website to count the visits. Last year this site was hit about 100 times per week, now 50 hits per day ... still growing.

The link to the Application is now open.
There you can download the application forms.
In one week's time on 1st February we will also open the link to the online application.

The organizers of the competition are looking forward to the echo from the guitar world.

To get into the right frame for this year's guitar competition the town of Velbert organizes a concert on March 17th at 8 p.m. The already in their lifetime legendary "Los Romeros" accompanied by the Württemberg Chamber Orchestra Heilbronn will perform the concerti b-flat-minor and g-minor for guitar quartet and string orchestra by Antonio Vivaldi.

More Information:
Town of Velbert
Los Romeros
Württemberg Chamber Orchestra

Tickets:
Online Tickets

Now and then we receive questions from interested guitarists who are uncertain to which age group they belong. So we gave further explanation in the competition regulations.
Here again the details.

Key date for the calculation of the age:
6th June 2012

Age group I   under 14 years
⇒  born after 6th June 1998

Age group II   14 to 16 years
⇒  born between 7th June 1995 and 6th June 1998   (both dates included)

Age group III   17 to 19 years
⇒  born between 7th June 1992 and 6th June 1995   (both dates included)

One cannot participate in more than one age group.
One cannot participate in an age group which differs from the frame given above.

The Jury for 2012 has now been constituted.
Among these are two persons who are new to the Velbert competition:
Martha Masters from the USA, the president of the Guitar Foundation of America (GFA)
and Johannes Monno , who lectures at the Conservatory of Stuttgart (D).

GIAMPAOLO BANDINI - CESARE CHIACCHIARETTA    ⇒  Homepage
Magical atmosphere of the Tango Argentino
Thursday, 7th June 2012

BEIJING ANGELS GUITAR QUARTET    ⇒  Video
Brilliant virtuosity from the Far East
Friday, 8th June 2012

We tried to capture the atmosphere of the competition 2010 in a video clip of 3 minutes length. You find this clip under VIDEO to watch it or to download.

The registration period for the 7th International Competition for Young Guitarists «Andrés Segovia» 2012 in Velbert will last from 1st to 29th February 2012

The compulsory pieces for this competition are now online
Further information can be found in the chapter Regulations

In every age group the compulsory pieces mentionened below must be performed. The given frame of time means total time on stage.

The key-date for calculating the age is the 6th June 2012

Age group I    under 14 years    total duration: 13 - 15 Min.

• Francisco Tárrega
  Rosita
       or
• Andrés Segovia
  Estudio sin Luz (Schott)
       plus
• free program from 2 different historical periods minimum

Age group II    14 to 16 years    total duration: 17 - 20 Min.

• Isaac Albéniz
  from: Recuerdos de Viaje
  Rumores de la Caleta
       or
• Luigi Legnani
  from: 36 Capricci op. 20
  No. 15 (b-minor)  and  No. 22 (c-minor)
       plus
• free program from 2 different historical periods minimum

Age group III    17 to 19 years    1st round  total duration: 13 - 15 Min.

• Johann Sebastian Bach
  from: Suite e-major BWV 1006 a
  II. Loure  and  III. Gavotte en Rondeau
       or
• Heitor Villa-Lobos
  from: 12 Etudes
  No. 5 (Andantino)  and  No. 7 (Très animé)
       plus
• free program

Age group III    2nd round (Finals)  total duration: 13 - 15 Min.

• Free program, containing a piece composed after 1950.
  Pieces from the 1st round may not played here for a second time.

Link to the summary 2010   (sorry ... up to now in German only!)

The 6th International Competition for Young Guitarists in the Forum Niederberg ended with a top class prize winners' concert. Once again the young musicians showed the full scale of their mastery and filled the audience with enthusiasm. The organizing Music&Arts School, the German section of the European Guitar Teachers Association (EGTA-D) and their numerous helpers chose the advertising slogan: "Your ears will be amazed", a promise which they indeed kept.

At first the youngsters from age group I (under 14 years) came on stage. Being all professional Alecu Ciapi from Romania (3rd prize) announced his piece in English, sat down on the bench and went ahead with a Tango from Francisco Tárrega. The audience was then struck with astonishment by Roland Dyens' "Fuoco" from the "Libra Sonatina", performed by one of the two 1st prize winners, the Chinese girl Kaiieng Chan. Musicality, dynamics, extreme virtuosity, everything was present  - and quite a few were asking themselves how she will play once grown up.

After the performance of the prize winners of the age group II (14 to 16 years) Heinz Jürgen Küpper, former director of the Music&Arts School, organizer and presenter, reported on a dilemma:  "You see here the consequence of the desperation among the jurors - we have too few prizes!" Although no less than 5 prizes are intended for every age group, there were now six. To the 2 first prizes 4 third prizes were added, one of the latter went to the German Niels Pfeffer, whose rapt performance fathomed out the pensive sounds of Armand Coeck's "Constellatons".

In the age group III (17 to 19 years) we listened to those who doubtlessly aim for a professional carreer - one of them was the frequent prize winner Janko Rašeta from Poland (3rd prize). At the age of nine he played in Velbert for the first time. The winner of this age group, the Korean Kim Jin Sae was in addition given a master guitar from the Romanian luthier Constantin Dumitriu.

Well, and a Russian of the age group II, who was not at all prepared for it, got the biggest ovations: Aleksej Kotyurov received from the luthier Friedemann Pods a prototype of the guitar, which had been developed especially for this competition by the firm Karl Hofner GmbH. The young fellow in a T-shirt, not a bit shy, sat down on the stage without any preparation and played a piece on this new and unfamiliar instrument in a truly virtuoso manner.

Cornelia Bühne

We managed that you can watch part of the competition LIVE!
The transmission will last 7 hours:
4 hours on Friday 4th June (13-17 h) and 3 hours on Saturday 5th June (10-13 h)
You can watch the performance of the Age Group 3 (17 to 19 years) - particularly the FINALS on Saturday.

After the competition the recordings will remain stored on the server for about 2 weeks. So you can also watch the video of the competition at any time later again.