6th International Competition for Young Guitarists
«Andrés Segovia» 2010 in Velbert from 2nd to 5th June

The photos of the competition 2010 are now online

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

1st prize	Kaiieng Chan	People's Republic of China
1st prize	Aran Choi	Korea
3rd prize	Alecu Vicentiu Ciapi	Romania
3rd prize	Zsombor Sidoo	Hungary
5th prize	Oskar Strukiel-Piotrowski	Poland

1st prize	Sören Golz	Germany
1st prize	Divna Šimatović	Croatia
3rd prize	Albrecht Bunk	Germany
3rd prize	Ana Maria Iordache	Romania
3rd prize	Lovro Peretić	Croatia
3rd prize	Niels Pfeffer	Germany
EGTA Prize	Ana Maria Iordache	Romania

1st prize	Jin Sae Kim	Korea
2nd prize	Marcin Kuzniar	Poland
3rd prize	Janko Rašeta	Poland
4th prize	Tomasz Fechner	Poland
4th prize	Mariusz Kozlowski	Poland

Master guitar from Karl Höfner GmbH & Co. KG
Aleksej Kotyurov   Russland

Master guitar from Constantin Dumitriu (Romania)
Jin Sae Kim   Korea

Stipend for Guitar Art Festival Belgrad
Daniel Egielman   Poland

Stipend for Internationale Gitarrenfestspiele Nürtingen
Benjamin Čaušević   Croatia

Stipend for Internationales Bergisches Gitarrenfestival
Sergiu Hudrea   Romania
Daniel Schreivogel   Germany

Stipend for Internationales Gitarren-Symposion Iserlohn
Janko Rašeta   Poland

Stipend for Koblenz International Guitar Festival & Academy
Siarhei Krauchonak   Belarus
Iuliana Camelia Nitu   Romania
Lovro Peretić   Croatia

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.

Under municipal surveillance the performance times of all participants have been drawn. So we are now able to put up a more precise timetable of the competition.
You find it under "Regulations -> Timetable"

This is the overview of the applications on March 25th

Nationalität	Nationality
Bosnien-Herzegowina	Bosnia-Herzegovina	2
Deutschland	Germany	28
Griechenland	Greece	1
Großbritannien	Great Britain	1
Kroatien	Croatia	5
Litauen	Lithuania	1
Niederlande	Netherlands	3
Polen	Poland	13
Rumänien	Romania	8
Russland	Russia	1
Schweiz	Switzerland	2
Serbien	Serbia	2
Slowakei	Slovakia	1
Südkorea	South Korea	2
Tschechien	Czech Republic	1
Ungarn	Hungary	2
Volksrepublik China	People's Republic of China	1
Weißrussland	Belarus	1
SUM		75

(sorry ... only in german)
Velbert ruft und aus 20 Ländern kommt das Echo von jungen Menschen, die sich der Gitarre verschrieben haben, dem beliebtesten Instrument der Welt. Zum 6. Mal wird über das Fronleichnam-Wochenende der Jugendwettbewerb „Andrés Segovia“ im Forum Niederberg ausgetragen. Die Anmeldephase ist gerade abgeschlossen mit dem Ergebnis, dass rund 80 Gitarrenvirtuosen im Alter von 9 bis 19 Jahren zusammen mit begleitenden Eltern und Lehrern nach Velbert reisen werden, um sich miteinander zu messen und wertvolle Erfahrungen auf internationalem Parkett zu machen. Denn mittlerweile hat es sich von Sibirien bis Sizilien herumgesprochen: ein Preis in Velbert ist eine wichtige Stufe der Karriere. Und wer jemals Zeuge der abschließenden Preisträger-Konzerte war, weiß warum. Hier gibt sich die Gitarrenelite der Zukunft ein Stelldichein. Es ist kaum zu glauben, was diese jungen Leute aus ihren Instrumenten zaubern. Insofern ist es sicher nicht falsch, den 5. Juni für das diesjährige Preisträgerkonzert schon jetzt im Terminkalender vorzumerken. Fünf Mal wurde der Wettbewerb auf europäischer Ebene ausgetragen, in diesem Jahr wurde er auf die ganze Welt ausgeweitet. Nun haben sich auch Kandidaten aus China und Korea angekündigt: ziemlich spannend.

The registration for the 2010 competition expired on 28th February. The organizers from the Town of Velbert and from EGTA (German section of the European Guitar Teachers Association) were quite keen to see the response to the competition advertisement, particularly as for the first time guitarists from the whole world were called to pit themselves against each other. By now we have come to an overview: about 80 young guitarists from 20 countries handed in their programs.

It appears as if they all will obtain the admission to the competition. At present our specialists are scanning the submitted data. Only in a few cases some questions still have to be cleared. So we expect to be sending the official admissions to the applicants by the beginning of the next week.

A warm welcome to Velbert from the Organization Team