WINNER OF PIANIST COMPOSING COMPETITION ANNOUNCED!

Congratulations to Evelyn Dobson, who has been chosen as the winner of our 2016 Composing Competition. She receives a Kawai upright model K-15E worth over £3,350. Her winning score will be published inside Pianist and performed on the covermount CD.

Dobson, from Plymouth, wowed the judges with her composition Ceasefire. The judging panel – consisting of Pianist Editor Erica Worth, music educator Nigel Scaife, composer John Kember and Kawai representative Matt Ash – agreed that the piece was distinguished by its musical intelligence, thematic consistency, subtle harmonies, originality and a great poignancy. The 47-bar piece is prefaced with a short introduction in which Dobson writes of children emerging onto the streets of the Syrian city of Aleppo to play during a ceasefire.

‘This will take a while to sink in,’ she said. ‘I’m shocked, because I felt sure I hadn’t got the key quite right. One of the things I wanted was to make it playable, so that anyone could have a go. I did want it to be accessible.’ She is a piano teacher with 60 years’ experience, having taken on her first pupil when she was 14 years old.

Judging the competition wasn’t easy: there were 130 entrants of all ages (the youngest being eight!) and from all corners of the globe. A full feature about the competition – in which the judges discuss the process, explain what they were looking for and mention other pieces that impressed them – will appear in Pianist 96.