Thrilling young performers grace stage for Hastings International Piano Competition gala concert

Conducted by Scott Dunn, the night is Hastings International Piano's gala concert at the

White Rock Theatre on Saturday, September 27. The concert begins at 7.30pm, preceded by a pre-concert talk at 6.15pm, How Does an Orchestra Work? with Rainer Hersch in conversation with RPO managing director Sarah Bardwell.

The concert programme will be Antonin Dvorák: Slavonic Dance Op 72 No 2; Frédéric Chopin: Piano Concerto No 1 in E minor, Op 11 (Harmony Zhu); and Sergei Rachmaninov: Piano Concerto No 2, Op 18 (Curtis Phill Hsu). Tickets are £23-£41.15 including commission and restoration levy, via the White Rock Theatre box office. Tickets for the talk are free but must be booked in advance.

Artistic director at Hastings International Piano Competition, Vanessa Latarche is delighted to be able to bring the first and second prize winners back to Hastings following their success last year –just as the competition nears the closing date for next year's event.

Harmony Zhu was just 18 when she won second prize in 2024 and is now not only forging a career as a pianist, but also studying at Harvard. She will be soloist in Chopin’s poignant and romantic Piano Concerto No 1, written in 1830 when he was just twenty and about to leave his native Poland to live the rest of his life in exile.

First prize winner Curtis Phill Hsu is the soloist in Rachmaninov’s monumental Piano Concerto No 2. One of the best known of all concertos, the piece was a huge success when it was premiered in 1901 with Rachmaninov himself as soloist and later became part of popular culture thanks to its use in David Lean’s 1945 film Brief Encounter.

Vanessa said: “This is the most important concert that we have apart from the competition itself. We do it in the non-competition year with the competition happening every other year. The main purpose is we want to focus on our winners and we want to give them the opportunity to work with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra which is something they really would not usually get so early in their careers. The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra is one of the best orchestras in the world and it's wonderful to give them this chance. What it gives them is the experience of working with professionals at the highest level, and they will be performing pieces that will be very accessible for the audience.

“They meet the orchestra on the day but they meet the conductor the day before. It's very important that he gets to know the soloists the day before in terms of where they want to take time around certain corners and where they might want the orchestra to be quieter. It's a conversation about how the soloist wants the orchestra to play but it is very much a joint effort and a collaboration.”

In the meantime, entries for next year's competition are coming in with a deadline of September 30: “They come in via video applications and we will be reviewing the video applications in the middle October and the results of this will be before Christmas. We would be aiming and hoping for about 250 applications.”

Which is in itself one of the legacies of the pandemic when video applications became the norm and indeed, as Vanessa says, a much greener and a much fairer way of doing things. It cuts the travelling and it allows for entries from around the world – all part of the building excitement.

“We have got a very, very good team here. The team we've got here is fantastic. Everyone is working on social media and publicity and the new design for the website. We've also got a very strong development team. We are a charity and we are dependent on being able to forge partnerships with businesses that will make our work possible, and we are always looking for new partnerships in the area particularly around the time of the competition next February and March. We can create bespoke packages for any kind of business. You can find out more on the website.”

Vanessa also expressed her gratitude to Steinway’s for their support.