THE ASAHI SHIMBUN
October 29, 2021 at 17:23 JST
Michiaki Ueno won the cello section of the Geneva International Music Competition on Oct. 28. (From the website of the Geneva International Music Competition)
Michiaki Ueno became the first Japanese to win the cello section of the Geneva International Music Competition on Oct. 28, one of the world's most prestigious music prizes.
Ueno, 25, also won first prizes at the Romanian International Music Competition in 2010 and the International Johannes Brahms Competition in 2014. He placed second at the Tokyo Music Competition in 2012 and the Lutoslawski International Cello Competition in 2018.
Ueno was born in Paraguay and spent his childhood in Spain. He started studying cello at the age of 5 and became the first Japanese to win the International Tchaikovsky Competition for Young Musicians in 2009, when he was 13.
He received an honorable award from the Iwatani Tokiko Foundation in 2015 and an award for new musicians from the Aoyama Music Foundation the following year.
Ueno studied at the Toho Gakuen School of Music. His mentors include Hakuo Mori and Pieter Wispelweij. Ueno has been studying at the Robert Schumann Hochschule Dusseldorf in Germany since 2015.
He has worked with many Japanese and overseas orchestras including those in Russia and Warsaw. He has also performed in Germany, Romania and Slovakia.
The Geneva International Music Competition, which started in 1939, is famed for launching the careers of up-and-coming artists, with many past winners going on to become some of the world's top classical musicians.
Recent Japanese top prize winners at the Geneva competition include Mami Hagiwara, who won the piano section in 2010, and Hinako Takagi, winner of the composition section in 2019.
(This article was written by Mizuho Morioka and Junko Yoshida, a senior staff writer.)
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