Mihály Berecz, Wataru Hisasue, Laura Mota Pello and Julian Trevelyan render homage to Géza Anda in the 50th year since his passing with a special recital containing piano music for two, four, six and eight hands by Fauré, Liszt, Rachmaninoff, Brahms, Debussy, Grainger, and others.

Widder Saal, Augustinergasse 24, 8001 Zurich, 7 February 2026, 5 p.m.

Tickets: CHF 50. Make your payment via TWINT or email info@geza-anda.ch

In collaboration with our partners Widder Hotel and The Living Circle.

The Schedule, Rules and Repertoire of the 17^th Concours Géza Anda are online. The Concours Géza Anda 2027 is open to participants from all countries who were born after 26 May 1995. Applications will be possible from 19 November 2026 to 01 February 2027 via an online portal on this website.

The next Concours Géza Anda will be carried out between 26 May and 5 June 2027 in Zürich and Winterthur. The jury will be chaired by Gerhard Oppitz.

As per our tradition, the Mozart-Semifinal will be accompanied by the orchestra Musikkollegium Winterthur, the final by the Tonhalle-Orchestra, Zurich.

Details available from Géza Anda’s 104th birthday, 19 November 2025…

For several years now, Wataru Hisasue has been passionately devoting himself to the piano works of French composer Pascal Dusapin (born 1955). Wataru’s first CD, recorded in collaboration with Bavarian radio Bayern Klassik under the Genuin Classics label, has just been released. In addition to Dusapin’s virtuoso ‘Seven Studies for Piano’, it features the world premiere of his composition ‘Did it again’.

Last May, the Géza Anda-Foundation launched a new series of events where our laureates and friends of the Foundation unite to make music together. After the first recital, we now present a new collaboration with the Verbier Festival Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Gábor Takács-Nagy. Mihály Berecz plays Haydn’s Concerto in D, Ilya Shmukler Beethoven’s Second, and Dmitry Yudin Mozart’s Fifteenth Piano Concerto.

Wed 10 September 2025, Salle de musique, La Chaux-de-Fonds
Thu 11 September 2025, Kleine Tonhalle, Zürich

After successfully ploughing their way through the highly competitive rounds of the Concours Reine Elisabeth in Brussels, Wataru Hisasue was awarded the Second Prize and Sergei Tanin the Sixth Prize at the final concert with magnificent renderings of, repectively, Brahms’s Second Piano Concerto and Prokofiev’s Third, as well as the imposed piece for piano and orchestra, “Music for the Heart”, which the competition had commissioned from Kris Defoort.

Our new CD and first collaboration with label Prospero Classical contains unreleased radio broadcasts from the 1963 Lucerne and 1974 Salzburg Festivals. Géza Anda plays with the Philharmonia Orchestra (Brahms 1) and the Vienna Philharmonic (Mozart 18), respectively, conducted on both occasions by Karl Böhm. After breaking listener’s records since its publication, it has just won an ICMA Award in the category “Historical Recordings”. The award ceremony takes places on 19 March at Tonhalle Düsseldorf. 

Ilya Shmukler (1st prize), Daumants Liepiņš and Dmitry Yudin (shared 2nd prize) are the winners of the 16th Concours Géza Anda! A shower of further awards was bestowed upon them and other excellent participants in this year’s edition: Wataru Hisasue, Laura Mota Pello, Valentin Malinin, Konstantin Khachikyan, Hyuk Lee and Aristo Sham.

Six Swiss music universities in Geneva, Lausanne, Berne, Basle, Zurich and Lugano, and the Rahn Kulturfonds recommended young pianists for the first Géza Anda Junior Jury. They will follow the entire competition and award prizes of their own. The Swiss group will be joined by a member of the Rubinstein Junior Jury 2023, who will also act as their speaker. Among others, this project is intended to strengthen ties between the piano departments of Swiss music universities and the Géza Anda-Foundation. Moreover, it gives students a profound insight into a decisive constituent of their profession.

From over a 160 applications with a very high standard, 42 candidates have been invited to the 16thConcours Géza Anda 2024. We are looking forward to welcoming them in Zurich on 29 May.

The entire Géza Anda Competition will be streamed live on our Youtube channel. Tickets for the Mozart-Semifinals and the Final Concert can be obtained through the box offices of Musikkollegium Winterthur and Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich, respectively.

For some time now, our prizewinner Marek Kozák has been performing forgotten Czech piano concertos from the late 19^th and first half of the 20^th century, at the Prague National Theatre under Robert Jindra, among others. Now, these fascinating concertos by Kovařovic, Bořkovec and Kaprálová have been released on CD by “Supraphon”. Although written at different periods, all three concertos are characterised by Rachmaninoffesque symphonic grandeur, an energetic verve and effusively lyrical tunes. A highly recommended listen!  

The Fondation Thiébaud-Frey endows an award for a prizewinner of the 16^thConcours Géza Anda, which is worth CHF 3000 and includes a recital at the cultural centre La Prairie in Bellmund, Switzerland.  

The G. Henle Beethoven Prize will be awarded by the competition jury for the most convincing interpretation of a work by Ludwig van Beethoven during the 16th Concours Géza Anda. With this endowment, G. Henle Verlag would like to raise awareness among competition participants of the crucial role played by an authentic score in musical interpretation. G. Henle Verlag is considered the first and foremost publisher of urtext editions. To this end, the prizewinner will be given access to a large number of Henle Urtext editions – either in print, or in digital form.

A new collaboration between the Géza Anda-Foundation and the National Academy of Music « Prof. Pancho Vladigerov » in Sofia allows Mihály Berecz to prepare Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto for his debut the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic at the Concertgebouw Amsterdam on 2^nd March. Julian Trevelyan will try out Rachmaninov’s Third Piano Concerto, which he hopes to present at the forthcoming Leeds Piano Competition. 

Our laureates will rehearse these works for three days in Sofia with the Academic Orchestra and an experienced conductor, Konstantin Ilievsky. On 14^th February, they perform them before an illustrious audience at the Music Academy. On that occasion, Julian will also conduct a piece by Pancho Vladigerov, the most eminent Bulgarian composer, who was born on 13^th March 125 years ago in Zurich.

His appointment as intendant of the Ruhr Piano Festival in 2005 was followed one year later by the chairmanship of the jury for the Concours Géza Anda 2006, at the invitation of its founder, Hortense Anda.

One of the most influential figures in international music management since the early 1980s, Franz Xaver Ohnesorg was not only an enthusiastic discoverer and promoter of artists but also a tireless ambassador for the promotion of music in many shapes and genres – particularly for “classical music”.

The greatest achievement in his life was probably the creation and rise of his Ruhr Piano Festival, where his long tenure as artistic director and intendant was to come to a crowning conclusion for him at the end of this year with the last of three charity concerts on 25th November, performed by great artist friends such as Martha Argerich and Anne-Sophie Mutter for the handover to the new director of the festival, Katrin Zagrosek.

Among his wide interests, he always pursued piano music and pianists with a special passion. Therefore, it was only natural that he should let himself be persuaded to chair the jury for the 16th Concours Géza Anda 2024 out of his longstanding appreciation and relationship with his friends in Zurich.

The news of his sudden death took us completely by surprise. Our deepest thoughts are now with his family.

The winner of the 15th Concours Géza Anda, Anton Gerzenberg, will play Felix Mendelssohn’s First Piano Concerto in place of András Schiff in Winterthur on 17th and 18th January. The Musikkollegium Winterthur will be playing, conducted by Estonian conductor Anu Tali. In 2022, Anton had already stepped in at very short notice with this virtuoso concerto in Zurich’s Tonhalle, conducted by Paavo Järvi.

The Musikkollegium Winterthur is one of the oldest orchestras in Switzerland with a splendid past. Composers such as Hindemith, Honegger, Schönberg, R. Strauss, Stravinsky and Webern wrote written pieces for the orchestra, which prides itself of having worked with great musicians such as Hermann Scherchen, Franz Welser-Möst, Heinrich Schiff, Thomas Zehetmair and currently Roberto González-Monjas as chief conductors. The Mozart-Semifinal of the 16th Concours Géza Anda 2024 on 5 and 6 June this year will be conducted by Mikhail Pletnev.

The 16th Concours Géza Anda takes place between 30 May and 8 June in Zurich and Winterthur.

The winner of the Liszt-Bartók Prize of the 15th Concours Géza Anda, Mihály Berecz, wins the Kissinger KlavierOlymp 2023 with a magnificently performed recital and a brilliant appearance during the final concert. As a prize, a concert performance with orchestra awaits Mihály at the renowned German festival Kissinger Sommer next year.

After the final concert on 8th October, the Kissingen jury of experts from various fields in the music industry announced: “The 26-year-old pianist from Hungary combines musicality, stylistic determination and joyful performance in the highest degree. He convinced the jury with his technical ability, wit, timing and the structural awareness of his interpretations.”

The Kissinger KlavierOlymp’s final concert was recorded by Bayerischer Rundfunk and will be broadcast on 21st October at 15:05 on BR-Klassik and on 27th October at 20:03 on Deutschlandfunk Kultur.

On 2nd June, Syrian violinist Bilal Alnemr and Czech pianist Marek Kozák played music by Smetana, Ysaÿe and Grieg for a good-humoured adult audience at the “Razzia” in Zurich, while on 3rd June, during a family concert titled “Tchaikovsky and his Nutcracker”, children’s eyes shone brightly – and not only because of the unexpected Christmas cookies, which were handed out to them.

“In Touch with Talent” has been run jointly by the Géza Anda-Foundation and the Orpheum-Foundation for many years. Both foundations are dedicated to the promotion of young musicians.

In the run-up to the 16th Concours Géza Anda 2024, a morning event was also held for host families, during which Marek Kozák played an interesting Rachmaninoff programme. We are still looking for host parents for the next Concours; you can find more information here.

The next Concours Géza Anda will be carried out between 30^th May und 8^th June 2024 in Zurich and Winterthur. It is open to participants from all countries who are born after 30^th May 1992. Details will be published on this website in Spring.