It came as no surprise when jury chair Alison Balsom announced from the stage in Bristol Beacon Hall on 24 September that 17-year-old pianist Ryan Wang had won the 2024 edition of the BBC Young Musician (BBCYM) competition (see News page 6). Wang’s performance of Rachmaninov’s second piano concerto with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, conducted by Ben Gernon, had been greeted rapturously by the audience, concluding a thrilling concerto final and a competition that took a very different shape from previous years.
Instead of working their way through heats dedicated to specific instrumental categories, the performers were invited to submit video entries organised into eight regions, from each of which two musicians progressed to live auditions at the BBC’s new studios in Cardiff. A further 34 were added irrespective of region, so that a total of 50 players performed short recitals for the panel of three judges: trumpeter Balsom; pianist Alexis Ffrench (who is artistic director of the ABRSM); and multi-instrumentalist, composer, conductor and DJ Hannah Catherine Jones.
From quarter-finals to the concerto final
Two quarter-finals, each including six performers, took place at the Great Hall of Swansea University and led to a semi-final also featuring six musicians: English/Swedish violinist Maya Broman Crawford-Phillips, a student at the Yehudi Menuhin School; Surrey-born harpist Jamaal Kashim, who studies at the Junior Royal College of Music; violinist Shlomi Shahaf, born in Israel and raised in Ukraine, and currently attending the Purcell School; cellist Hugo Svedberg from Bournemouth, a former member of the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain; and two pianists, Ryan Wang and Jacky Zhang. Zhang, from Surrey and aged only 16, was taking part in the competition for the third time and is already in the final year of an undergraduate degree course at the Royal College of Music.
Wang, Shahaf and Zhang went through to the concerto final in Bristol. Not only was this the first time that two pianists had competed against one another in the final, they both chose to play ‘Rach 2’, while Shahaf played Tchaikovsky’s only violin concerto. The result was a fascinating concert in which all three performers demonstrated extraordinary musicality, virtuosity and personality, as they had done throughout the previous rounds. But the feeling in the hall was that Wang had brought that extra degree of imagination and brilliance to his performance that made him a worthy winner.
The winner, Ryan Wang
Born in Vancouver, Canada, Wang already has an impressive list of competition prizes and awards under his belt, including being the youngest person to have won the Prix Cortot at the École Normale de Musique in Paris. However, he is currently a music scholar at Eton College, where his piano teacher is Gareth Owen.
‘Mr Owen has taught me at Eton College since Year 9 and was a very important part of my development and journey,’ said Wang after his win. ‘He knows what to do and what to say to keep me calm and prepare me for a concert. He was with me every round of Young Musician. Eton has been so supportive, helping me to balance my academic studies with musical opportunities.’
The school in turn reports that Wang has been an energetic and highly valued member of its music department, throwing himself into chamber music, solo performances, and enjoying masterclasses with eminent pianists including Pascal Rogé. Tim Johnson, Precentor and Director of Music at Eton College, said: ‘We are so proud of Ryan and all he has achieved since joining the school. He has done a brilliant job in balancing his busy performing schedule with his academic and co-curricular activities, and is a great role model for our younger musicians.’
New competition structure
The new format for BBCYM has proved controversial within the music sector, with many commentators on social media and in the press expressing dismay that abandoning the instrumental categories has removed an important showcase for young players across all disciplines. Those who followed the competition through all its broadcast stages will have seen and heard some inspirational playing from wind and brass players and percussionists, but the brightest spotlight of course falls upon the concerto finalists.
Asked about the rationale behind the changes and whether he feels they worked out as intended, Paul Bullock, the BBC’s executive producer for the competition broadcasts, explains that the regional call-out for entries was introduced to ensure that all the UK’s four nations were included, and to try to attract competitors from geographical regions that had previously been underrepresented. In this it was to some extent successful. ‘We had way more entries from Northern Ireland, for example, than we’ve had for a long time,’ he says. ‘It was really exciting seeing those 50 young players coming through our doors in Cardiff. Of course there was variation in the standard, but on the whole it was incredibly high; our judges were genuinely bowled over by what they heard.’
The judging panel
In contrast to previous competitions, the judging panel remained the same throughout all the rounds. This enabled them to get to know and support the performers as they progressed through the final stages, and an additional feature of the earlier broadcasts was their short discussions with presenter Jess Gillam – herself a BBCYM concerto finalist in 2016 – on aspects of performance and musicianship. Bullock acknowledges criticism of the lack of specialist judges for each instrument, and of their apparent focus on storytelling and musical personality rather than technicalities. He says he and his team did consider bringing in a new panel for the final and giving the original three judges a mentoring function, but once the competition was under way it seemed clear that sticking with Balsom, Ffrench and Jones would be the most effective strategy … not least because growing familiarity with them would help a general audience to stay with the broadcasts.
‘There are multiple ways of looking at these things, but I think it worked well and the consistency through the competition has been as good as it’s ever been, with fewer problematic decisions.’
Representing the best
A primary aim in the major change of abandoning instrumental categories was to address the situation which had sometimes arisen in the past where there might be strong candidates in one or two instrumental categories and not in another, so the final would not be representative of the best young musicians who had taken part. Of course there will always be discussions about why individual performers did not make it through to the last three – the characterful playing of two very different harpists, Defne Anar and Jamaal Kashim, made a particular impression, for example – but the standard of playing in the quarter-final was so high that almost any of the 12 and certainly any of the six semi-finalists might have won the competition in another year.
As Richard Morrison pointed out in a Times article, it was noticeable that the six semi-finalists were ‘a multi-national bunch’, two of them are the offspring of professional performers, and none of them attend state secondary schools. While some see this as a yet another indictment of our music education system, others point out that the right place for a gifted young musician to be is at a specialist school, and many of the BBCYM entrants who study at places like the Purcell School, Chetham’s or Wells will be on generous scholarships funded by the government’s Music and Dance Scheme.
In his autobiography, the competition’s founder Humphrey Burton explains how he was inspired to set it up by the experience of working as a television producer on the BBC’s coverage of the Leeds Piano Competition. The final featured Mitsuko Uchida, Myung-whun Chung, András Schiff and the winner Dmitri Alexeev, but Burton was concerned that very few people seemed aware of the broadcasts and, more importantly, none of the finalists was British. ‘I realised we needed to jack up public interest in such occasions,’ he writes. ‘The BBC must mount its own competition … open only to British musicians so we would be sure of a British winner.’ Even then, when arts were integral to the BBC’s output and budgets proportionally larger than they are now, Burton was pleasantly surprised by the corporation’s commitment to the new venture in terms of planning time and many hours of prime early evening airtime.
The jury: (from left) Alison Balsom, Alexis Ffrench and Hannah Catherine Jones – adjudicated each stage of the competition (© Betsan Evans/BBC)
A view from the jury
Asked how aware she was of the competition as a teenager in Doncaster, jury member Hannah Catherine Jones says she followed it enthusiastically from the age of about ten, being moved to tears by some of the performances: ‘I guess I was in some ways putting myself in the competitors’ shoes. It’s a funny one, because on the one hand I looked at these people and thought, I’m not like them. I was a mixed-race kid at a state school and I struggled to have a specialism, but I was inspired by them. When Adrian Spillett won, I remember thinking I didn’t know it was possible to be so moved by percussion, so I started having drum lessons. I was trained on the violin by my dad (who is from Barbados), so of course I loved Nicola Benedetti. I’ve studied piano and voice too, and now as an adult I know I wasn’t meant to have that sort of focus; but I absolutely love seeing people in their element, and I think the competition can still do that.
‘It’s almost like it is showing us where we need to do better, all of us, in terms of trying to democratise access to music and all the benefits it brings for mental health and transferable skills. Of course, BBCYM is about the best of the best and it’s amazing that it exists,’ she concludes. ‘It was just extraordinary to be in the room for the final, it’s a feeling that goes beyond words. Shlomi, Jacky and Ryan all delivered incredible performances, but it just felt to us that on the night, Ryan’s playing was on another level; he seemed to be creating his own universe and yet he was empathetic to every line and every player in the orchestra. But all of them have got absolutely glistening careers ahead of them.’
The 25th edition of the BBC Young Musician competition will be held in 2026.
