Ilya Shmukler, piano student of Stanislav Ioudenitch at Park University’s International Center for Music, took 1st Place at the Concourse Geza Anda piano competition in Zurich, Switzerland on June 8, 2024. In addition to taking the top overall prize, Ilya was awarded the Audience Prize, the Mozart-Prize, the Special Prize of the Hungarian Radio Arts Groups, and the Junior Jury Award. Congratulations Ilya!
Géza Anda was a Swiss-Hungarian pianist and celebrated interpreter of classical and romantic repertoire, particularly noted for his performances and recordings of Mozart. In his heyday, he was regarded as an amazing artist, possessed of a beautiful, natural, and flawless technique that gave his concerts a unique quality. Three years after his death, the first Concours Géza Anda was founded by his widow.
Among the countless competitions, the Concours Géza Anda is a unique and extraordinary institution in international comparison. This is not only due to the high-ranking jury, which is staffed with outstanding representatives of the music world. It is also due to the Géza Anda Foundation committing itself to accompany the winners as mentors for three years and, among other things, providing performance opportunities.
In addition to the $40,000 first prize, the Géza Anda Foundation arranges a considerable number of concert appearances for the top three prize winners in the period from 2024 to 2027 and provides free concert management during these three years.
About Ilya Shmukler
When he was 3 years old, Moscow native Ilya Shmukler’s mother found him jumping on the bed and beautifully singing Robertino Loreti’s “Jamaica;” she immediately recognized his musical talent and started him in lessons. It was important to his non-musician parents that he be raised as a well-rounded person, so his early years were also spent with school, table tennis, and ballroom dancing. But at 10, he says his life changed after applying for and winning his first music competition and attending the subsequent international summer academy: “There I discovered a true musical life, and I fell in love with it, inspiring me to commit my life to music.”
He performed his first recital at age 12, and made his orchestral debut at 14. He has since made solo appearances in Europe and North America, and has performed with the Mariinsky Theatre, Fort Worth Symphony, Kansas City Chamber, Sendai Philharmonic, Bayer Symphoniker, Tambov Symphonic, and New Music Orchestras, among others.
Ilya is a laureate of many international piano competitions, taking top prizes at the Wideman (Shreveport), Lewisville Lake Symphony, Artist Presentation Society (St. Louis), Shigeru Kawai (Tokyo), Sсriabin–Rachmaninov (Bulgaria), and Rachmaninov (St. Petersburg) Competitions. He was a quarterfinalist in the 2017 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, and achieved the milestone of his career as a Finalist in the 2022 Cliburn Competition. In addition, he received the award for the “Best Performance of a Mozart Concerto” in the 2022 Cliburn Competition. In 2021, he won the Carnegie Weill Recital Hall Debut Audition and made his New York debut at the venerated venue on December 13, 2022.
He completed his master’s degree with honors at the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory in 2021, under the guidance of Elena Kuznetsova and Sergey Kuznetsov. Presently, he studies with Stanislav Ioudenitch at the International Center for Music at Park University in Parkville, Missouri.
