21 October 2024
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17-year-old pianist Ryan Wang, from Vancouver, Canada and a student on a music scholarship at Eton College, Windsor is the winner of BBC Young Musician 2024
The competition’s Grand Final was broadcast on BBC TV, iPlayer, BBC Radio 3 and BBC Sounds last night (Sunday 20 October) and was presented by saxophonist and broadcaster Jess Gillam – a BBC Young Musician finalist herself in 2016.
Ryan started playing piano aged four and was only five when he performed his first solo recital at Carnegie Hall. He received his Artist Diploma at the École Normale de Musique de Paris in France in May 2024, being the youngest ever to win the Prix Cortot. Other recent highlights include being in the Fondation Louis Vuitton’s New Generation Piano series 2022-2023, and receiving the First Prize and audience award in the 18th Animato International Chopin Competition in February 2024.
At the Grand Final, Ryan performed one of the most popular works in the piano repertoire, Rachmaninov’s Second Piano Concerto, accompanied by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales conducted by Ben Gernon.
He impressed the judging panel, comprising trumpeter Alison Balsom, pianist and composer Alexis Ffrench, and multi-instrumentalist and broadcaster Hannah Catherine Jones.
The BBC Young Musician 2024 Grand Final was filmed on Tuesday 24 September at Bristol Beacon. The other finalists were violinist Shlomi Shahaf (17), born in Israel and raised in Ukraine, currently studying at the Purcell School, and Jacky Zhang (16) from Surrey, a piano and composition student at the Royal College of Music.
From left to right: Jess Gillam, Jacky Zhang, Shlomi Shahaf, Ryan Wang, Alexis Ffrench, Alison Balson, Hannah Catherine Jones.
Previous BBC Young Musician winners include celebrated classical music stars such as cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason, violinist Nicola Benedetti, and clarinettist Mark Simpson.
Watch the whole Finals on BBCiPlayer.
Photos: © BBC/Betsan Evans