Stephen Hough leads relaunched Leeds Piano Competition | classical music

The Leeds International Piano Competition will be relaunched under the artistic direction of Sir Stephen Hough. The pianist is leading important reforms in the triennial competition that first began in 1963. He will also chair an international jury that includes fellow pianists Piotr Andrzejski, Lukasz Debargue, Yul-Um Son, and Katherine Stott, and the King’s music master, composer Erroline Wallen.

The age limit for the 2027 competition will be raised to 35, and competitors will have complete freedom to choose the music they perform, whether it’s Couperin, Copland, Boulez or Busoni.

“I never wanted to be on a jury, and I don’t like competitions,” Hough said. “It can feel like a bunch of auditions where you’re trying to one-up the competition. That’s not what music is about. But I thought, in Leeds, maybe there’s something a little different we could do here, and find a way to give young musicians a platform to show us who they are. Everyone’s not good at everything.”

“Often, competitions become an extension of your final exam at music college. But we want to know what you’re going to program when you’re asked to make your debut at Wigmore Hall or Carnegie Hall? Give us a program, show us the best side of you so we can see the best in you, not an average kind of the best half at everything.”

For the Final Concerto, the finalists will submit three piano concertos (again, any one, rather than choosing from a pre-selected list) that they will be happy to perform with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra and its principal conductor Domingo Hindoyan. Hendoyan, Hough and one of his fellow jurors will choose which work they would like to hear in the final play.

Raising the age limit – most competitions limit the age of competitors to under 30 – is another innovation. “It doesn’t mean we’re necessarily expecting a lot of 33- to 34-year-olds to come in – although we certainly welcome them to do so,” says Hogg. “But I wanted to send a message to the young players that there is no rush about this. Don’t feel like you have to suddenly compete before you get older. You have time.

“It comes from something my principal piano teacher Gordon Green said to me when I was a teenager, ‘I’m not interested in the way you play now. But the way it plays in 10 years is what interests me.”

Hough was born in Wirral and studied at the Royal Northern College of Music. He said: “Since my childhood I have been in awe of the Leeds match. It was an exciting, elusive goal that had the entire nation glued in front of the television to watch the best piano playing.” The finals of the competition were broadcast live on BBC Two; In recent years, BBC Radio 3 has broadcast the finals and semi-finals, and in partnership with Medici TV the final rounds are broadcast live and available when you catch up. The content will also be available on Leeds’ YouTube channel and leedspiano.com.

Previous winners of the esteemed competition include Radu Lobo and Murray Perahia, and finalists include Mitsuko Uchida, Sir András Schiff, Lars Vogt and Federico Colli. Only two women have won the competition – Sofia Gulyak in 2009 and Anna Tsibuleva in 2015, both Russian-born. Even in recent years, Leeds’ Championship finals have been dominated by male players. The blind hearing was introduced for Leeds’ first round in 2024 and will remain so for the 2027 competition.

“We have to keep those things in mind and make sure there’s no unconscious bias, that we’re not tipping things towards any one style,” says Hogg, adding that “by the time you get to 20-year-olds on stage in Leeds, in a way, it’s too late to think in terms of balance and representation. It has to start early, with parents and schools.”

Alongside the main prize of £50,000, there will be awards for contemporary music, most outstanding appearance, a new Leeds Piano Trail Award (for a compelling vision for a community-focused project to be developed and delivered in 2028), and an Audience Award. “If the public disagrees with the jury, that would be a positive for me,” Hogue said. “This is not a test, but a platform. I want to get away from the idea that there is one winner. Choosing a winner is imprecise and subjective. On a different day, a different jury might reach a different result.

“Leeds put itself on the map for imagination, for poetry, for a profound kind of music. And that’s still there,” he said. “In the end, we just want to find someone who changes our lives while performing.”