One of the youngest participants, Yonghuan Zhong was on the threshold of a true adventure with music performed on old pianos.'It all started when I paid a visit to my teacher. He has many different pianos. Including period instruments, of course. And it was at his home that I first played on such an instrument and discovered that it was incredibly interesting for me. I decided there and then that I wanted to expand my knowledge of period pianos and instruments. I find it increasingly interesting that I can better understand and approach Chopin's true feelings and thoughts'.
Thus reflected Yonghuan Zhong before the final of the 2nd International Chopin Competition on Period Instruments. He won equal third prize with Angie Zhang. That verdict united--quite tellingly, perhaps symbolically--the Chinese pianist's youthful spontaneity with the far greater experience of an American pianist nine years his senior. In art, a decade's difference is almost a chasm, but sometimes, it seems, opposites do attract. Moreover, they always performed one after the other, in the first session of each round: she with the number 34, he 35.
At the start of the Competition, Yonghuan Zhong was 18 years old and a student of Wojciech Switala at Katowice Music Academy. And it was at Switala's home that he first came across an historical piano.
Despite his young age, Zhong had already won prizes in the International Halina Czerny-Stefanska Competition in 2022 (second) and--a year later--the Arthur Rubinstein Memorial Competition in Bydgoszcz (fourth). In 2021 he took part in the International Fryderyk Chopin Piano Competition for Children and Youngsters in Szafarnia, where he took second place, and even earlier (2020) he won the Vladimir Krainev Competition in Kharkiv and the Ignacy Jan Paderewski Competition in Poznan. So his prize in the 2nd International Chopin Competition on Period Instruments crowned a very good streak for this teenage pianist. Here he plays a variety of works by Chopin, including his Ballade in F major.
