The KEW Piano 2025 announced the names of the twelve finalists who will give their best from 26 to 31 May at the Brussels Palais des Beaux-Arts. Our fellow countryman Valère Burnon is one of the twelve.
The twelve finalists• Rachel Breen
• Valère Burnon
• Arthur Hinnewinkel
• Wataru Hisasue
• Mirabelle Kajenjeri
• Masaya Kamei
• Shiori Kuwahara
• Nikola Meeuwsen
• Nathalia Milstein
• Jiaxin Min
• Sergey Tanin
• Yuki Yoshimi
On the Queen Elisabeth Competition website you can find the profiles of the finalists: .
Final programmeAccording to tradition, during the final week (from Monday 26 to Saturday 31 May at 20.15 hours) two of the twelve pianists perform in the Henry Le Boeuf Hall of Bozar accompanied by the Brussels Philharmonic under the direction of Kazushi Ono. The order of performance of the finalists (pdf) and their programme can also be found on the KEW website.
Each finalist performs the unpublished compulsory work by Kris Defoort, Music for the Heart, which was written especially for the final of this piano session (world premiere on Monday 26 May 2025) and a concerto of their choice. The candidates receive the score of the compulsory work on the day they enter the Music Chapel, which means they have exactly one week to prepare this composition. Composer Kris Defoort on his compulsory work "Can life itself, the sometimes so intense reality of the 'now' be captured in music? Kris Defoort does it with his piano concerto Music for the Heart. Memories, images, scents, encounters but also inspiration from films, books, concerts – in short: the full richness of the arts – form the foundation for a carefully crafted composition, beating like a vital pulsing yet at the same time so fragile heart. Music for the Heart is an intuitively created work. Gliding in from nothing, starting from silence, improvisation forms the very first seed. Playing with rhythmic timbres, meaning slowly emerges, a musical core that Defoort deepens day after day, analyzes and lets grow in endless variations. Like a living, transforming organism, the music grows into a balanced composition – a piano concerto. From the heart of this concerto speaks... a character. The HEART, as the central musical line, stands for that which pushes the blood through our mortal body, but also, on a more spiritual level, for that which connects us with other hearts, other beings, with the earth itself." https://www.krisdefoort.com/ Saturday evening 31 May the proclamation takes place after the last candidate has defended themselves. Usually around midnight the result is known. Those who cannot attend the competition in person, and that applies to the vast majority, can follow or re-watch the competition live via various channels. Here is a list with the overview of broadcasts (pdf) Final jury Gilles Ledure (chair), Imogen Cooper, François-Frederic Guy, Daejin Kim, Momo Kodama, Denis Kozhukhin, Laura Mikkola, Steven Osborne, Jorge Luis Prats, Anne Queffélec, Tamara Stefanovich, Jean-Claude Vanden Eynden, Anna Vinnitskaya, Boyan Vodenitcharov and Lilya Zilberstein.