Oscar Wong Wins Sydney Eisteddfod Kawai Senior Piano Scholarship

Oscar Wong from the Gold Coast, Queensland has won the Sydney Eisteddfod Kawai Senior Piano Scholarship for 2024 gaining praise from the adjudicators for his renditions of Miriam Hyde’s Forest Stream, Frédéric Chopin Preludes, and selections from Beethoven’s Sonata in E flat-major, Karol Maciej Szymanowski’s Masques and Nikolai Kapustin’s Etudes.

Oscar is currently studying with Professor Katarzyna Popowa-Zydroń and Paweł Wakarecy at the Feliks Nowowiejski Academy of Music in Bydgoszcz, in Poland. He previously graduated with a Bachelor of Music (with Distinction) from the Queensland Conservatorium, studying with Natasha Vlassenko. 

Oscar has won numerous awards domestically and internationally, including First Prizes in the Antoni Radziwill International Piano Competition (Poland, 2024), International Chopin Competition in ASIA (Japan, 2023), Premio Concurs Elisabeth Tschaikowsky (Switzerland, 2022) and the Lev Vlassenko Piano Competition (2017). As soloist, he has performed concerti by J.S. Bach, Chopin, Schumann, Henze, Mendelssohn, Saint-Saëns and Tchaikovsky. In November, he will be performing Chopin’s E minor Concerto with the AMFN Symphony Orchestra in Poland, under Maestro Michał Dworzyński.   

 The Sydney Eisteddfod Kawai Senior Piano Scholarship was established to discover and encourage promising young pianists, aged 17-26 years, on the cusp of a professional career. It offers a first prize of $12,000 ($2,000 cash plus $10,000 Scholarship) for further study in Australia or overseas.

Adjudicating the scholarship contenders were Vatche Jambazian, Jerry Wong and Konstantin Shamray and a live audience, at St Paul’s College, University of Sydney. The four other finalists were Rachel Shindang (Point Cook, VIC), Anna Gao (Mount Dandenong, VIC) and Tony Lu (Cherrybrook, NSW) selected from 20 of Australia’s most talented emerging pianists.  Former 2021 Scholarship winner Calvin Abdiel, currently studying for Master’s degree in Europe returned to this year’s event as a guest performer, playing Rachmaninoff.