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Joyeux 20e anniversaire, CIMCL!

Competitions

The Lyon International Chamber Music Competition celebrates its 20th anniversary in style!

This year, the CIMCL celebrates the 20th edition of its chamber music competition. A member of the WFIMC since 2008, the competition has gone from strength to strength, with innovative proposals and an increasingly warm welcome from candidates and audiences alike.

After pre-selections which showed that there is a real passion and richness of interpretation for melodies, Lieder and songs, 17 piano-voice duos were invited to express their particular sensibility during the semi-finals in Lyon. 
The competition took place in the magnificent amphitheatre of the University of Lyon, under an evocative fresco illustrating an eloquence contest in ancient Greece.

The semi-finals were presented as a mini-festival, over three days and in two 30-minute performances for each ensemble. They revealed the very different sensibilities of the musicians, with interpretations that were sometimes highly personal, making the task of the jurors a difficult one. The Jury, led by mezzo-soprano Bernarda Fink, praised the determination of the candidates, whose drive for perfection in interpretation was sublime. In the end, it selected three ensembles that particularly enthralled the audience:

 

Duo Vert, 1st Prize winners

The Duo Vert, featuring Jeeyoung Lim, a magnificent bass-baritone, sublimely expressive and moving, served by the eloquence of pianist Cole Knutson, revealed their ease in French melodies (Duparc's remarkable Vie Antérieure), German Lieder (Brahms sensitive), Isangyun and Rachmaninoff, whose beautiful musicality touched the audience. Their final repertoire, ranging from Grieg to Yves, including Copeland and his formidably spirited Boatman's Dance, thrilled the audience. But it was in the more profound pieces by Guy Ropartz and Gabriel Fauré that the soft, round voice, nurtured by the interwoven sounds of the piano's complicity, convinced the speechless audience as well as the Jury.

Duo Nuvoletta is Joanna Kacperek on piano and Clara Barbier Serrano on vocals. A sublime voice, with enveloping high notes supported by perfect diction in every possible language; the voice is full, nourished and elevated by an invested, storytelling piano: the obvious complicity of the two musicians moved the audience.  The inspired program skillfully blended darker arias with lighter waltzes. In the Final, the duo's bright, dapper accents dazzled the audience, who awarded them their prize, with the Jury awarding the female duo 2nd prize. Last but not least, Duo Nuvoletta was awarded the Prix Belle-Saison, a project involving ten or so engagements in fifteen or so venues throughout France!

Duo Nuvoletta, 2nd Prize and Audience Prize

Duo Musubi, 3rd Prize

The Musubi Duo finished the competition in third place. Although they were favourites in the previous round, Yui Nanasawa, a vibrant, highly expressive soprano with a full voice and ethereal high notes, and Kishin Nagai, who makes the piano sing so beautifully, did not fall short in the Final. Thanks to their daring interpretation, the promising pair also won the Prize for best performance of Chants du Déversoir, a compulsory piece specially commissioned from composer Jean-Patrick Besingrand, based on poems by Arthur Teboul. 

Duo Vert performing at the Finals

Laureates :

1st Prize : Duo Vert – Jeeyoung Lim, bariton & Cole Knutson, piano

2nd Prize: Duo Nuvoletta – Clara Barbier Serrano, soprano & Joanna Kacperek, piano

3rd Prize: Duo Musubi – Yui Nanasawa, soprano & Kishin Nagai, piano

Jury :

Bernarda Fink, mezzo-soprano (chair); Markus Hadulla, pianist; Dietrich Henschel, bariton; Susan Manoff, pianist; Mark Padmore, tenor; Chantal Santon-Jeffery, soprano

Artists:

Musicians from the Orchestra of the Lyon Opera: Nicolas Gourbeix and Julia Bitar, violins; Gabriel Defever, viola; Marie Girbal, cello.

 

© WFIMC2025/SB