Enrica Cicarelli, juror at the 2025 Olga Kern Competition, commented on this year's edition:
It is the second time for me at the Olga Kern Competition since 2019, and it has been a very interesting competition. There should have been 22 competitors at the first round, but some of them withdrew, so we started out with 17. The level was rather good, with some very interesting talents, many of them from Asia, or from the US but of Asian descent. As for the repertoire, we listened to a lot of Rachmaninov because of Olga Kern’s heritage- a wonderful side of this competition.
As far as organisation goes- everything was very well organised and people would really feel welcome in Albuquerque. A lot of that has to do with Olga’s personality: she has such a strong personality and an enormous amount of energy which really makes things easier. She is also really well connected in Albuquerque- whether its donors or host families, people love her here and are proud of her coming back to the city. She performs regularly with the New Mexico Philharmonic, which is of course also the competition’s partner and is a very good orchestra.
Programming in this competition is quite free, but this year it included a mandatory piece written by Olga Kern herself- a great addition to the repertoire, very demanding, very tricky but really interesting.
The jury this year was also a wonderful group to work with. We spend a lot of time together, we eat and drink together, but like other competitions, we are not talking about candidates- period. The voting system is quite simple- we give a score from one to five- and works very well. The winners get invitations to Italy, to South Africa, and of course to perform with the New Mexico Philharmonic. There is also a CD recording for Steinway.
