Bolzano Festival Bozen 2026 - Zhonghua Wei

Zhonghua Wei — Lunch Concert
Senior Jury Prize – 65th Busoni Competition 2025

The Ferruccio Busoni International Piano Competition presents, as part of the Busoni Festival, a concert series bringing together the prize winners of the 2025 edition and young pianists awarded at other international competitions affiliated with the World Federation of International Music Competitions. These concerts serve as a bridge between the competition circuit and the launch of an international career, offering a window onto today's young pianistic talent.

The featured performer of this concert is Zhonghua Wei, winner of the Senior Jury Prize at the 65th Busoni Competition 2025. His programme ranges from German Romanticism to the virtuosic world of Liszt, and on to the music of Sergei Bortkiewicz, a Ukrainian-German composer of the early twentieth century.

The series includes two further concerts: Aristo Sham, winner of the 1st prize at the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition 2025 — one of the most prestigious piano competitions in the world — opens the festival with a programme centred on the dialogue between original and arrangement, featuring transcriptions by Ferruccio Busoni of works by Bach, Brahms and Chopin, and noted for his stylistic versatility, richness of tone and architectural clarity. At the end of August, Nikola Meeuwsen, winner of the 1st prize at the Queen Elisabeth Competition (piano), will perform a programme ranging from Bach's Partita No. 1 in B flat major and Haydn's Variations in F minor to Ravel's Le Tombeau de Couperin and Beethoven's Sonata No. 23 in F minor, the "Appassionata".

Programme:

Franz Schubert
Fantasie in C major D. 760, "Wanderer"

Franz Liszt
Two Concert Études S. 145
1. Waldesrauschen
2. Gnomenreigen

Franz Liszt
From Années de pèlerinage, Deuxième Année — Italie:
Sonetto 104 del Petrarca S. 161 No. 5

Sergei Bortkiewicz
Piano Sonata No. 2 in C sharp minor Op. 60