The contest has brought together fourteen quartets from Armenia, Belgium, Finland, France, Italy and Kazakhstan. Performers from every part of Russia represent the host country. These are student quartets from Moscow, St. Petersburg, Kazan, Novosibirsk and Petrozavodsk.
"The event is timed to the Dmitry Shostakovich birth centenary galas," Valentin Berlinsky, top-notch Russian performer and contest jury president, said to a news conference last Thursday.
"The Moscow Conservatory has established its own award for this particular contest," added prominent violinist Vladimir Ivanov. Conservatory orchestra department dean, he is on the jury. The best quartet on which Moscow Conservatory students or alumni appear will have its Smaller Hall for a concert-a generous award.
The winner quartet will also have a concert.
Renowned solo and quartet performers are on the jury-suffice it to mention Marc Danel of Belgium, Italy's Pavel Vernikov, Dominique de Villancourt of France, and several Russians, among them Alexander Galkovsky, Vladimir Ovcharek amd Vladimir Ivanov.
Grand Prix makes 720,000 rubles, roughly $24,000; the second prize 360,000 rubles, or $12,000; and third 280,000 rubles, $9,300.
Established seventeen years ago, the Shostakovich contest launched many quartets into the global limelight. Of special brilliance among them are Russia's Eleonora, Dominant, Mozart and Romantic, The Lark of the U.S., France's Danael, the British Medea, and Italy's Fone Quartet.
