Maxim Kinasov takes a bow after his finals’ performance in the 2019 HIPCC (photo: John Cole).

An evening in with HIPCC prizewinner Maxim Kinasov

In the days of the coronavirus, we cannot attend live music performances, but we can turn to the web. Hastings International Piano Concerto Competition has launched a series of short online concerts to help fill the gap. Competition prizewinner Maxim Kinasov will be performing Franck-Bauer and Rachmaninov tomorrow, Friday, evening at 7pm. Nick Terdre reports.

The ban on live concerts not only deprives audiences of an evening’s entertainment and edification, but also deprives the musicians of a valuable source of work. The organiser of Hastings International Piano Concerto Competition acknowledges the situation and hopes to ameliorate it.

“In these times when the livelihood of our musicians is at risk, we are launching this series to support the careers of our prizewinners and will be paying them a performance fee,” it says.

The series, entitled An Evening In With…, will feature a number of prizewinners and contestants, including this week Maxim Kinasov, who took second prize in last year’s competition. He will be playing the Prelude, Fugue and Variation, Op. 18, by Franck-Bauer and the Etude-Tableau in C minor, Op. 33 No. 3, by Rachmaninov.

The concerts are free to view, but viewers are invited to make a voluntary donation to the Hastings International Piano Engagement Fund, or to consider becoming a Friend of HIPCC.

In addition to taking second place and being awarded the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra Prize at last year’s competition in Hastings, Kinasov enjoyed a very successful year in 2019, winning first prize and a special jury mention at the Cantù International Piano Concerto Competition in Italy, and the runner’s-up prize at the Bromsgrove International Musicians Competition in the UK.

He also completed his Master of Music in Performance degree, with Distinction, at the Royal Northern College of Music and played in the college’s Gold Medal Winners concert at Wigmore Hall in the spring, having won its Gold Medal award the previous year, made his full-length solo debut at Wigmore Hall in October and was selected as a Kirckman Concert Society Artist for 2019-20.

The first concert in HIPCC’s series, which passed HOT by, was given last week by Roman Kosyakov, who won first prize in 2018 and, like Kinasov, is Russian.

Earlier this month the organiser brought the first Hastings International Piano Festival to a successful conclusion.

An Evening In With…Maxim Kinasov Friday 27 March, 7pm. View it on Facebook or the HIPCC website. 

Donations can be made here and more information on becoming a Friend is here.

See also Second-placed Maxim Kinasov talks of his life in music

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