Ukrainian violinist wins 2024 Queen Elizabeth International Competition

On the night of June 2, the name of the winner of one of the most prestigious international music competitions, the Queen Elizabeth Competition, was announced in Brussels. Ukrainian violinist Dmytro Udovychenko, a Kharkiv Specialized Music Boarding School pupil, won the first prize.

This is reported on the competition website.

This is the first time in the history of Ukraine that a Ukrainian violinist gained a victory. He will receive a prize of €25,000.

At the award ceremony, he demonstratively did not shake the hand of one of the jury members — Russian musician Vadym Repin, who received the title of People's Artist of Russia from Putin in 2022. His wife, Svetlana Zakharova, is a member of "United Russia," Russia's ruling party that supported the Russian invasion of the territory of Ukraine.

As emphasized by the jury, Udovychenko brilliantly played at all rounds of the competition. In the final, on the day of his 25th birthday, he performed Dmitri Shostakovich's First Violin Concerto.

After his studies at the Kharkiv Lyceum of Music, Udovychenko continued at leading German universities under the teachers of Boris Harlytskyi and Christian Tetzlaff and has become a laureate of many international violin competitions:

• in 2018, he won the 2nd prize at the Josef Joachim competition,
• in 2022 – the 3rd prize of the Jan Sibelius competition,
• at the Singapore International Violin Competition in 2022 – 1 prize.

The Queen Elizabeth International Music Competition is held annually in various categories.

Ukrainians have already become laureates and winners of this competition, in particular:

• in 2015, Oleksii Semenenko became the laureate of the second prize among violinists;
• in 2022, cellist Oleksii Shadrin became the laureate of the fourth prize.

Queen Elizabeth's competition is supported and attended by Queen Mathilde of Belgium.

We will remind that the folk amateur brass band of the Kharkiv Aviation Institute played for ten hours and set a national record of Ukraine. During the performance, the musicians played almost 100 songs and collected over half a million hryvnias for the Armed Forces of Ukraine.