The winner of the 12th Hamamatsu International Piano Competition is 22-year-old Manami Suzuki
She becomes the first Japanese pianist to win the Competition in Japan. She won not only the First Prize but the Chamber Music Prize and Audience Prize. On behalf of the international Jury, chair Noriko Ogawa presented the awards to Suzuki after her performance of Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No.3 with the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra conducted by Toshiaki Umeda on Sunday evening in front of a packed 2,300-seater audience at the ACT CITY, Hamamatsu.
“This is a huge honour for me. I watched the 10th Hamamatsu Piano Competition on YouTube in 2018 and knew I wanted to enter it one day. I was also hugely inspired by the film based on Riku Onda’s wonderful book Honeybees and Distant Thunder, a fictional tale about a Japanese piano competition (newly-available translated into English). It is quite overwhelming to win but I just want to carry on as before, practising my favourite composers – Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert – and playing as sincerely as I can.”
Born in Osaka, Manami Suzuki started playing the piano at 4. She is currently studying at Tokyo College of Music as a scholarship student. In 2023, she won First Prize at the 92nd Music Competition of Japan and Iwatani audience Award.
As part of her prize, she will receive an extensive concert tour of Japan, a recording on Orchid Classics to coincide with a recital at King’s Place, London on 23rd January, 2026 (arranged by Ikon Arts Management) and further concerts in Paris and Warsaw in the season ahead.