During a prestigious event on Saturday 29 July in Parow, Cape Town, 24-year old pianist Sulayman Human was named overall winner of the national instrumental classical music competition, ATKV-Muziq.
ATKV-Muziq, the biggest and most prestigious classical music competition in Southern Africa, with previous winners including international award-winning pianist Ben Schoeman and Megan-Geoffrey Prins, is an annual contribution of the ATKV towards classical music in South Africa. This is a national classical music competition for young musicians between the ages of 15 and 27, with a total prize money of R180 000 awarded to the winners.
Sulayman, currently a Masters student at the University of Stellenbosch, won the Overall Prize of R65 000. An additional prize of R8 500 for the Best Interpretation of a Baroque or Classical work during the Final Round was also awarded to Sulayman for his rendition Mozart’s Sonata no. 10 in C major, K330; III. Allegretto.
The overall second prize of R32 000 was awarded to Cameron Williams (saxophone) and the overall third prize of R16 000 was awarded to Jeffrey Armstrong (violin).
An additional prize of R8 500 for the Best Interpretation of a South African Composition during the Second Round was awarded to Cameron Williams for his rendition of
- Stephenson’s Introduction and Allegro.
Young adult musicians across Southern Africa were invited to participate in the first round in May this year. The top ten candidates were chosen to take part in the second round. Five finalists were then chosen at the end of the second round to participate in the final round. The remainder of the five finalists (besides Sulayman, Cameron and Jeffrey) were Brain Bae (piano) and Jonathan Mayer (violin), who also performed during the final round.
The Afrikaans national radio station, RSG, was the media partner of ATKV-Muziq this year.