Su Wen Hsuan, a senior student of the Dept. of Music, recently stood out from many outstanding flute players around the world and won the championship of the open category at the 8th Flute Festival Singapore 2017.In the final, she played Chant de linos by A. Jolivet, a piece that’s rich in style and requires sophisticated technique. She is highly appraised by the judges.
The 8th Flute Festival Singapore was held in Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts. There are two groups of contestants, the junior category and open category. Workshop, masterclass and flute orchestra were held. Goh Tiong Eng was the host, Denis Bouriakov , often referred to as “the Paganini of the flute”, Irina Stachinskaya, Taiwanese Flute player Prof. Chiang Shu-Chun attended as judges.
This festival is highly valued in the world of flute. Participants from Hong Kong, the United States, Russia, Australia, Taiwan, South Korea and other countries joined the first round in sending the recording to the organizer. 20 were selected to participate in the semi-final in Singapore and five made it to the finals. This is an intense competition.
According to Goh Tiong Eng, this year’s competitor are very skilled and talents. It was hard to decide the winner. In the end, Taiwanese players got the runner up in junior group and the champion in open group.
Su choose to play Chant de linos by A. Jolivet, wrote in 1944 for flute and piano. The piece is like ancient Greek mourning chant. The work displays a wide range of techniques including flutter-tonguing, extreme dynamic changes, and irregular phrases. Denis Bouriakov said that Su is a talented flute player and was surprised that she didn’t miss any note.
Su said that she was really honored to get the first prize in her first competition. Her priority was to join the master class and workshops. It was a really wonderful experience to learn from Denis Bouriakov and other renowned flute players.