The pianist Vsevolod Zavidov wins the 2025 “Prix UBS Jeunes Solistes” Award
Vsevolod Zavidov has been named winner of the renowned “Prix UBS Jeunes Solistes” Award for 2025. The pianist prevailed against two other soloists as well as two ensembles at yesterday’s finale at the Lucerne School of Music, winning over the jury with his performance of works by Domenico Scarlatti, Ludwig van Beethoven, Frédéric Chopin, György Ligeti, Maurice Ravel, and Igor Stravinsky.
The “Prix UBS Jeunes Solistes,” which includes a cash prize of CHF 25,000, has been awarded to highly talented young musicians every two years since 2001. In addition to the prize money, the award includes a performance in the Debut series at Lucerne Festival. Vsevolod Zavidov’s prizewinner concert will take place on 21 August 2025 during the Summer Festival; program details will follow at a later date.
Vsevolod Zavidov was born in Moscow in 2005 and began his musical education at the age of four. Since the fall of 2023, he has been studying with Nelson Goerner at the Haute école de musique de Genève, where he is pursuing a master’s degree in Specialized Musical Performance for Soloists. In 2016, at the age of ten, Zavidov made his US solo debut at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall in New York. Another milestone was his debut in August 2023 on the main stage of the Festival International de Piano in La Roque d’Anthéron. His competition successes include first prize at the Concertino Praga (2020) and the Gina Bachauer International Junior Piano Competition in Salt Lake City (2021). In April 2024, he stepped in for Khatia Buniatishvili to perform Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto with the Taiwan Philharmonic under Jun Märkl in Basel.
“The fact that the finals bring together artists in different formations and with a variety of instruments is what distinguishes the ‘Prix UBS Jeunes Solistes’ from other music competitions. The award recognizes musical personalities from the Swiss conservatoire scene who are unique in the quality and presence of their artistic performance,” explains Valentin Gloor, jury chairman and President of the Conference of Swiss Universities of Music (CSUM), as well as director of the Lucerne School of Music.
“Vsevolod Zavidov thrilled the jury and won them over through his impressive performance of his program. I am delighted to be able to introduce him to our festival audience at his Debut concert next summer and thus to support a step in his international career,” says jury member and Lucerne Festival’s Executive and Artistic Director Michael Haefliger.
The “Prix UBS Jeunes Solistes” is a joint initiative of Lucerne Festival, the CSUM, and UBS. Each music academy was able to nominate a maximum of two candidates for the semi-final, which took place at the Bern Academy of the Arts at the end of October. Three soloists and two ensembles qualified for the final in Lucerne: alongside the winner Vsevolod Zavidov, the cellist Vilém Vlček, the violist Kinga Wojdalska, the Thalia Quartet, and the ensemble Ossian’s Dream competed against each other. The jury included Valentin Gloor and Michael Haefliger; cellist and former winner of the “Prix UBS Jeunes Solistes” Sol Gabetta; and Xavier Dayer (Director of the Music Department at Zurich University of the Arts), Rico Gubler (Head of the Music Department at Bern Academy of the Arts), and Noémie Robidas (General Director of the Haute École de Musique Vaud Valais Fribourg), who represented the Swiss music academies.