The 21-year-old Japanese violinist Koshiro Takeuchi was crowned winner of the Montreal International Musical Competition, at the end of a grand final largely dominated, like the day before, by his compatriot Sara Watanabe, who finished second.
The shortest jokes are the best. In terms of comic relief, the 2026 edition of the Concours musical international de Montréal will definitely have considered that it was necessary to make things last.
After the selection of the finalists on Wednesday, Thursday’s gag was the choice of the winner. Koshiro Takeuchi and Sara Watanabe are two excellent violinists, but it only takes a few bars to realize Sara Watanabe’s superiority on all levels: the sonorous presence is immediately striking; the G string is present, warm and nourished; the sentences constantly make sense; the musicality is imperious and imperial.
The great Watanabe
Sara Watanabe, who was fortunately awarded the Mozart prize (as consolation, the Turkish Bade Dastan won the public prize), also took an immense risk by choosing the 2e Concerto by Bartók. The work is almost impossible to put together in the short preparation time allotted. It is difficult for everyone, and the OSM had not played it for quite a while. Hats off to the orchestra and conductor Sascha Goetzel for making it all work.
It is true that Watanabe exuded such serenity that it was astonishing. It’s quite infuriating to remember that the modest pianist Fejervari once won the First Prize for his original and daring choice of 3e Concerto pour piano de Bartókwhich he had nevertheless played more than banally, while Watanabe failed with the 2e Violin Concerto which she executed wonderfully, with confidence and panache, notably doing justice to the oppositions of climate (risoluto / calmo) and the dynamic differences. We wondered how the First Prize could escape him. Well, the First Prize escaped him!
The two other candidates were exactly like what we had heard and anticipated the day before, with an improvement for Takeuchi, panicked by Mozart and freer in Tchaikovsky. The young man is very easy to decode: he is the top of the class, and he finished first in this class too.
There is, as in Mozart, here and there this tic of sentences which culminate without culminating, a bit as if when eating a cake we put it back in its box in the fridge. THE nerd Takeuchi has a superlative bowing technique, which allows him to play very quickly whenever he wants; what he does with it, however, is harmless and without relief. The G string is bland, there is no body, no matter, no harmonic density. It’s bouncy music, technically accomplished but without interest.
The Robert Trempe Prize
As for Laurel Gagnon, we will recall that her Mozart was burdened by all the limitations that we described the day before, but he found a jury to say “we want to hear that in Brahms”. And believe us, they heard it!
The building began to wobble when Gagnon missed measures 159 and 160 of 1is movement. Then, we had the random sequence of intonation approximations that we feared, both in the sequence of 1is movement, in the treble of the second and in the Finale (measures 97, 163, 237 / 238, etc.). As a result, the jury could not do anything other than rank this candidate in 3rd place. Still: we were deprived of Dastan or Zhang in the final, without returning to others previously.
Speaking of going back in time, we were delighted to see again, Thursday evening during the break, some members of the “up-and-coming jury”, violin students from various institutions in Montreal and Toronto whom we had met on May 28 to discuss judgment and criticism.
At the end of the first round, this jury awarded the Robert-Trempe prize. We recommended that these young people pay attention to the musical personality of the candidates. Their choice fell on the Dutchwoman Charlotte Spruit, eliminated by the “regular” jury in the first round. On Thursday, we expressed to these young musicians our sincere admiration for the courage and foresight of this judicious choice. Charlotte Spruit was one of the few real “characters” in this competition (along with, as we have said, Michael Germer).
This Robert-Trempe prize, the most modest in prize money, is, with the public prize and the Mozart prize, the one which does the most honor to this strange “Violin 2026” edition.
