Israeli pianist Yaron Kohlberg, 24, received the $25,000 second prize and the special Contemporary Prize of $1,500. His repertoire included Beethoven's Concerto No. 5, Bach's Prelude and Fugue in E major (from Book Two of The Well-Tempered Clavier), Prokofiev's Sonata No. 8 and Schumann's Davidsbundlert‹nze. He trained at the Tel Aviv and Jerusalem Academies, and won first prize in the 2006 Israel Radio Young Artists Competition in Jerusalem.
The $15,000 third prize was awarded to Manhattan School of Music alumnus Alexander Moutouzkine, 27, of Russia. The laureate of the 2004 New Orleans and Iturbi International Piano Competitions, he performed Beethoven's "Waldstein" Sonata, Dallapiccola's Sonata canonica [after Paganini], Haydn's Sonata Hob. XVI: 46, Liszt's B Minor Sonata and Tchaikovsky's Concerto No. 1, among others. Moutouzkine also received the $2,000 Beethoven Prize and a $1,000 prize from a Junior Jury comprising local teenaged pianists.
Fourth Prize, $10,000, was awarded to Ran Dank, a 25-year-old Israeli Juilliard graduate. A friend and former classmate of Kohlberg, he performed Boulez's Douze notations, two Chopin polonaises, six Debussy etudes, Mozart's Sonata K. 570, Rachmaninoff's Concerto No. 2, and others. Dank also received the $1,000 Baroque Prize.
The Cleveland International Piano Competition is biennial. Its 2005 winners were Chu-Fang Huang, Sergey Kuznetsov, Stanislav Khristenko and Spencer Myer.
