Fuchs placed behind Vitaly Pisarenko from Ukraine and Nino Gvetadze from Georgia at the festival, which was held on April 1-12.
Fuchs studies at the academy under Attila Némethy and Balázs Szokolay. Szokolay "discovered" Fuchs in Ukraine where he has been on the juries of several piano competitions. When he heard Fuchs, Szoklay said he realised she was an "unpolished diamond".
"Only a month before the competition in Utrecht, Angelika won the Yamaha competition, beating the best of her classmates at the Music Academy, so we knew that she was in good form," Szokolay said.
The competition in Utrecht is one of three that bear Liszt's name - the other two are in Weimar and in Budapest. It is held every three years and enjoys a high level of sponsorship. Fuchs competed against other pianists between the ages of 17 and 29 at the competition. In addition to Liszt's B Minor Sonata, which all participants must perform, Fuchs played Liszt transcriptions of Saint Saens's Danse Macabre and Mendelssohn's A Midsummer Night's Dream.
The international jury included Lucas Vis, Janina Fialkowska, Leslie Howard, Igor Roma, Jeffrey Swann, Arie Vardi, Rian de Waal, Oxana Yablonskaya, Kim Mi-Kyung and the Hungarian pianist Károly Mocsári.
Photo: liszt.nl
