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Stories   >   Classical Guitar reports from 7th Changsha International Guitar Festival

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Classical Guitar reports from 7th Changsha International Guitar Festival

Posted: August 6, 2018

This was the 7th Festival in Changsha, which saw a marked increase in international participants over previous years. The competition was a main feature, and there were over 30 participants from around the world taking part. This made the Changsha Festival the largest competition in China in 2018, a vast improvement on the previous year's showing, in view of the valuable prizes awarded. Two of the finalists had already appeared in the final of this year's GFA (Guitar Foundation of America) competition. Finalists in order were:

1st Ji Hyung Park (Korea)

2nd Giacomo Susani (Italy)

3rd Bokyung Byun (Korea)

4th Hao Yang (China)

5th Lazhar Cherouana (France)

6th Zifei Wang (China)

Winner of the composition competition was Konstantin Vassiliev

This year, there were a number of visiting guests from all over the world, as well as the artistic director of the festival, Xuefei Yang. The concerts were all of the highest quality, and included two guitar duos as well as contemporary acoustic guitar and flamenco dance. The first evening kicked off with Xuefei Yang, who presented an impeccably played Spanish program that included music by Albéniz, Granados and Rodrigo, but also featured some pieces by flamenco guitarists Nino Ricardo, Paco Peña and Paco de Lucía. An outstanding feature of this program was the participation of a fiery flamenco dancer, Maria Vega, who added visual meaning to some of the well-known pieces played by Xuefei.

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