Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner An Internet-based Classical Piano Competition

Just wanted to announce that Reddit's r/piano subreddit and the Discord Pinano Server are currently hosting an Internet-based classical piano competition and anyone/everyone is welcome to enter. Deadline for submission is December 31. Contest rules are here. Submission is via video recording and posting of one's entire program taken in one unbroken take. All official video submissions will be available for viewing after the competition runs.

BTW, one Reddit r/piano member has already created a first draft video recording of her program which I linked to in this other PW post over there, so her program is a sample.

Nice! One other place to waste time online... I mean, educate myself further, because that's totally what I'm doing when I'm in front of the computer. Yes yes *nods*

-Nah, seriously, this looks very promising. Thank you

LOL, that is how I feel very often as well.

And the winner of the Classical Division of the First Pinano Discord Piano Competition was just announced by the jury:

vevurka of PianoWorld, Reddit, Twitch, and Discord (@NPhardness)!

And her winning performance is this one which starts with a marvelous performance of Chopin's Ballad No. 1 in G minor, Op. 23:


(I can only imagine that this is difficult for an Internet competition as the competition rules required the entire performance of all consecutive pieces be played in one continuous take without a break in the recording, so correction of errors could only be accomplished through making another ~30 minute recording.)

Here's a Youtube list of all the winning performances in both the Classical and Free Divisions. There will be Gala concert coming up when schedules of the winners are worked out.

Congratulations vevurka! Look forward to your Gala concert!

P.S. A shameless plug for vervurka's live stream: She runs a livestream on Saturday afternoons at 3pm EST at this Twitch link where she takes requests of viewers via her Discord channel and some online request queue. I attended the one on 5 January and she very willingly played my requests which included my favorite piece (La Campanella) and also another wonderful performance of this same Chopin Ballade No. 1 she had entered into the competition.

YES, congratulations!!

Huge congrats!

Thanks so much guys! I am very happy that the reddit/discord communities are starting to host such events for the community. It makes classical piano music more approachable. That is also the reason why I stream on Twitch - some people may say that it is a very weird platform for playing classical piano... But I want to change how young people see the classical music - that it can be performed not only in the concert hall, but it can be also performed at home in a more relaxed fashion. And to make them see that the themes from movies/games/anime have roots there. Since I'm streaming it was quite challenging for me to change my mindset to make my competition recording, because when you stream, mistakes happen, but they just pass through. With the recording they stay... But you all know that. I hope more people will join next community events, the bigger community we have, the more people will come and share passion with us!

Excellent performance, vevurka, very impressive!!! Thanks for sharing! You're clearly very experienced and have lots of hours behind you. Looking forward to hearing more, and how I'd love to hear you on a big 'ol concert grand!

Read the requirements and looks like this is the kind of piano competition to look forward to.

A few years ago, the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. (CBC) hosted a Piano Hero competition 2 years in a row. The contest was open to anybody who is a citizen of Canada regardless of their level of playing. The main problem with the contest was the different levels of playing. There were people who played less changing pieces like "Minuet in G" and similar pieces from the Notebook for Anna M Bach. And people who submitted short pieces like Bach Invention #8. Here you have the top 10% of the group who submitted videos of Chopin nocturnes, Beethoven sonatas or even a movement out of a Rachmaninoff concerto were guaranteed to be in the final. And the ones at the intermediate and the lower levels had no chance of even an honorable mention except their videos are accessible to the public. A contest with different levels of playing should be divided into at least 3 categories (beginner, intermediate, advanced) to give everybody an equal chance of getting a prize.

Well, since this was the "First" Pinano Discord Piano Competition, I'm hoping for a second one myself. But first for the Gala Concert of the winners of this first competition, which is coming soon I imagine. I'll link it here when that happens.

The gala is actually split, since the winners don't have a common timezone (US, EU and Asia...). So the winners will play during the weekly recitals of reddit \r\piano discord.


I think that might be a very good idea to do split categories, I will point that out to jury. There were people who did great job with their level, but they could not make it. It was the first time, so there is a lot of room to improvement... I guess they were more like trying the idea, if it could work out for the society we have on reddit \r\piano and its discord.

In this very next recital in 3 days? Don't these recitals overlap with the time of your own Twitch sessions?


It certainly makes a lot of sense to me to split the Classical and Free Division recitals. They have different audiences.

Were you able to fix your computer?

Wow, at first I couldn’t believe a computer programmer can play that well! I am myself a computer programmer and I also play this ballade but seeing someone play it hundreds of times better made me feel miserable and I experienced such a big envy 😤 But then I read that vevurka actually studied music and has MA in piano and so it makes sense now and I won’t need to abandon my hobby 🥳 Congrats for the well deserved award!