Teenage violinist wins BBC Young Musician 2026, after first all-female final — SkimNews
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- Sofia Demetriades, an 18-year-old from Leicestershire and a first-year undergraduate at the Royal Academy of Music, won BBC Young Musician 2026 with Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto in the first all-female final in the competition’s 48-year history.
- Sofia Demetriades advanced from several hundred video applications to 40 live auditions at Bath Spa University and one of eight quarter-final places; the quarter-final took place on her 18th birthday.
- Joanna MacGregor, Ben Gernon and Errollyn Wallen praised Demetriades’s performance of Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto for “insights, poetry and maturity”; MacGregor called her “simply extraordinary.”
- Alma Nunez Debretzeni, 17, reached the final as a recorder player and performed Graham Fitkin’s Recorder Concerto with six recorders, from a 1.6-metre contrabass to the tiniest sopranino; she said the contest made her want to pursue music after planning to study psychology, calling it “literally life-changing.”
- Kezia Colton, an 18-year-old saxophone player, performed Takashi Yoshimatsu’s 1994 Cyber Bird Saxophone Concerto in the final; 2022 overall winner Jordan Ashman joined her onstage.
- Sylvester Maschi, 14, became the first accordion player to reach the competition’s final stages and was one of Demetriades’s fellow quarter-finalists.
- BBC Young Musician awards its winner £3,000 toward music studies plus recording and Radio 3 broadcast opportunities, including with a BBC ensemble; all three finalists will work with Young Classical Artists Trust on managing their careers.
Why it matters: Demetriades receives £3,000 toward music studies plus recording and Radio 3 broadcast opportunities, giving the 18-year-old concrete support as she begins her first undergraduate year at the Royal Academy of Music. All three finalists will also work with Young Classical Artists Trust on managing their careers, extending the competition’s practical benefits beyond the winner’s £3,000 award.
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