Dénes Várjon Gets Prestigious ICMA Award
For his CD recorded with Tabea Zimmermann and Jörg Widmann, Dénes Várjon received the prestigious International Classical Music Award (ICMA). The prize was handed over to the great Hungarian pianist at a festive gala concert in Lucerne's KKL Concert Hall on the 10th of May.

The International Classical Music Award has been awarded since 2011. ICMA is the successor to the Cannes Classical Awards (later called MIDEM Classical Awards). The jury includes music critics from prestigious magazines Andante, Crescendo, Fono Forum, Gramofon, Kultura, Musica, Rondo Classic, Scherzo and others, as well as from radio stations MDR Kultur (Germany), Orpheus Radio (Russia), Radio 100.7 (Luxembourg), International Music and Media Centre (Austria), the Resmusica.com website (France) and Radio Classic (Finland).

Awards are presented in 16 categories. This year the winners were selected from 316 CDs nominated in different categories. With jury members coming from 17 different countries the award is one of the most prestigious distinctions in classical music.

ICMA President Remy Franck said: "Only an international jury like ours can choose such an impressive, international range of winners, with productions from 18 labels and eight different countries. I am particularly happy that our jury does not only focus on long-established musicians, but also closely monitors a wide variety of labels, allowing the discovery of outstanding recordings by young artists, like the ones we have this year with Elsa Dreisig, our Young Artist of the Year 2017, with violinist Chouchane Siranossian and cellist Christoph Heesch. This proves again that at the ICMA less well-known musicians and smaller independent labels also have a chance. For us, only musical quality and integrity are important."