Roman Kosyakov was one of nine Russian pianists the Dublin International Piano Competition barred in March 2022. The board re-invited all countries in April; he took third prize in May.
Nine Russian pianists were excluded from the Dublin International Piano Competition (DIPC), "out of the 65 originally scheduled to take part", The Irish Times reported on 11 March 2022, in an article by Ronan McGreevy. The article named them, "according to the website thepianoleague.com", as Sergey Belyavskiy, Arseniy Gusev, Maxim Kinasov, Roman Kosyakov, Arsenii Mun, Ilya Shmukler, Vitaly Starikov, Arseny Tarasevich-Nikolaev and Dmitry Yudin.
In March 2022 the DIPC said it understood that many musicians do not support the war, "but in light of Russia's actions, we will be unable to include competitors from Russia in the 2022 competition".
The Irish Times article quoted Kosyakov, writing on Instagram: "I'm just curious, how will this help to stop the war". It quoted Mun, writing on Facebook: "People should know, being from Russia does NOT mean that we are taking part in such decisions!"
The same article reported that the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in Texas kept its Russian entrants, saying it did not regard them as "officials of their government".
The World Federation of International Music Competitions (WFIMC), of which the DIPC is a member, published an undated statement on Russian and Belarussian candidates asking member organizations "not to discriminate against and exclude any young and gifted artists from participating in their competitions"; that statement does not name the Dublin competition.
The DIPC board then reversed the decision. In a statement whose archived page carries the timestamp 4 April 2022, the board said it "condemns the flagrant violation of international law by the Russian authorities" and "also recognize[s] that individual artists cannot be punished for the actions of their State". Citing the WFIMC statement, it decided "to re-extend the invitation to participate in the Quarter-Finals of this year's Competition to competitors from all countries, including Russia".
The competition ran from 17 to 24 May 2022. Kosyakov took third prize and the Bridget Doolan Prize for the best performance of a piece by Mozart, The Journal of Music reported on 25 May 2022, in an article republished by RTE Culture. The same report said the ban "was subsequently reversed after public criticism". Those two items are one report, not two independent ones.
The DIPC statement page at https://dipc.ie/statement-from-the-dipc/ now returns HTTP 404; its text is preserved at https://web.archive.org/web/20220404181529/https://dipc.ie/statement-from-the-dipc/. No source checked here records whether the other eight pianists competed.
Sources
- The Irish Times, March 2022
Where it stands
Resolved and reversed: the DIPC board re-extended the invitation to competitors from all countries, including Russia, at the quarter-final stage, in a statement whose archived page is timestamped 4 April 2022. Roman Kosyakov, one of the nine, competed in May 2022 and took third prize; what became of the other eight is not recorded in the sources checked. No later correction or retraction was found in any of the cited sources.