Oberlin is a destination spot for students worldwide seeking the intellectual vitality of a liberal arts education combined with a professional music school of the highest caliber. Indeed, the Washington Post pronounced Oberlin a “national treasure.”

Every year, dozens of international students matriculate at the Conservatory, which holds auditions throughout Asia as well as the United States.  Some of these students form their first impressions about Oberlin by competing in its annual international piano competition. This July, the first-prize winner, Ruoyo Huang, a 16-year-old pianist from Sichuan, China, actually had an advance view; he performed in a master class for Professor of Piano Robert Shannon when a contingent of Oberlin faculty went to China in January for a cultural exchange.

The finals round took place Saturday evening, July 30, in the Conservatory's Warner Concert Hall. Huang received a cash award of $4,000 as well as the Audience Favorite Award of $100.

Second prize and $1,500 went to Korean-born Sun-A Park, 17, of Little Ferry, New Jersey. The third-place award of $1,000 went to Fangzhou Feng, 15, of Shenyang, China.  Hanmo Qian, 18, of Sichuan, China, won the fourth place prize of $500. Chinese-born Vicki Ning Wang, 18, of Richmond Hill, Ontario, Canada, won the fifth-place prize of $200. Qian and Wang will attend Oberlin this fall, both of them studying with Associate Professor of Piano Angela Cheng.

Judges for the finals round were Dean of the Conservatory David H. Stull, Oberlin Professor of Piano Sanford Margolis, Professor Matti Raekallio of the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, Finland, and Professor Mykola Suk of the University of Nevada in Las Vegas.

The competition has, from its inception, included noted pedagogues and performers from around the world. Notable artist/teachers who have judged and taught at the competition and festival include Li Ming Qiang of China; Soo-Jung Shin from Seoul, Korea; Che Chen Wang,  from Shanghai; Menahem Pressler, Yoheved Kaplinsky, Martin Canin, Robert Weirich, and Jerome Lowenthal.

Of course, prominent teachers of younger students are also invited to lecture and judge — people such asGary Amano, Emilio del Rosario, Hans Boepple , and John Weems.

Internationally known musicologists have given symposia on Beethoven, Chopin, Schubert, and others. Managers have given career-counseling sessions. Oberlin faculty member and fortepianist David Breitman has presented a frequent series of concerts and lectures on original instruments and what they teach us about performance practice in the classical era. In addition, there is an active piano pedagogy series run by some of the most famous names in that field: Tinka Knopf, Marvin Blickenstaff, Edna Golandsky, Stewart Gordon, and others.

All contestants are required to submit a program of at least 40 minutes duration, including at least four selections.  Of those four, one must be a classical sonata or sonata movement. Another must be a short lyrical work chosen from a list of six compositions by Mendelssohn and Chopin. The other two selections are at the discretion of the performers.

Anything goes, and there have often been many unusual choices; 20th century (and 21st century) music is increasingly common. The biggest challenges in the piano repertory — Opus 111 of Beethoven, Gaspard de la Nuit by Ravel, and the Brahms' Paganini Variations, for example, long ago became common at youth competitions. Still, the competition's director Robert Shannon believes that the required lyrical works (usually only two to three minutes long and containing no overt virtuosity), are incredibly demanding and revealing — a true measure of artistic maturity.

Ruoyo Huang secured his first-place and audience- favorite prizes by performing Fantaise, Op. 49 by Frédéric Chopin and the first movements of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Sonata, K. 576, Igor Stravinsky's Petrouchka, and Robert Schumann's Fantaise, Op. 17. Huang, who began studying piano at the age of four, is now a student of Professor Zheng Daxin at the Sichuan Conservatory of Music.

Second-place winner Sun-A Park performed Chopin's Étude Op. 25, No. 7, Ludwig van Beethoven's Sonata Op. 2, No.3, Sergei Prokoviev's Sonata No. 7 in B-flat Major, Op.83, and Johannes Brahms' Variations on a Theme by Paganini, Book II, Op. 35.

Fangzhou Feng, who came in third, played Franz Joseph Haydn's Sonata in E Major, Hob. IVI, 31; the number 4, 15, 16, 17, and 24 Preludes, Op. 28, by Chopin as well as his études, Op. 10, No. 2, and Op. 25, No. 7; and the first movement of Prokoviev's Sonata No. 6, Op. 82.

The fourth-prize winner, Hanmo Qian, performed works by Mozart, Debussy, Rachmaninoff, Chopin, and Liszt. Vicki Ning Wang, who came in fifth, played works by Beethoven and Alberto Ginastera.

As is the competition's protocol, the finalists are told only moments before walking onstage what pieces from their repertoire they are to play for the judges.

All but one of the finalists performed on Oberlin's Hannan Hamburg Steinway; Ruoyo Huang chose the New York Steinway.

The finals round was broadcast live on 104.9 WCLV, northeast Ohio's classical music station, and simulcast on the Internet at wclv.com thanks to the sponsorship of the Riverside Company, a leading private equity firm specializing in premier companies. The president of WCLV, Robert Conrad, served as master of ceremonies for the evening.