Eurovision Young Musicians 2022 – Montpellier welcomes virtuoso talents on 23 July

On 23 July at 21:00, Eurovision Young Musicians 2022 will take place, Montpellier will bring new talent to the four-decade-old European classical music competition after 4 years.

In total, classical music talent from nine countries will compete for their public broadcaster in the 20th edition of Eurovision Young Musicians 2022 Montpellier. This year’s event is organised by the European Broadcasters Union (EBU) in partnership with several public service broadcasters – France’s Radio France and France Télévision and Poland’s Telewizja Polska (TVP) – as part of the Festival Radio France Occitanie Montpellier summer event series in France. Interestingly, this is the first event organised by the Eurovision Network involving broadcasters from two different countries as hosts.

In 2022, classical music talent from nine countries will take to the stage: 11 countries have withdrawn from the last edition in 2018, including Hungary, but the returning entries include host France and our neighbours Austria. This year, France and its public broadcaster France Télévision will be hosting its second Eurovision event, following the Junior Eurovision Song Contest in Paris last December.

Venue, presenters and jury

The classical music competition, celebrating its 40th anniversary, will be held in 2022 at the Corum in Montpellier, a complex including the Events Centre and Opéra Berlioz. The two hosts of the evening will be French playwright Judith Chaine and Belgian radio presenter Vincent Delbushaye, and the Orchestra of the National Opera of Montpellier Occitanie, which will accompany the competitors, will be conducted by Pierre Dumoussaud.

A professional jury will decide the final result. The jury will be composed of Lithuanian pianist Mūza Rubackytė, president of the jury, Swiss oboist Nora Cismondi, Jean-Pierre Rousseau, director of the Radio France Montpellier Festival, French cellist Christian-Pierre La Marca and Albanian violinist Tedi Papavrami 2022.

The Running Order for Eurovision Young Musicians 2022 – Montpellier

The classical music competition for 12 to 21-year-olds will feature performers from the following countries on the evening of 23 July 2022:

Running Order	Country	Performer(s)	Instrument	Piece(s)
1	Croatia	Ivan Petrović-Poljak	Piano	Piano Concerto No. 1 in E flat minor by F. Liszt
2	France	Maxime Grizard	Cello	Concerto for cello by A. Dvořák
3	Poland	Milena Pioruńska	Violin	Violin Concerto No. 2 in D minor by H. Wieniawski
4	Germany	Philipp Schupelius	Cello	Pezzo Capriccioso op.62 by P.I. Tchaikovsky
5	Austria	Alexander Svetnitsky-Ehrenreich	Clarinet	3rd mvt from Concerto No. 2 for clarinet in E flat major by C.M. von Weber
6	Norway	Alma Serafin Kraggerud	Violin	Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso op.28 by C. Saint-Saëns
7	Belgium	Thaïs Defoort	Cello	1st mvt from Cello concerto in E minor op.85 by E. Elgar
8	Sweden	Lukas Flink	Trombone	1st mvt from Trombone Concerto by H. Tomasi
9	Czech Republic	Daniel Matejča	Violin	3rd and 4th mvt Violin Concerto No. 1 by D. Shostakovich

Eurovision Young Musicians 2022 – broadcasts on TV and online

At the time of writing, only the following countries and public service media broadcast information are available (we will update the availability of this information changes):

Date of broadcasts	Country	Broadcaster
23 July, 2022	Belgium	La Trois, Musiq’3
	Croatia	HRT 3
	Czech Republic	ČT art
	France	France Musique, Culturebox
	Norway	NRK1
	Poland	TVP Kultura
24 July, 2022	Germany	WDR Fernsehen
	Austria	ORF 2
29 July, 2022	Sweden	SVT Play

Virtuosos and Eurovision Young Musicians – the Hungarian aspect

Few people may know that some countries have also recently organised national selection shows for the Eurovision Young Musicians contestants. In recent years, the joint classical music collaboration between MTVA and Virtuózok Produkció, Virtuosos V4+, has been very popular, and this year 3 young talents from the 2021 competition could become Eurovision Young Musicians.

Poland will be represented by Milena Pioruńska and the Czech Republic by Daniel Matejča on violin. In contrast, Croatia will be represented by Ivan Petrović-Poljak on piano, among the previous winners and laureates of Virtuosos V4+.

Eurovision Young Musicians 2022 history in a nutshell

The last Eurovision for Young Musicians was held in Edinburgh, UK, in 2018, and was won by Russian contestant and pianist Ivan Bessonov. Scheduled to take place in 2020, the competition was to have been hosted by Croatian public broadcaster HRT in Zagreb as part of its World Music Day programming but was first postponed due to the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic, and then the classical music competition, originally scheduled to take place every two years, was cancelled until the announcement of 2022. This year’s programme was confirmed by Norwegian public broadcasters NRK and Belgian public broadcaster RTBF in February 2022, with the Montpellier venue in France confirmed.

Datatables: Wikipedia (revised by OurVision International)
Illustration: Belgian RTBF graphic for Eurovision Young Musicians 2022
Sources: EBU, Virtuosos.com / OurVision International