2022 Dublin Competition to Ban Russian Pianists

According to numerous reports, the Dublin International Piano Competition committee has decided to ban Russian pianists from participating in its 2022 competition.

“I feel very sad and it shouldn’t be happening with anyone because of the political situation in my opinion. It is just simply unfair and if this is not discrimination that what is then?” Says Roman Kosyakov when asked about his reaction to the email.

Arsenii Mun, another Russian pianist expelled from the competition after having been selected, made a public statement on his Facebook page:

“We are facing the dark days of history. In my opinion violence and war can’t be justified under any circumstances. Government should be capable of Verbal communication rather than weapon showcase. Sadly not everyone understands it apparently…As a musician, my ideology is to bring Peace and Joy through music around the world. And I hope that people will understand that I and most of my musical colleagues and friends from Russia are against war and aggression. It is so sad to see how concert organizations are canceling concerts and competitions are banning Russian musicians who actually never publicly supported government and moreover made statements against the war!!! People should know, being from Russia does NOT mean that we are taking part in such decisions!”

According to a now-deleted article on the Dublin Competition’s official website titled “Qualifying international and Irish competitors for 2022 DIPC”, there were 65 pianists total accepted to participate in the 2022 competition. Nine were from Russia. They were:

Sergey Belyavskiy, Arseniy Gusev, Maxim Kinasov, Roman Kosyakov, Arsenii Mun, Ilya Shmukler, Vitaly Starikov, Arseny Tarasevich-Nikolaev, Dmitry Yudin.

Piano League has reached out to the Dublin Competition for comments on the decision and will update this article accordingly.