Alon Kariv Wins The Bad Kissingen Piano Olympiad 2025

Rising young Israeli pianist, 26-year-old Alon Kariv has won the Kissinger Sommer Internationales Musikfestival's KlavierOlymp 2025. An elite and prestigious competition that is also a mini-festival unto itself, each year the KlavierOlymp (Piano Olympiad) invites six of the world's finest young  pianists — all must already be major competition prizewinners.

The jury announced that Alon Kariv was awarded First Prize, which will include a concerto performance with a major orchestra at next summer's Bad Kissingen Music Festival. He joins an illustrious list of previous prizewinners at the Olympiad (established in 2003), among them Behzod Abduraimov, Kirill Gerstein, Igor Levit and Alice Sara Ott.

Alon Kariv comments, "The Kissinger KlavierOlymp is a remarkable 
experience — playing alongside five of my most distinguished and brilliant pianist colleagues, in ideal surroundings, with a fantastic team and audience, all encourages you to give of your very best. To have been awarded First Prize in such a prestigious competition and amidst such company is a profound honor. My deepest thanks to the jury and to everyone who contributed to such an incredible event. I really can't wait to be back, to perform in the Kissinger Sommer Internationales Musikfestival."

Kariv is having a busy year. He arrived in Bad Kissingen straight from giving a recital in the 'Tuesday Matinees' concert series at Merkin Hall, at the Kaufman Music Center in NYC; immediately before that he was in Warsaw, at the Auditorium Maximum Chopin Series. Earlier this year he was showcased in the prestigious AMG Rising Stars series at the Stadtcasino Basel.

He began the season by playing with the English Chamber Orchestra at London's Cadogan Hall under their Principal Guest Conductor Roberto Fores Veses, and will end the year on international tour with the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra, under Music Director Julian Rachlin. Also upcoming are debuts with the Israel Camerata Jerusalem, and the Czech National Symphony Orchestra (Prague and UK tour).

Winner of almost every national award in Israel, including the 2022 Young Artist Competition in Jerusalem, and, in the UK, Second Prize at the prestigious 2023 James Mottram International Piano Competition, Kariv has already played with several major orchestras. These include the Israel Philharmonic, English Chamber Orchestra, RSB Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra, Haifa Symphony Orchestra and Slovenian Radio and Television Orchestra. He has played under the batons of eminent conductors Zubin Mehta, Ivor Bolton, Karl-Heinz Steffens, Ilan Volkov, George Pehlivanian, Domingo Hindoyan and Roberto Fores Veses. He recently undertook a six-city tour of the US, including Carnegie Hall, with the Kyiv Virtuosi Symphony Orchestra under Music Director Dmitry Yablonsky.

Kariv has recorded his debut solo album in London, with the English Chamber Orchestra, performing pieces by Chopin and his student Carl Filtsch — to be released in the near future.

Alon Kariv studies with Tomer Lev and Arie Vardi of the Buchmann-Mehta School of Music, at Tel Aviv University. From 2017 to 2019 he studied at the Juilliard School in New York. And he has participated in many masterclasses with some of the world's greatest artists and pedagogues including Murray Perahia, Sergei Babayan, Alexander Korsantia, Tatiana Zelikmann and Garrick Olssohn.