Geneva’s Composition Final Gives Hanurij Lee a Clean Sweep

The convergence of jury and audience awards made South Korean composer Hanurij Lee the clear winner of the 2026 Geneva International Music Competition’s composition final. Stuff #1 won first prize and all six special awards, among them the audience, young audience and student prizes. The competition lists Lee as 20 and a student at the Korea National University of Arts. His previous honours include first prize for composition at the 2024 Bartók World Competition.

The final took place at Geneva’s Victoria Hall on 11 November. The Orchestre de la Suisse Romande performed three finalist works, with Mats Thiersch conducting Lee’s score. The other composers were Hong Kong’s Sing-Yat Chen and Brazilian-Italian Rafael Marino Arcaro. In an unusual joint final, each new piece also served as a test for a finalist in the conducting competition. That format meant the composers heard their music realised by a professional symphony orchestra while the conductors worked with unfamiliar contemporary scores before an audience and jury.

Lee describes Stuff #1 as part of a series inspired by the repetitive structures of Khrushchyovka apartment blocks and the fading of individual sensation within them. This instalment, subtitled Hymne pour le Velu qui hoche la tête, moves away from the series’ dry, rigid atmosphere toward images of dust, fur and a shaggy figure nodding almost imperceptibly. Repetition, in the composer’s account, becomes a sensory residue rather than only a formal pattern.

The result joins professional performance to several kinds of public response. Jury ranking, audience voting and younger listeners all converged on the same work, though each reflects a different way of listening. For a composer at the beginning of a career, the opportunity to develop and hear a large-scale score is as consequential as the medal itself. Lee has said the Geneva competition’s supportive environment for composers made the recognition especially meaningful.