Aleksandra Arsenova
Only fourteen-year-old harpist Aleksandr Arsenov of Russia won the Harp category.
Aleksandra Arsenova was born in Moscow in 2004 to a family of professional musicians. The Arsenovs are nearly an orchestra: mother is a violinist, father a French horn player, and her elder sister is a flutist. Aleksandra chose the harp and at the age of six she went to the Gnessin Moscow Secondary Music School to study playing the harp with the renowned professor Milda Agazarian.
Despite the young age, Aleksandra has participated in a number of prestigious music competitions. She won the First Prizes at the Crystal Key International Harp Competition in Saint-Petersburg (2012), the Wales International Harp Festival’s Junior Competition in Caernarfon (2014), the eMuse International Online Music Competition in Athens (2015), the Mark Rubin Moscow Open Youth Harp Competition (2017), and became a finalist of the Wales International Harp Festival’s Youth Competition (2018). She performed as a soloist with the Cantus Firmus Moscow Chamber Orchestra, the Nizhniy Novgorod State Philharmonic orchestra and the Orchestra Santiago de Compostela at the Peregrinos Musicales International Festival in Spain (2015).