Aristo Sham’s gold medal-winning performance at the 2025 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition was nourished by roots that stretch all the way back to the lessons he received during early childhood from his piano-teacher mother. What he first learned as a three-year-old at home in Hong Kong set the course for a truly remarkable journey of personal discovery and artistic growth, informed by schooldays at Harrow, one of England’s leading private schools, a joint degree at Harvard University and the New England Conservatory, and postgraduate studies at New York’s Juilliard School of Music. His emergence on the world stage, helped by earlier competition success, is set to continue thanks to his ultimate triumph at the Cliburn, one of the most prestigious and demanding of all piano contests. “The Cliburn lasted three weeks, but it felt like five years,” Aristo Sham tells Apple Music Classical. “Every single moment, I felt like I was learning something. The great thing about doing this competition is that I came out a completely different person, not just because of the prize but because of how much I felt like I’d grown and developed in this time. The platform and exposure we get from this competition, and the support we get both from within the organisation and audiences around the world is just incredible. I think there are very few opportunities like that. It brings everyone together.” Over the course of four rounds, Sham and his fellow finalists each played a minimum of four hours of music. A six-figure financial reward, international recital and concerto engagements, live recordings taken from the competition, and invaluable career development support are among the benefits bestowed on the winner. Silver and bronze medallists, Vitaly Starikov and Evren Ozel respectively, also received substantial cash prizes and copper-bottomed career opportunities. Sham made his winning mark in the competition with technically demanding and musically challenging works. He launched his preliminary round with Busoni’s virtuosic transcription of the Chaconne from J.S. Bach’s Partita in D Minor, devoted his quarter-final outing to Beethoven’s “Hammerklavier” Sonata, a towering landmark of the repertoire, and served up a rich mix of Bach, Scriabin and Rachmaninoff in his semi-final solo recital. “In my programming, I had the idea that it should all come together as an artistic presentation of myself,” notes Sham. “I tried to represent as many different sides of myself as possible in each programme and, through each performance and round, I think I revealed an extra layer of my artistry. Of course, I will not be doing another competition ever again! But I think it’s these extreme conditions that push us to our very best. That’s the value of these big competitions, in addition to all the career stuff we gain from them. We go into this incubator and find, in the deepest part of ourselves, the best part of ourselves.” What were Aristo Sham’s Cliburn competition highlights? “There were moments when I felt that certain things clicked, both in my own practice and on stage,” he replies. “But one watershed moment for me was in the semi-final, after the first Etude in Rachmaninoff’s Etudes-tableaux. That was the first time I felt like, ‘Wait, now I’m just playing a concert and don’t feel I’m in a competition anymore.’ I felt completely in flow. In the first two rounds, I had this distinct feeling that I was not free like I would be in a concert—I was fighting for every single moment. But from that moment onwards, about halfway in the semi-final recital, I felt like I was free to speak, free to express, free to communicate. In the three concertos afterwards, I really felt like this was my domain—I’m there just to play my music and give everyone a memorable time.” Livestreamed video of every Cliburn session connected the competition’s participants to a large global audience. Close camera shots of Aristo Sham showed his clear rapport with conductor Marin Alsop and the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra in his final round performances of Brahms’ Piano Concerto No. 2 and Mendelssohn’s Piano Concerto No. 1. The live recordings of his competition rounds also captured the clarity of his playing, its singing line and projection of the music’s underlying structure. “I think it’s important to be extremely clear in what we’re trying to communicate so that everyone gets it,” he observes. “I hate this idea that the audience has to know these pieces to enjoy them or understand something about a specific composer to understand their music. That’s not the case. I think the performer has to be so clear in their communication to make the performance compelling and enjoyable for all.”