In October 2025, 12-year-old composer Carey Tan received the “Promising Young Talent Prize” at the Vienna International Classical Music Composition Competition for his original Piano Concerto No. 1 – The Explorers.
At the award ceremony held at Palais Ehrbar in Vienna, he shared the stage with a 52-year-old Japanese university composition professor and a 63-year-old renowned Italian composer. The jury remarked that this was the first time in the competition’s history that the prize had been awarded to a composer under the age of twenty.
The distinguished Viennese conductor Christian Schulz took Carey’s hand on stage and commented:“To compose such a large-scale symphonic work in this era is an extraordinarily rare gift.”
On 9 August 2025, Carey premiered the concerto at the Vienna Musikverein (Golden Hall) with the Arad Philharmonic Orchestra of Romania. Later, on 2 November 2025, he performed the work again at the Berlin Philharmonie in collaboration with the Berlin Symphony Orchestra.
