Long has acted as the biennial event’s art director for nine times.
This year’s event saw the competition among fifteen contestants who are students from professional music schools from 11 countries, namely Italy, Germany, Spain, Paraguay, Poland, Austria, the Netherlands, Luxemburg, Chile, the Republic of Korea and France.
They all were required to perform Long’s classical piece of music Faust–Sonata, inspired by a tragedy by Germany’s Johann Wolfgang Goethe, during the first and second qualifying rounds of the competition.
The finale featured guitar performances of several Vietnamese folk songs, such as “Nui rung Tay Nguyen” (Central Highlands’ mountains and forests), “Nguoi o dung ve” (My darling, please don’t leave) and “Di cay” (Paddy transplanting), by Prof. Dao Ngoc Long and two winners in 2014 and 2020 from Denmark and Belarus.
Talking to Vietnam News Agency after the contest, Long, Director of the music school Berlin Gesundbrunnen, unveiled his intention to bring the competition to Vietnam on the occasion of its 20th anniversary.
