Finalists in the Dallas Chamber Symphony’s Dallas International Piano Competition, following a concert at Moody Performance Hall on June 23, 2026. L to R, Kamil Pacholec (second prize), Jialin Yao (first prize and audience award) and Miao Gao (third prize).
After performing three piano concertos Tuesday evening with the Dallas Chamber Symphony, at Moody Performance Hall, the three finalists in the DCS’s Dallas International Piano Competition were presented their prizes.
The $2,500 first prize, and booking for a future performance with the DCS, went to Chinese pianist Jialin Yao. He also won the $500 Audience Choice award.
Second prize, for $1,500, went to Kamil Pacholec, from Poland. The $1,000 third prize was awarded to Miao Gao, from China.
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Guest conductor Jim Stopher flawlessly coordinated with the pianists, and his clear, musical leadership drew responsive, capable playing from the orchestra. There were however a few too many fuzzy horn attacks.
The chamber symphony’s piano competition, open to ages 18 to 35, is a biennial affair, alternating with a violin competition. The first two rounds were held at the University of North Texas in Denton.
From 172 applicants, 15 were chosen to perform piano concertos with piano accompaniment in the quarterfinal round. Nine semifinalists then were selected to perform 30-minute solo recitals. The three pianists heard Tuesday were picked as finalists.
Given limited rehearsal time, contestants were asked to pick standard-repertory concertos. Whether their choices were best suited to performances with a chamber orchestra, in a 700-seat hall — as opposed to a full symphony orchestra in a hall three times that size — could be argued. Rather clangorous sound might have been alleviated by dialing back the hall’s adjustable acoustics a bit.
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Yao, trained in his native China and at the Juilliard School in New York, now is pursuing an artist diploma at Southern Methodist University. He gave the audience-favorite Tchaikovsky Concerto No. 1 a big-screen performance that got the evening’s most enthusiastic ovation.
He’s clearly a formidably equipped and communicative player. Although he spun out some lovely delicacies, he seemed most in his element making Big Statements. Those big chords at the beginning, marked merely forte, were thundered out quadruple-forte; never mind that violins have the real tune there.
Balances were nicely gauged in the middle movement, but in the finale dynamics kept getting pumped up too much too soon, and the coda would have been better if less frantic.
Pacholec, trained in Poland and at the University of Miami in Florida, would have been my choice for first prize. The Chopin E minor Concerto was by far the least showy of the evening’s three offerings, but its smaller scale was best suited to the chamber orchestra.
Pacholec was not out to wow the audience, but to serve the music. His was playing of unassuming authority, organic naturalness and genuine warmth.
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Gao studied at the China Conservatory of Music, continuing at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York. His lickety-split tempo for the first Allegro of the Prokofiev Third Concerto was not without precedents. But the slightly more reserved pace of Prokofiev’s own 1932 recording lets the music dance rather than fly like the proverbial bat. (Prokofiev was a superb pianist — and far subtler than most present-day interpreters.)
Gao had the chops for the showpiece concerto, but his performance seemed calculated more to impress than to reveal deeper truths about the music.