Lina Nakano Advances to the Final of the Naumburg International Violin Competition—Presenting Her Talent to the World
November 1, 2026.
Lina Nakano has advanced to the final of the 2026 Naumburg International Violin Competition, currently being held in New York City, United States.
Its official English name is the 2026 Naumburg International Violin Competition.
The organizer is the Walter W. Naumburg Foundation.
This year marks the Foundation’s centennial. Naumburg
The competition takes place in New York City from October 27 to November 1, 2026.
Lina Nakano is one of the five violinists who have advanced to the final.
The final takes place at Kaufmann Concert Hall at 92NY in Manhattan.
The final round begins at noon on Sunday, November 1, local time, which is 2:00 a.m. on Monday, November 2, Japan Standard Time. naumburg.org
According to the current official schedule, Lina Nakano will perform at 3:00 p.m. on Sunday, November 1, local time, which is 5:00 a.m. on Monday, November 2, Japan Standard Time.
Her collaborating pianist is Jinhee Park.
She is fourth in the performance order.
The starting time is provisional and subject to change.
The final will be livestreamed on the official website and can also be watched from Japan. 2026 Naumburg International Violin Competition
I consider Lina Nakano a genius of extraordinary magnitude.
Today, I wish to discuss why.
Physical Agility, Encounters with Painting, and a Historic Bartók Performance
Saturday, February 28, 2026, at 2:00 p.m.
The Japan Century Symphony Orchestra’s 296th Subscription Concert, held at The Symphony Hall.
The conductor was Masaaki Suzuki.
Lina Nakano performed Korngold’s Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 35.
I learned about this concert quite some time after tickets had gone on sale.
Consequently, the seat remaining near the front of the main floor was in the very first row, but off to the side, close to the far left.
It was the worst possible seat for listening to an orchestra.
However, I wanted to hear Lina Nakano’s violin, so I attended, thinking that for that purpose, it would not be the worst seat.
This was my first time hearing Lina Nakano perform live.
On this occasion, I was astonished.
I was born with such physical gifts that I was once told that, if I trained under the track and field teacher, I could run 100 metres in the ten-second range.
When Lina Nakano walked past, right before my eyes as I sat in that seat, I was astonished.
What an agile physique.
It was as though a puma, or an agile animal like a cheetah, had passed before my eyes.
That was the impression I had.
Later, when I read about her background, it all made sense.
She had also studied ballet from early childhood.
Having witnessed the way she moved, I am now convinced of this.
Had she become a ballerina, she would have been a first-rate, perhaps even a truly world-class ballerina.
Beethoven once said that music was the supreme art, the greatest of all the arts.
That was because cinema did not exist in Beethoven’s time.
Poetry, novels, and paintings possess no physical body.
They are neither performed with the body nor listened to with the body.
He regarded music as supreme because music alone possessed this quality of physicality.
Lina Nakano is studying abroad at the Juilliard School as a special scholarship student.
Recently, she posted photographs from a visit to the Museum of Modern Art in New York to view paintings.
It is a place I, too, truly wish to visit at least once.
This was some time after her Osaka performance.
As I looked at those photographs, I thought.
An extraordinary genius such as Lina Nakano views some of the world’s greatest paintings in one of the world’s greatest museums in this way.
That alone would surely cause her music to evolve further and deepen.
Of that, I was convinced.
Then I heard her performances as a finalist at the recent International Violin Competition of Indianapolis.
The video released by the organizers, showing her performing the pieces she had selected from the required repertoire, also had exceptionally fine sound quality.
I was deeply moved.
My heart was stirred.
Ah, Lina Nakano was finally becoming the truly genuine article.
The Bartók she played for the concerto, the final requirement, was a historic performance.
Lina Nakano, 21; Murata Natsuho, 19; HIMARI, 15.
I felt the bliss of knowing that the world’s finest are now in Japan.