The Mason and Hamlin Prize was a national piano competition sponsored by the American piano manufacturer Mason & Hamlin. The grand prize for the winner was a Mason & Hamlin grand piano. The competition was held annually in Jordan Hall at the New England Conservatory in Boston, Massachusetts.
History
The prize was established around 1910, during the period when Mason & Hamlin was owned by the American Piano Company and later by Aeolian-American. The competition was open to senior students in the pianoforte department at the New England Conservatory of Music (NEC). The top award consisted of a grand piano produced by the company. The competition was held publicly in NEC's Jordan Hall.
Piano manufacturing in the United States ceased in 1942 under the authority of the War Production Board due to World War II, and Mason & Hamlin production shifted to military gliders. The competition appears to have been intermittent, with recorded winners spanning from 1910 through at least 2007.
Known Winners
- 1910 – Julius Chaloff
- 1919 – Naomi Bevard
- 1920 – Jesús María Sanromá
- 1925 – William Beller
- 1927 – Luise Hedwig Bube
- 1935 – Peter Louis Walters
- 1975 – Joseph Evans (later professor and chairman of the Music Department, Michigan State University)
- 2007 – Nathan James Knutson
Sponsor
Mason & Hamlin is an American manufacturer of handcrafted grand and upright pianos, founded in 1854 in Boston, Massachusetts, by Henry Mason and Emmons Hamlin. The company is one of two surviving American piano manufacturers from the "Golden Age" of pianos, along with Steinway & Sons. Notable historical figures associated with Mason & Hamlin pianos include Sergei Rachmaninoff, who used a Mason & Hamlin for his 1924 recording of his Second Piano Concerto, and composer Maurice Ravel, who praised the instrument.
