The winner of the Seventeenth Van Cliburn International Piano Competition won't be named until Saturday. But right now, one thing is certain: It won't be a woman.
Only two women, Olga Kern and Cristina Ortiz, have ever won in the competition's more than 60-year history. And it will be at least another four years before that changes.
The Cliburn is not unusual in this respect.
Only two women have won the Leeds and Queen Elisabeth competitions, and only one woman has won the Tchaikovsky as of November 2024, according to data compiled by Pianists for Alternatively Sized Keyboards.
One size might not fit all
But some music professionals said the issue isn't gender. Pianists with small hands, both men and women, are at a disadvantage. And they offer a potential solution.
"Piano keyboards come in one size, people don't," wrote Rhonda Boyle, who analyzed the handspans, or distance between the thumb and pinky, of 473 pianists.
Boyle, one of the cofounders of Pianists for Alternatively Sized Keyboards, and her coauthors, found that of the pianists surveyed, men have a handspan of 8.9 inches on average, compared to a 7.9-inch span among women.
That extra inch might not sound like much, but it makes a world of a difference to pianists who seek precision, control and fluidity in their performances.
Leveling the playing field
Carol Leone, chair of piano studies at Southern Methodist University, has smaller hands. She found a solution that she wishes was available to more pianists: stretto pianos. Stretto, or "narrow" in Italian, refers to a smaller set of piano keys.
"What we're trying to do is even the playing field," Leone said.
Instead of a standard 6.5-inch octave, adult stretto sizes can be 6- or 5.5-inch octaves.
The action is a mechanism inside the piano that involves its hammers and keys, and the stretto "action" can be loaded into a regular acoustic piano. The change takes about five minutes, Leone said.
But these alternative keyboard sizes are not well known, nor are they widely available.
"People just don't know about it," said Hannah Reimann, a pianist and CEO of Stretto Piano Events, Inc. "I think what it will take is some more participation from the manufacturers, and it will take raising awareness and it'll take a third party like us to help get it off the ground."
Reimann formed the nonprofit to showcase stretto pianos and allow more people the opportunity to try one out.
"There are plenty of naysayers out there, but they don't really have the kind of familiarity that we have. They don't have the information or the knowledge or the experience," she said. "Once people hear people playing concerts, there's really no argument, you know?"
The smaller keyboards allow artists with small hands to expand their repertoire without risking injury.
"When I sat down at one of these pianos for the first time, it was life-changing," said Leone.
She plays on all three sizes, choosing the keys based on the work she is performing.
But the varying sizes are not something that the Cliburn plans to offer its contestants, CEO Jacques Marquis said.
Facing 'real life' conditions
"Because we're launching careers of young musicians and the winners will go on a tour for the next three years and we're booking something like 250 to 300 concerts, we always apply the real-life conditions," he said.
And most concert halls aren't going to have strettos.
"And the real-life condition is a pianist will not travel with his piano. He will take the piano that's [available at the venue]. And we have stories of people over the years who were traveling with the piano, but that's like one in a million," Marquis said.
While only two women have taken the top prize at the Cliburn, several others have medaled.
Men tend to outnumber women in the applicant pool, Marquis said. In this competition cycle, there were 340 applicants. 89 were women.
The nine-person jury for this year's competition included five women.
Yanjun Chen, is a 23-year-old Cliburn semifinalist from China.
She has never played a stretto piano, and she isn't sure she'd use one for a competition after spending years studying on a standard set of keys.
But, as someone who sometimes wishes she had bigger hands, she'd like to try one out.
"I'm interested. I was always wondering what if the keyboards are smaller and how would I be able to project more sounds," she said.
By getting more stretto pianos into music schools around the world, Leone hopes that more pianists will have the opportunity to try out different sizes.
"There's nothing wrong with an instrument fitting the musician," she said. "The pianos with these keyboards are identical in every other way. No one can even tell."
Arts Access is an arts journalism collaboration powered by The Dallas Morning News and KERA.
This community-funded journalism initiative is funded by the Better Together Fund, Carol & Don Glendenning, City of Dallas OAC, The University of Texas at Dallas, Communities Foundation of Texas, The Dallas Foundation, Eugene McDermott Foundation, James & Gayle Halperin Foundation, Jennifer & Peter Altabef and The Meadows Foundation. The News and KERA retain full editorial control of Arts Access' journalism.
Copyright 2025 KERA