Congratulations to second year BMus (Hons) Music clarsach player Catriona Kane, who is the winner of the 2025 Tovey Memorial Prize Competition.

On winning the prize, Catriona said: "I had a great time taking part in the Tovey competition. It was organised very well and all of the other contestants played amazingly. I would highly recommend anyone to apply next year. I applied on a whim last minute and ended up having the best time so you never know who may win!"

The prize is awarded annually to the Undergraduate Music student who shows the greatest promise in composition or instrumental/vocal performance. This year’s competition was held in the Reid Concert Hall on 26 February 2025 and the other finalists were Ripley Brown (piano), Wesley Hua (classical guitar) and runner-up Lucy Good (voice).

Sir Donald Francis Tovey

Sir Donald Francis Tovey (1875-1940) was a notable British musicologist, music analyst, composer and pianist. From 1914 until his death in 1940, he was the seventh Reid Professor of Music at the University of Edinburgh. He founded the Reid Orchestra and wrote programme notes for the orchestra's concerts. Many of these notes were later formed into six volumes of his Essays in Musical Analysis for which he is best known today.

His archive, including scores, letters, handwritten programme notes and annotations in the scores of others, is housed in the Centre for Research Collections at the University of Edinburgh Library.