It crowned Olivier Korber, already a finalist in 2015, for his performance of Chopin's twelve études, opus 25, rewarding his sensitive and inspired playing, his supple touch, and his way of making the instrument sing, which gives his interpretation the accents Chopin dreamed of. So far, nothing surprising — but what if we told you that Olivier Korber is a specialist in financial mathematics? Better still: in 2016, mathematicians and finance specialists took the top places in the final. A fine achievement too for Olivier Dupont, joint 2nd prize, a financial engineer; a much-noted program from Julien Cohen, joint 2nd prize, a mathematics student at Cambridge; and 5th prize for Emil Simeonov, head of the applied mathematics department at the University of Vienna (Austria). Whether they played Prokofiev, Chopin, Bach, Rachmaninov or Beethoven, all shared the same selfless love of music — but they also share a love of mathematics! Ever since Pythagoras, who linked the musical scale to proportions, or Euclid, who wrote a work on music that has unfortunately been lost, since Bach and his music steeped in mathematics, and even Mozart, who composed a palindromic canon, we have known that mathematics and music are linked…
