The Critics' Prize (sometimes called Critics' Special Prize) of the Moscow Music Critics Association is awarded to a participant of the International Tchaikovsky Competition. It is a parallel award and is not an official part of the competition. It was first awarded in 2011 to Alexander Lubyantsev. Subsequently, it was awarded to Lucas Debargue in 2015 and to Aylen Pritchin in 2019. In 2011 the award was supported by the Mikhail Prokohorov Foundation and in 2019 by the record label Melodiya. History 2011 At the XIV International Tchaikovsky Competition, an uproar followed the second-round results of the piano competition. Chronicles of the events appeared in the British newspapers The Guardian and The Times. The Times wrote that audience members and Russian critics were upset at the elimination of Eduard Kunz and Alexander Lubyantsev. The Guardian, concluding that the Tchaikovsky Competition audience is “one of the most interactive, involved and opinionated groups of music lovers anywhere,” called Lubyantsev, who was a top prizewinner at the competition's previous edition, a “favorite of the fervent, Muscovite public” and described his being “mobbed like a pop star by groups of photographers, journalists and teenage girls” backstage after his last performance. According to the newspaper, it was his departure that "caused the most controversy." Remarkable accounts of the public's unequivocal behavior towards Lubyantsev and towards some jury members appeared in international and Russian newspapers. The Times wrote that Valery Gergiev, chairman of the organizing committee, was “forced” to call a press conference “to answer the press outcry about the piano jury’s decisions.” The critics petitioned Gergiev to include a “Critics’ Prize” among the competition's awards, citing the presence of such prizes at other major competitions, including the Queen Elizabeth Competition in Brussels. Speaking later in an interview on Radio Svoboda, critic Yuliya Bederova noted that in his refusal Gergiev did not cite the competition's regulations, which forbade the introduction of new awards later than two months before the start, but rather based his refusal on the fear that “any other opinions, should they be different, would call the jury’s position into question.” She continued, “For her colleagues and her, additional viewpoints are an enrichment and not a refutation of the jury’s opinion or its authoritativeness,” and noted that at the time of the press conference it was unknown whether the results of critics’ vote and the jury's vote would be different. The critics proceeded independently