At the international competition for string instrument makers "Violin - Soul and Shape," held at the end of November 2019 in Moscow, I participated with my violin, which I specially built for this competition, and won 1st place, a gold medal, and a diploma as the winner in that category. The competition took place in 3 stages, and it was very tense and uncertain right up to the final.

It was very stressful, challenging, and at the same time wonderful to listen to my instrument competing with the instruments of other participants and to compare them with each other. After the announcement of the competition winners following the final stage, I felt perhaps the greatest satisfaction an artist can experience when achieving the greatest success in life, where my decades-long work and effort in the field of violin making were crowned with such a great victory and award at a prestigious international competition, competing against numerous participants from all over the world.

It is a unique and unrepeatable feeling that probably happens only once in a lifetime. If it happens again on another occasion, I suppose it would not be of the same intensity and weight, because the first victory is always the dearest and greatest.