Sixteen-year-old pianist Lara Ömeroğlu has been named BBC Young Musician 2010. Her fellow finalists were fourteen-year-old violinist Callum Smart and seventeen-year-old flautist Emma Halnan. All three played a concerto of their choice with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales (under Vasily Petrenko), but it was Lara's thrilling performance of Saint-Saëns' Op. 22 Piano Concerto No. 2 in G minor that finally triumphed.

Lara is the first pianist to win the BBC competition since Freddy Kempf in 1992. She is a student of the Purcell School for young musicians in Hertfordshire, and her long list of achievements includes winning the West London Pianoforte Festival and reaching the final of the International Franz Liszt Piano Competition in Weimar. She plays the piano as both a soloist and chamber musician, and is also an accomplished viola player.

Throughout the competition Lara demonstrated intellect, insight, stamina and good humour. Her reward is £2,000 and a specially-designed trophy (pictured), as well as the prestige of winning the UK's most important competition for young people. The biennial competition has launched the careers of many high profile instrumentalists, including Nicola Benedetti, Jennifer Pike, Natalie Clein, Emma Johnson and Tasmin Little.

BBC producers Humphrey Burton and Walter Todds initially conceived the Young Musician competition as a response to the lack of home-grown finalists in the 1975 Leeds Piano Competition. The first programme was broadcast on BBC Two in 1978, and since then thousands of young people have entered. Initially there were four categories (keyboard, strings, brass and woodwind) but a fifth, percussion, was added in 1994.

In 2008 there were a lot of complaints about how proceedings were relayed on television. We barely heard a few bars of music before fading out to interviews which showed competitors playing computer games or shopping with friends. This year's competition was much more sensitively arranged. Viewers were able to hear long passages of music and form their own judgments, and the BBC deserves praise for the changes it has made.