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Ugh the distortion is awful, every loud chord is accompanied with distortion...

What do you think of the following statement:

"And some hint that the old "Russian school" of training a battalion of classical pianists to create a highly physical, even volcanic sound may now not only suffer in comparison with the emerging Asian stylistic school, but finally may yield far fewer truly impressive masters of that once-singular Russian sound."

Van Cliburn 2009: Russian pianists dwindling in number
04:54 PM CDT on Friday, May 22, 2009

By ANDREW MARTON / Special Contributor to The Dallas Morning News

there's no wonder about that, as far as population goes and globalized music/piano education, Asia will produce more pianists than any country in the rest of world.

I am intrigued by the term "Asian Stylistic School" ... I think there is something to it.

I am not so sure one can speak of an Asian school yet. Certainly not from the perspective of a high end competition like the Cliburn. I am defining 'Asian School" as a music teaching tradition, not based on an individual's nationality.
Despite the plethora of Asian nationalities (may be 50% of all competitors), there are only 2 competitors who are graduates from (or currently at) Chinese conservatoires: Feng Zhang (Shanghai) and Ning Zhou (also Shanghai). Zhang Zuo started at Shenzhen but is now at Eastman, so she probably counts as a Chinese graduate.
There is one competitor fully trained in Japan (Tsujii). I think 2 more had partial training in Japan and Korea, respectively.
If anything, the "American School" is over-represented. However if you look at equally prestigious competitions elsewhere, such as the International Tchaivovsky competition, the majority of the winners are Russian. Politics, anyone?

Rashkovskiy has to be the most right-handed pianist I have ever heard! I am always partial to a pianist who picks Op. 110, but I was very unimpressed.

As far as the 'asian stylistic school' goes, whatever seems to accompany them in their conquest is not in their favor. I have yet to be impressed by an imaginitive Asian schooled pianist. Lang Lang has come close a few times, Yundi Li may have impressed me with his slight originality in the Liszt sonata, Kudo's Vine sonata was decent,,, but their training and approach to the piano is evident in their playing. While on the subject, Zhang Zuo's performance, to me, embodied the Asian approach to our music in program, technique, and style... yet I did enjoy her performance.



Did anyone else think that Stanislavsky's choice of the Ligeti Capriccios was a bit odd? While the capriccios are very wonderful and 'cute' in their own way, I've never seen them as very representative of Ligeti's genius...

As someone said earlier, we shouldn't get too caught up in what Cliburn's website puts as "nationality" and then start speaking about "Asian" and "American" stylistic patterns in piano playing...there are a lot of competitors with Chinese flags next to their titles on the biographies but most of them attended schooling in the West. Thank globalization or whatever, but we can no longer assume that we are watching the different approaches of different nations to piano-education when we see a wide variety of contestants in terms of backgrounds in these competition. I'm sure it's tempting to watch Ilya Rashkovskiy, see the Russian flag, and then make all kinds of delicate comments about Russian pianistic techniques....except that he moved to Germany for music schooling.

Yes, that certain (almost scripted) "style" is very evident in ZZ's playing in many aspects, which I enjoy because it's not (in my mind) the antiseptic European style. In fact, she has the same teacher in ShenZhen as YDL, SC, and Haochen Zhang.

I don't mind music being free of contamination or pollution! ...Just foolin'

In Nobuyuki Tsuji's performance portrait, he begins to play some piece on the piano after a brief snippet talking about how he composed music when he was ten years old. Does anyone know what he is playing there? (If not, I assume it's his own composition). Sounds nice...

Anyone else absolutely love that Lam played some Granados? I think she could have cranked up the volume in a couple spots in the Quejas..., but I guess she conserved energy to get through that Kernis Etude...

I enjoyed her playing.

Daniel

Yes, but I'm enjoying the Stravinsky from Haochen Zhang even more.

I haven't caught up to all the contestants but so far, of the ones I've listened to I've enjoyed Haochen Zhang, Lam, Di Wu and Vacatello the most.

I also enjoyed Lam's take on part of the "Goyescas". I followed with the score--pretty tricky. I enjoyed her playing--and that "Superstar" Etude was way cool with the jazz inferences!

I'm unable to listen but I'm pleased Andrea Lam's performances have been well received. I first heard her play here in Oz quite a few years ago when she was about 13.

I heard Amy Yang perform in NYC several years ago. She is a tremendous artist. I noticed she has not programmed any real "blockbusters" in the sense of the Carnaval, Liszt Sonata, Spanish Rhapsody, Chopin Sonatas, etc., but rather "musical blockbusters" such as the Davidsbundlertanze, Berg Sonata and Brahms Op. 119. I must admit there has been a very consistently high level of playing amongst all of these competitors, but if Ms. Yang plays the same way tomorrow that she did in NYC, I think she'll emerge as a front runner. Sound is very important to me.

I really enjoyed his playing a lot. Unfortunately, he'll likely be eliminated to due to the last couple minutes of the Liszt ballade...:(

Quite often, however, there are Russian professors in the music schools.

I have remarked at competitions that the young Chinese pianists, generally speaking, speak Russian.

That is all very well, but it really doesn't completely eliminate problems of bias caused by allowing students of jurors to compete. For one thing, although a juror may not get to vote on their own, they certainly can undervalue those who aren't their students. And there's some kind of inherent unfairness in the fact that all competitors don't have the same number of jurors, since the number will be reduced each time a juror has to pass. I also doubt that all of the jurors really are always completely unaware of who the teacher of some of the competitors are.

I've read of some piano competitions where students of jurors are simply forbidden to compete, so it is possible to do that. I seem to remember the Cliburn giving some lame excuse for not adopting that policy, some nonsense about how hard it was to find qualified jurors, which just on the face of it seems to me like a laughably transparent fabrication. They have, for reasons I don't understand, at least one favored juror who seems to always have students competing. Hmmm....

To be fair, I have not looked at the history of the competition to tally up the statistics of that sort of information (if it's even available without hiring a PI). I think it would be a much healthier situation if they at least rotated out the jurors.

Quite a memory lapse in the Brahms Paganini variations as well. Despite the mistakes, I still liked his performance.