Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner 2009 Van Cliburn Competition Megathread

got my teacher's email after Bozhanov's Chopin, and he said that Bozhanov's collaboration with the orchestra was perfect last night.

It's in the Cliburn's "rulebook" that a first prize always be awarded. Richard Rodzinski has gone on record saying that not awarding a first prize is a bad idea and makes everyone (especially the promoters) feel cheated because they have X amount of dates already under contract for the winner.

As far as my own ranking goes, it's still too early to tell. Personally, I'm still shedding tears for Beus.

Anybody know who's playing tonight?

There's a link to the finals schedule on the front page:

http://www.cliburn.org/

Thanks!

Tonight - Thursday June 4

7:30 pm- 8:20 pm – Recital - Yeol Eum Son
8:45 pm- 9:25 pm – FWSO with Nobuyuki Tsujii (Chopin #1, Op. 11)
9:45 pm- 10:25 pm – FWSO with Haochen Zhang (Mozart #20, K 466)

I'm definitely rooting for her to take the gold. Interesting choice of a closing recital program though...

Anyone else find it interesting that she was a Finalist in the 2005 Chopin Competition, but did not play a single Chopin piece this time around?

Daniel

Absolutely sublime Beethoven op. 111.

Agreed. I am in awe of that performance.

Yes, very good rendition of Op. 111.

Tsujii's Chopin is going very well right now.

he has a very straight forward approach to this piece. the 1st movement sounded very good this way, but i kind of feel the 2nd movement sounds flat, and 3rd a little mechanical. but he has such incredible ability.

Straightforward it may be, but I prefer it far more to the maniacal one heard yesterday .

no question, most people would like this one better, more of the standard way of playing it. but i know what i like.

Yes, most people would, as being different isn't always being better.

it's subjective.

Tsujii played competently, but I prefer the maniacal one heard yesterday.

Zhang's Mozart is sounding quite a bit more grand and quite a bit more Romantic that what I'd normally expect for a Mozart piece... but what the heck, it's still quite enjoyable.

[EDIT: added after end of performance] I like it. Very nicely done.

Tsujii continues to amaze me. And the Mozart was the first performance I've heard from Zhang that I found interesting.

Of the two concerti tonight, I preferred Tsujii's performance (and also preferred it to yesterday's rendition) but I have to admit that Zhang did play quite beautifully. He was much more interesting tonight than he has been in previous rounds. I have a feeling that they'll both medal.

Son was still a snooze-fest, IMO.

I just came across this interesting internet petition called Transparancy In International Music Competitions . One thing that makes it especially interesting is the list of fairly prominent musicians that have signed (they are mentioned towards the bottom of the homepage). Another is that I spotted the names of some competitors in this current competition in the list of names. The basic idea - that there is no good reason the scoring given by each judge should not be made public - seems fairly sensible to me.