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I felt the same way about Huangci. I am not listening with very good speakers but I also did not like her sound esp. in the ballade. Very little singing.. the piano , imo , did not sound terrific for her (yamaha)

For the most part - yes, but they try not to get too technical in their comments so the broader audience can understand their points. They often try to explain what they liked or disliked in the very descriptive way.

Things often mentioned are left/right hand balance, legato playing, dynamic contrast, quality of sound (often commented alongside the choice of a particular piano for the performance), control, the amount of emotion (and sometimes overexpressing it) shown.

Sometimes they play back again the same piece played by two pianists to comment and contrast the interpretations and talk about strong points of each.

Unfortunately just before Claire I had a guest and I didn't listen much, but I catched up while they commented on Fei-Fei Dong. She was compared to a lovely little bird singing beautifully with joy and charm.

Right now, Claire has just finished.

To give you a glimpse, some comments from the studio after the performances I am listening to right now:

Claire: quite cold, they didn't like the lyrical parts, saying they were too metronomic. They wondered whether Chopin is her favourite composer and wished they could hear her in Bartok or Prokofiev. For them the etudes were the best, being technically well executed, but lacked emotional depth and musicality a bit.

Then they commented on 10/5 etude by Katada and Huangci commenting on the use of rubato, exposing the left hand theme and charm found in Katada's performance not found in Huangci's playing.

After that they commented on Fantasie in F minor by Katada, that she didn't quite feel the phrases and the theme movement which exposed the steady "mechanical" rhythm of left hand chords not well balanced with right hand melody that should grasp the heart diverting the mind from this rhytmical monotony. After all they complimented on her playing saying that she had many interesting ideas in this piece and that she has great potential.

After all they loved Fei-Fei Dong audition the most, pointing out the textual error in the Scherzo saying it was surely due to great emotion put into this piece. They clearly said it couldn't have been a pure technical error. "Technical perfection is not the goal, it's just a path to attain a goal", mentioning that the emotions evoked in the listener are the most important thing in music making, even when some slips can happen and wondering how the jury will think of this particular mistake.

Mati
You are very sweet. Thanks very much for taking the time to write all that down. Very interesting.
I had a feeling that they comment a bit more liberally and specifically than we are accustomed to here. Are the discussants pianists or other musicians? well-known in Poland?
I think the organization is doing a great job so far.

For the most part they are piano teachers from our conservatoires, but I can't say I know them well. I believe at least some of them have some kind of concert career, but not big enough to be heard of by a guy like me.

The hosts (sitting at the left side of the table) are tv or radio journalists specialized in music.


M.

So far, it seems that we all draw the same conclusion about each contestants as the commentators do.

Is there a post made for the 2005 international chopin competition like this?

Da Sol Kim is playing some fierce etudes right now - the first audition in the afternoon session.

That was one of the best Chopin Ballade No 4 performances I've ever heard.

I enjoyed it a lot too. He showed great passion, dynamic contrast and easy to follow direction in his very coherent interpretation. That's why I'm even more curious what the commentators meant saying he had great technical ability and the performace was top notch, but they found several pianistic flaws in his interpretation. They are going to discuss it during the break, I will try to do a short transcript and post it here.

This scherzo no 4 is a really weird piece.

It sure is! And Ms Ann doesn't seem to understand the piece.

Playing aside, I LITERALLY HATE LIVE TRANSLATION of interviews. I really wish they have left the English original untouched. What this guy is trying to say is totally distorted, but I had trouble listening to her speaking underneath.

lol, where did the sound go??

Mati - or they should hire you to be the English-Polish translator.

I'm watching the links here right now:

Chopin Competition Streaming Broadcast

I wouldn't resist ;-) But honestly, they should hire someone who is not hesitating how to translate the word "piece" o_O

Is there any easy way to fix the constant stopping/pausing/starting of the video stream followed by the white circle? It's much worse for me now than last night.

Mei Ting Sun gave Pfeffer a big hug after his performance. Does anyone know if Sun is considered one of the favorites?

That piano bench is awesome.

It would be interesting to know how many pianists chose each different piano. But maybe this kind of poll would be much easier in a later round.

So far I have seen a Yamaha CFX, Shigeru Kawai, and Hamburg Steinway(don't know if there's more than one of these to choose). Anyone see any other instuments?