Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner I'm in the finals in a piano competition - live broadcast

Congratulations!

I missed the broadcast. Can we still see it somewhere?

>be aware that we were all given ONE rehearsal, lasting less than an hour

Wow. I spend hundreds of hours on getting all things right, I can even spend a full hour with my teacher on the interpretation of a simple piece . And now you have to do this in less than an hour with a complete orchestra. How exactly does that work?

Forgot to answer - basically this scenario is surprisingly normal in piano competitions. Just imagine - six highly different (well, hopefully!) pianists are supposed to play six concerti within two days. Even having selected an 'often performed' concerto can prove difficult if another finalist has chosen it and plays it completely differently - will it confuse the orchestra or not? With a completely unknown piece like Prokofiev 5th, it's a real gamble - what if the conductor hasn't studied the concerto properly, what if the players haven't prepared it? (mind you, they were told who the finalists were - and thus which concerti would be performed - the evening before the rehearsals started) It's enough to put any orchestra, conductor and soloist under some amount of stress, and the fact that things never click everywhere under all of that stress is the reason for why a lot of concerti finals in competitions tend to be somewhat mediocre, in my very personal opinion. Typically, I'd much rather hear a pianists solo recital in the first or second round. However, this turned out to be a very successful gamble for me in all ways - though many in the orchestra was hoping the Prokofiev wouldn't be in the finals, they quickly became enthusiastic about the piece, and the conductor, who is also a pianist (and composer) was super easy to work with, very flexible and incredibly alert the whole time, especially when I was lost. Check the ending of the second movement! I forgot that the sort of Q&A between piano and woodwinds (towards the very last bars) was initiated by the piano, I thought it was the other way around...a somewhat odd silence for anyone that knows the piece, and he stopped conducting, until I realized what was going on and came in, too late. EVERYONE in the orchestra followed. That surely doesn't happen in every competition...

thanks for the kind words, wr! Ah, you must refer to this spot towards the end of the first movement...? That particular passage four-bar passage comes like 4-5 times throughout the movement, and its not just in a different key each time but it is also slightly altered almost every time - I knew I was going to mix things up sooner or later Luckily I was back on track quite fast!