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As some of you know, the Queen Elisabeth Competition has already started, and the 24 semifinalists were recently selected. They're streaming the competition, and there's a video archive as well. For anyone that wants to stay tuned, click here:


http://www.imkeb.be/cgi?lg=en&pag=1954&tab=146&rec=12712&frm=0&par=secorig1648

The list of semifinalists is here:

http://www.cmireb.be/cgi?lg=en&...=0&par=secorig1677&par2=atvorig0

Thanks!

All I did was look for your name!
I took a look at the whole list of candidates too. I see that most of them are named Kim.

Exaggeration, of course. But not much.
Korea does very well in these.

Thanks for sharing. I'll be following along.

Videos from the semifinals can be seen here - I've only browsed briefly, but there seems to be a very high level overall.

http://www.canvas.be/video/de-24-halvefinalisten/

Hi Fn,

Did you enter? I think you should have.

I did consider it for a long time, but had too many things going on at the time of the application deadline to make a decent audition video. I'm heading to SIPCA (Sydney) in less than two months, however...

I'm rooting for Dmitry Shishkin. I first heard him in last year's Chopin competition and have been listening to him ever since. He is incredible.

Me too, especially since he played "my" variations (from the e-cital). Only complaint I have is too much extraneous finger movement. But he's pretty awesome.

Has anyone played that dreadful Tears of Lights piece from memory? It's so LONG, and so awful!

I recall at least one pianist going on stage without the score...Don't remember who.

I have not watched them all - and won't have the time to do so, to be perfectly honest. But I happened to watch Chi Ho Han's semi-solo and he played it from memory. Thank you for the link.

Han, like Shishkin, was at the Chopin Competition last fall, but was eliminated after Stage 3.

Has anyone else had a problem with the streaming (both live and archived)? There's a huge amount of buffering and just plain stopping right in the middle of a performance. I don't have that problem with any other videos or live streaming.

If I understood it right, this is the list of finalists. It came from another site than the official site, so I hope that the information is not wrong.


Alberto Ferro
Chiho Han
Aljosa Jurinic
Dmitry Shishkin
Lukas Vondracek
Larry Weng
Yoonji Kim
Hans H.Suh
Henry Kramer
Alexander Beyer
Atsushi Imada
Kana Okada

Yes, it's pretty bad. Constantly skipping and rebuffering. Annoying.

fnork my friend,

My dear, you are every bit as beautiful a player as all those on your list.

Yes, I've heard all of them.

Practice hard, and then just submit your dossier. You can win....

We will all be cheering for you (even those who prefer someone else... bya_tches...)

Best of luck in Sydney, fnork! Remind me your program again?

Don't mean to digress from this post, but here is his program from the competition. Very exciting and varied! Best of luck, fnork!

I love the Medtner 2nd! Good luck with it!

Awesome programs - good luck! Here's hoping you break through against the standard competition crowd/rep.

Thanks to all of you for the comments and support! Means a lot. But perhaps let us stick to one competition at a time - so, let's discuss the QE for now...?

QE is an unusual competition in some regards. To start with, finalists are given a brand new score some two weeks prior to the finals of a work for piano and orchestra never previously heard nor performed, and all twelve of them are supposed to internalize the work in that brief time-span, learn the score well enough to be able to know what is happening in the orchestra, and so on. Also, there's a solo work for the semifinals that is sent out to competitors, I believe a month in advance to the competition. I think that this is a pretty good and valid approach in many regards - soloists today should be prepared to learn works within limited time-frames, and having the competition structured in this way makes it possible to see who is capable, and who isn't.

What I'm less sure about in terms of the competition structure is how the earlier competition rounds are structured. We have a fairly standard first round with a movement of a classical sonata, a Bach p&f, and a selection of Etudes - four in total, if I'm not mistaken. Only an hour before you perform, you are informed about which Etudes the jury wants to hear. If you pass, there's a solo round where you're expected to come up with two proposed programs where only a limited amount of music can be the same in each program, and you are informed a day in advance of the performance about which program the jury wants to hear. In addition to that, you perform a Mozart concerto. Now, it might sound stressful and complicated to be unsure about which Etudes the jury wants to hear, and which of the two submitted programs that you'll actually end up performing. But still - we're talking of a fairly short recital program, and to be fair, for anyone that has gotten as far as to being accepted to this prestigious competition, having four Etudes ready at any time is not really a big burden. The total chunk of solo works anyone will perform in this competition amounts to only a bit over an hour. Can we really make a fair judgement about someone's abilities to create interesting programs in this context...? I'm not entirely sure. I think that the approach of having candidates be informed about what they will perform in their recital round only a day in advance would be more valid if this round was somewhat longer - say, an hour or so. Or if there were two solo rounds after the first round. The basic problem with having such a short solo round is that it allows competitors to focus only on their "safe choices", which is so common in competitions as it is already. The additional stress the competitors face from not knowing which program the jury will want to hear has the effect of many competitors playing it safe in their programming choices.


With that said, I know very well how often it is said that many competitors perform the same old works competition after competition, but at the same time, who would complain about someone like Brendel having a recital with the "same old" Schubert sonatas he has been playing for decades...? It is normal to complain about the small crowd of piano competitors, that they all just repeat the same works all over again, but then again, isn't that what they're supposed to be doing for the rest of their lives, if they manage to keep their music career going...? I'm not saying that such a career shouldn't involve exploring lesser-known works, contemporary music or unusual discoveries, but let's remember that one part of this job is to be able to perform the very same work you've played for years with the same vigor and enthusiasm as when you first heard the work. If a competitor manages to do that convincingly, very well for him/her.

Thoughts?