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Several people say they've just fallen in love with Yutong Sun right now. It was fun haha. I enjoyed that Liszt too.

Me too. It's nice to hear a piece I'd never imagine being programed.

If I rememeber correctly, the last couple of perfomances of the final take place in the (Texas) afternoon.

And Andre Watts filled in for an ailing Glenn Gould in 1963 (Leonard Bernstein asked him to, he was conducting), in the Liszt #1 concerto.

Hmm there is nothing for me to see on the 7th. Then the 8th and 9th three performances a day between 2-5 am. But on the 10th (last day in the calendar), one at 2:30am....and one at 10 pm...Hurrah! That last one must be what you were remembering.

Everything from Yutong Sun is highly competent, nothing is out of whack like it was with Hsu, but he's missing that necessary dose of artistry combined with age/maturity.

Agree, this is very standard. It's solid, but he's not really bringing anything new to any of these pieces. The tone quality isn't only getting harsher and harsher as he plays, too.

Anderson and Roe are color coordinating again today.

I misread this, at first, as "color commentating"--which means give colorful (interesting) info to sports boadcasts in addition to play-by-play. But, they always used to say stuff like:

And for our viewers with black-and-white TV sets: the white piano keys are white, and the black piano keys are black.

Jan Lisiecki has a pretty big career and never won any important competition. His career seems to have been forged by a credulous media as much as anything else.

Khatia Buniatishvili has a huge career and won 3rd place at the 2008 Arthur Rubinstein competition, though whether those two things are related I don't know. She seems to be in the Lang Lang mold of being willing to do anything to raise her profile, any media appearance, photo shoot, etc.

How does everybody feel about the common programming tactic of feeding the audience the "cod liver oil" first, then moving to the more popular, "listenable" works?

If I were ignorant of the tactic, it wouldn't bother me at all. Throw the tough piece at me first. But knowing the tactic exists, most particularly at symphony concerts, I do find it annoying and condescending. (It seems to happen much less often in competitions like this.) It's a tactic aimed at the "uneducated" and "unsophisticated." Of course, I welcome programs that are full of difficult and ugly works, with very little that is "listenable." It's fantastic to hear stuff you've never heard before, even if you end up hating it.

My current teacher who shall remain nameless was on the roster of a very reputable agent for young artists but he could not stomach competitions. He believes they are just contests of nerves. He's someone who was described at his Lincoln Center recital when he first signed with them as "the ghost of Horowitz". He's 33 now and about to age out of his current representation. In something out of a movie, he gave a recital recently where an extremely well know classical agent just happened to show up because he was in the neighborhood. He basically signed him after the concert. All his other pianists are competition winners, or near winners. He's spectacular. I think he will probably have a successful career now although that chapter is yet to be written. But I guess it can happen. Unlike the others, who I don't particularly care for, this guy is not manufactured out of media hype or looking like a porn star at the piano (I'm sorry, I know others like her, I just can't stomach anything about her).

I like popular. These are not popular enough for me.

Or, well, I prefer it when I hear something for the first time and like it very much, but it doesn't happen that often.

That Tchaikovsky-Feinberg was somehow like a 500 pound bauble.

(weight, not currency)

I don't think I've ever heard Favorin play Beethoven before. I'm nervous but excited.

Don't be, he's going to kill it.

I'd say that both of the afternoon performers are on the bubble, Sun because he couldn't maintain interest and banged and over-accented his way through his recital, and Kim because of programming choices. The Vine was well-played, but it was a mistake performing the Schumann. It quite simply doesn't go anywhere and is hard to hold the audience's interest even in the best of performances. The transcription was exciting, but he came very close to losing it at the end.

I hope that he passes through, he's proven to be a sensitive artist so far and I'd like to hear more of him. Of the performances we've heard, no one even remotely compares to Dasol Kim. I have a feeling Favorin is going to slay it tonight and Tchiadze will play respectably.

It's perfectly reasonable to program difficult contemporary works first. Especially at symphony concerts a significant portion of the audience will leave before these works if they are at the end of or very late in the program.

I think it's arrogant to call people who don't like these kinds of pieces "uneducated" and "unsophisticated". I know professional musicians who don't care for this type of music, and it's unreasonable to expect the average concert goer to be as open to some contemporary pieces as professional musicians might be.

I wasn't calling people uneducated or unsophisticated, just suggesting that the tactic itself seems to do so, to condescend to people. I agree there are lots of professional musicians who don't like new/unknown/rarely programmed/tonally challenging/whatever music.

Wow. Interestingly slow tempo.