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Good on them for the primer on concert etiquette.

....uhhh, are you serious about the first movement repeat??!?

Aren't the upper strings less edgey and wirey for Sunwoo's Dvorak?

(Gotta get that summer rosin right! )

Yeah, they're warmed up and are playing more sympathetically than they did for Broberg. Sunwoo has a good sound, this is the "accepted" tone and balance for chamber music. I still prefer Favorin's edge, though.

...and yet, they continue to applaud between movements.

Maybe it's now too underbalanced in the second movement? It's not really cutting through even in melodic passages.

Favorin and Sunwoo are both reprising the quintets they prepared (but didn't get to play) in 2013. Sunwoo is sticking with his 2013 concerto, Rach 3 (he had also prepared Beethoven 5), Favorin is playing Prok 2 but had prepared Rach 3 for 2013 (and also had prepared Beethoven 5).

Some did not have their hearing aids turned up during the announcement.

Good God, outburst of tubercular coughing.

The ensemble and intonation in Broberg's performance might not have been as tight as it is now, but I prefer it to this. Everything feels so low energy.

Agree completely. Though Sunwoo's rendition would probably be considered more refined and "proper" it just didn't really hold my interest. I admit that I'm not a particular fan of the work itself.

Hum. My impression is upper half Favorin and Sunwoo. Lower half Broberg. Tomorrow's chamber performers will shuffle themselves into this standing, going into the big concerto round. Then, jury will pull a "Sultanov," and Hsu will win on raw youth and verve with his Tchai.

I know what you mean about Broberg vs. Sunwoo in the Dvorak, but I liked Sunwoo better.

Personally, I really enjoyed Broberg's playing this evening. His Dvorak had so many colors and characters. His balancing and voicing was unique/individual and I think it was quite successful.

I had forgotten about that Bartok 2 denial. And it's almost standard rep these days.

Sometimes I even wonder about the wisdom choosing the Rach Pag Variations, just because of all the tempo and mood shifts.



Well, I'm of the opinion that everything potentially counts (otherwise, why play it?). And if a juror found the Kapustin to be problematic, that could enter into their assessment, I'd think, even if it wasn't the single determining factor. It has also occurred to me that a juror might feel that they weren't really qualified to be judging jazz, even fake jazz like Kapustin's, and might be less than thrilled at being asked to do that in the context of a classical music competition.

Ditto...and it had a certain energy and crispness that I found quite appealing.

I was fairly certain I'd seen the McDermott connection mentioned back when I first looked over the competitors' bios at the Cliburn website. A little web sleuthing shows that the bio below is what I had read on their site at that time. But, interestingly, that last phrase, the one that includes the reference to McDermott, is now gone. Regardless of the actual reason they removed it, it looks kind of questionable.

Earlier bio - "Yekwon Sunwoo earned his bachelor’s degree at the Curtis Institute of Music and his master’s at The Juilliard School, and also studied with Richard Goode at the Mannes School of Music. He currently studies under Bernd Goetzke in Hannover. Mr. Sunwoo won first prize at the 2015 International German Piano Award in Frankfurt, the 2014 Vendome Prize held at the Verbier Festival, the 2013 Sendai International Music Competition, and the 2012 William Kapell International Piano Competition. He has performed with the Juilliard Orchestra under Itzhak Perlman at Avery Fisher Hall, Baltimore Symphony Orchestra under Marin Alsop, Houston Symphony Orchestra, National Orchestra of Belgium, Sendai Philharmonic Orchestra, and others. His has given recitals at Carnegie Hall, Hamarikyu Asahi Hall in Tokyo, Wigmore Hall in London, Radio France and Salle Cortot in Paris, and Kumho Art Hall in Seoul. Mr. Sunwoo has been featured on WQXR’s McGraw-Hill Young Artists Showcase, and has performed chamber music for the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, with Ida Kavafian and Peter Wiley as part of Curtis On Tour, with Roberto Diaz on the Bay Chamber Concerts, and with the Jerusalem Quartet, Gary Hoffman, Anne-Marie McDermott, and Michael Tree."

They would have been better off just leaving it alone as the larger bio can easily be found on other websites.

As someone said on Twitter - Dasol Kim doesn't make finals, yet stumbling through the Hammerklavier at practice tempo gets Favorin in?

It makes absolutely no sense to cut by far the most polished and interesting competitor. Very curious decision on the jury's part. I'm done watching for the season.

To be fair to Favorin, while he hasn't proven to be the most consistently on-point competitor, his highs tend to be very high. I will submit that his semifinal recital--even if the Hammerklavier were to be performed exceptionally--wouldn't have been a particularly audience-friendly program. The Beethoven is a sprawling, dense work that I, for one, still haven't been able to really truly understand or appreciate even after all my years of listening, and the Shostakovich is inscrutable in a very different way. And yet, I maintain that his quarterfinal recital was probably the most entrancing recital I've ever heard in a competition.

One must understand that these odd omissions and inclusions are part and parcel of the competition experience. Though I will say, the present instance with the cut of Dasol Kim feels particularly egregious and brings to mind such previous instances as Frederic Chiu from the 1993 Cliburn or even Ivo Pogorelich from the 1980 Chopin.

Personally, I don't consider Yuri to be the affront here. There are other competitors in the finals whose inclusion, in my estimation, are far more questionable.

According to Jacques Marquis, "That will not happen."