Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Piano Forum Pianos at Tchaikovsky Competition #tch16

On the first day of the preliminary recitals, I heard two pianists play the Chinese Yangtze piano via medici.tv.

In contrast to the utterly underwhelming sample I encountered in Shanghai several years ago, this one actually sounded pretty decent. It sounded like a well-behaved Steinway to my ears

At the gala concert, I only saw four pianos on stage, so Kawai is no longer there?

So the current scoreboard is as follows:

Yamaha: 4
Yangtze: 2
Fazioli: 1
Steinway: 1

Four years ago, a Shigeru Kawai was very popular. The company does organize their own international piano competition, though.

Also, last time, I believe everybody used Steinway for the concerto rounds (even if they had selected something else for the prior rounds).

Bosendorfer is absent, as well.

Waiting to see a NY Steinway on this competition stage

http://www.thestandard.com.hk/section-news.php?id=205941

The raise of chinese piano era or what? And the concert grand model is named "CGFX"

Ah, Alexandre Kantorow is playing a Shigeru Kawai right now.

I have never heard of the 'Yangtze' piano brand before. Can anyone tell me anything about it? Surely the pianos must be half-decent if they are being used in the Tchaikovsky piano competition...

Yangtze is made by Parson's Music in China, and is a reverse-engineered Steinway. It's OK.

Lol always better than CGFX 274 lol

And I wonder why other tier 1 piano manufacturers like C.Bechstein, Steingraeber, Grotrian-Steinweg and perhaps Sauter are not putting their pianos in major competitions. Instead we have Yamaha, who has only one top piano which is ,,CFX and rest is far below (in contrary to all others mentioned, Steinway and perhaps Fazioli).

Actually they have smaller models that named B212, A188 and M170. What a coincidence, lol

Yangtze River Piano came up here in a thread nine years ago. A representative from Parsons commented at that time. I'd sure be interested in hearing from him again.

Larry.

I think that Steingraeber makes too few pianos to have anything at competitions. Additionally for Bechstein, although I would love to see them at a competition. G-S and Sauter, IMHO, do not care to make a piano designed for a modern concerto. That is not a knock on these brands. The G-S is a beautiful piano for solo work and chamber work.



I beg to differ. Yamaha, along with the CFX, has many top tier pianos, including the entire CF and SX line of pianos.

The Yamaha CF6 is one of the finest pianos I've played. I played it shortly after playing a bunch of Steinway Ds, Bs and As and preferred so much more than any of the Steinways.

Does anyone have the final piano scoreboard for this competition? Did Yamaha win?

In the finals:

Steinway: 5
Yamaha: 1
Yangtze River: 1

1. Kantarow: Steinway
2. Mao: Steinway
2. Shishkin: Steinway
3. Broberg: Steinway
3. Melnikov: Steinway
3. Yemelyanov: Yamaha
4. An: Yangtze River

Does any piano company pay to play, either the competition (including direct payments, sponsorships, advertising, etc) or the performers (Brand Artist, sponsorship, payment, etc.)? If not, are pianos provided free to the competition? Thanks.

In a perfect world, all the pianos are simply prepared and the contestants choose which piano they prefer for each round and that is the end of it.

However, in the real world, it can be somewhat different. As an example, at the Honens competition at the end of last year Fazioli and others claimed their pianos were "sidelined" and competitors were "pushed" towards Steinway.

IMHO, Steinway has always been aggressive when it came to coercing young artists towards their pianos, and these days they have lots of excellent competition. Juilliard, for instance, was one of the first schools to buy only Steinway pianos. But they have now bought a number of Fazioli pianos, along with Yamaha and Bösendorfer.

For pianists, there is at least a small semblance of the choice and variety that they enjoyed years ago.

My 2 cents,

Steinway has always been the big silver backed gorilla 🦍 in piano competitions and number of signed artists performing. If I was a competitor I might feel more confident performing with the known Boss Hogg instead of a different piano that I personally enjoyed.

The winner (by a mile), Alexandre Kantorow, played Shigeru Kawai SK-EX all through the earlier rounds, and switched to Steinway for the finals. I wonder why - not enough projection in those big concertos (Tchaikovsky 2 and Brahms 2) perhaps? The Shigeru sounded great BTW.

Hopefully, Kawai will let him have access to their pianos in solo recitals now that he's made it big, just like Mikhail Pletnev seems to be able to get hold of a Shigeru wherever he plays.......even in deepest darkest Scotland (where my namesake resides ).

I'm posting the video of the second round and final round.
The Shigeru Kawai was chosen by Kantarow for a very difficult interpretation in both areas technique and dynamic. In the final round, he needed a drum and I'm not trying to be funny that piano is a drum a sounds like one.