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Sorita was just breathtaking!! His op. 22 left me speechless, even though I had listened to it five times already this evening! :P unbelievable

How to reach them and tell them that they should STOP PLAYING WITH THE MICROPHONE LEVELS!!!!

STOP USING AUTO GAIN!!!!

FGS, this is classical music.

Let me say this: I'm getting pretty tired of tepid, beautiful, dreamy Chopin. That was the majority of the interpretations from most of the candidates. With that in mind, Sorita absolutely slayed it! Incredible dynamics, character, and pianism throughout. He was by far the best today.

Had high hopes for Sawada but felt that he would have been better suited to a set of etudes if the programming choice allowed it. Had Rao also played very well and got more comfortable as he went.

I'm with Brendan on the dreamy Chopin thing. I had to stop watching before Sorita, so i'll make sure to catch up with his performance later. He was one of my favorites in the previous stage.

I also noticed strange things with recording today. The levels were all over the place, and Talon Smith was clipping on louder passages. No idea what's happening but I hope they'll get this sorted out.

Very impressed with Sorita's rondo so much style and like he was telling a story whereas Nehring with all due respect was competent but bland. I wish they would leave the levels alone clipping especially in the ballade which was also quite good.

Just listened to Sumino in the opus 38 and the waltz. It is very solid technically, well played. But it is more technical than artistic. It lacks a certain individuality. The waltz was very good, but I would prefer something a little more vivacious and better articulated. It sounds elegant but lacks some fine nuances. A good performer though.

In many of the comments above I think the descriptions given of various pianist's playing are so vague as to mean not much more than "I liked(or didn't like) it". For example, "elegant but lacks some fine nuances", "telling a story", "bland", "beautiful, dreamy", "breathtaking", "did not connect with", "exquisite" "just missing something", etc. To me this shows how difficult it is to describe a musical performance in meaningful terms especially with just a few words, and I'm certainly not saying I could do any better.

Everyone has an opinion and no matter how good a performance is there will always be some that don't like it. Go listen to the finest performances of Richter or Cortot on YouTube and there will always be thumbs down and negative commentary. Imagine if a young Friedman showed up and played I doubt that would go over well even though his Chopin are some of the finest on record and held their own for 90 years. That said, although I find these competitors generally sounding quite similar I would be happy to have the ability of the worst pianist here.

I doubt she will win, but I found Shindo's performance mesmerizing. Maybe I'm just too big a fan of Ballade No.1.

Part of me keeps hoping that someone will improvise transitions between pieces like Friedman and Hoffman used to. THAT would certainly make lots of eyes pop of out for most jury members. Again, the conservatism of this particular competition limits the freedoms of most performers and we get very careful approaches from most. The ones who go against the grain and break out of the mold always stand out to me.

Not sure if this should be a separate thread, but I have a pet peeve: personally I have a VERY HARD TIME comparing performances on 3 VERY DISTINCT instruments: Kawai, Yamaha, and Steinway.

I VASTLY prefer the timbre and character of the Hamburg Steinway and (this is entirely personal and subjective) I have a VERY HARD TIME listening to Chopin performed on a Yamaha, no matter how wonderfully tuned and regulated. Th How can a performance on a Yamaha Grand be compared objectively to a performance on a completely different piano (Kawai or Steinway)???

I follow what I can, what I've thus far heard is: neat technical playing, obsessive to-the-letter playing, bit of nerves here and there, and an enormous lack of personality, this is the most unpersonal pianoshow on earth, Chopin should entice a pianist to show his/hers character, no evidence of any character till now, sad.

and to add more bad news: the members of the jury, what a lack of character there, ye gods, where are the artists? just boring anonymous professors, except may be Alexeev, Goerner, and some i really don't know.

Yeah, it's pretty much Kenner, Goerner (a fantastic artist, IMO), and Alexeev who distinguish the jury in Argerich's absence. I think last time that had Ohlsson there with her, too.

I think excluding Moreira Lima and Dang Thai Son from the list is a bit far fetched, even though they have never been as prominent on stage as some of the others.

As for the Polish members of the jury, truth is most no longer play too often in public, but also most have had long concert and recording careers in this part of the world. Not being prominent and popular worldwide does not void their accomplishments.

Also, even if many of the Jury members are not active performers, they are prize winners of this particular competition and as far as I remember, that's how the Jury is assembled.

Just finished watching the Sunday morning session - was quite impressed with Ushida and Wu, followed by Wiercinski and Sumino. Su showed better poise and composure during Stage 1, although she did OK. From Saturday session-2, I'm in agreement on Sorita and Rao as standouts; not so sure about Sham passing this round. Shindo's physical gestures kind of reminded me of Tiffany Poon from XVII-2015 - even more so than Poon.

Candotti played with grace, elegance, emotion and excitement when needed. She reminded that Chopin loved to play in small saloons with such a style.

Both of your statements are showing deep and complete ingnorance of both Chopin's music and this competition Jury. It's shocking considering your nickname (which is marking from Chopin's Barcarolle for those who don't know).

First of all:
Since 70 year this competition is bringing us best world's pianist. Agrerich, Zimerman, Pollini, Ohlsson, Seong-Jon, Blechacz or Avdeeva, and many others who took 2nd and 3rd prizes and later on won e.g. Tchaikovsky competition like Trifonov. Only Tchaikovsky comes close with winners of such caliber, and mostly they come from the past, with the exception of Trifonov. Sorry Leeds, Brussels and Forth Worth - you're just not there.

Second:
This is single composer competition and best pianists are coming here. If that doesn't translate to you by itself than I cannot comment. Chopin is hardest piano composer to play and is extremely easy to go wrong here.

Third:
You're jury names ignorance is just awful. Almost all of them at great artists, many of whom were finalists or 3rd stage or special prize winners. The fact that you don't know who is Mrs. Popowa-Zydron, Dina Yoffe or Wojciech Switala dosen't mean anything about their qualifications for being jury member here. And they are the highest you can get. Absence of Martha was confirmed just few days before competition start due to illness of Nelson Freire.
Great professors aren't (in most cases) very well known active pianists. And the opposite. Very few active and high level pianists are good professors. I have not heard of any notable student of Krystian Zimerman for that matter. They are "conservative" for a matter - to find person who is (and will be in future career) capable of playing Chopin with their own style, with passion, but who also know what is Chopin's music about. More on that in next point.

Fourth:
This competition is not to find the best "individual". There is very thin line in Chopin's music between parody, ugliness and being individual artist. Horowitz was on the borderline. Francois as well. But Osokins? Please. He even tells that he doesn't care about style, history and what is piece about but plays by his heart and intuition. His Polonaise op.53 was, I don't know what about. It was like a child taking out new toy from his wardrobe each 10 seconds. It was horrid. Now I am listening to Alberto Ferro - oh what a beautiful playing. There is everything. Artists, power, poetry, style, and I hear Alberto and not random pianist.
It takes an enormous talent, luck, good teacher to make a person like Argerich or Zimerman on stage. I do not see such pianists on the 40-55 year's ols pianists today, and if you will look for competition winner from those years there are no top level pianists. Yes there is Lugansky, Berezowsky, Hough and Andsens, but are they really at the level of afromentioned? We may like them more or not, but no they are not at the same level.

Many of today's competitors can't even play properly waltzes, not even mentioning polonaises. While poloinase is polish dance, waltz is internationally known and yet so many plays is so wrong. You may be individual and play waltz, but at the end it's still and has to be waltz. Not just sheet another sheet music. Pianists should be watching dancers before playing any dance (be it from Bach to Prokofiev).

Some observations:

Armellini was fantastic yesterday, played with lots of sensitivity in the first four pieces and then went for a virtuoso/Lisztian interpretation of the Heroic Polonaise. I loved it, and she got a huge response from the audience. Chopin with gusto!

Ushida was super refined, tasteful, and elegant. I also liked Sumino's performance very much, but he slightly suffered comparison to Sorita's outstanding recital, playing two of the same pieces (Rondo op/ 5 and Ballade #2; no one in any Ballade so far can top Sorita's coda in this). Overall, I'd say that the Japanese competitors are the strongest in this edition, and there's still Furumi today and Kobayashi later in the week.

Saw a bit of Crema this morning and wasn't sure he made the right programming choice with the two op. 26 Polonaises as the centerpiece of his recital. There not Chopin's best forays into the genre and I thought they overall dragged and ate up too much recital time when just one of them plus another contrasting selection would have been better. Similarly, I wanted to like Kai-Min Chang, but the 3 New Etudes just don't hold up to the opp. 10 and 25 sets and this segment of his recital also dragged (I don't think I've ever heard the whole set in public, and that's probably for a reason!). He did very well in his "standard" Etudes in the first round, so why not double down and do a few more of these?

People in the stream were saying that Choi was great and did the best from the earlier part of the session. I'll admit that I haven't listened to him yet but look forward to doing so.

Finally: is anyone else noticing weird things going on with the voicings on the Steinways and the Fazioli? They're not holding up and weird notes are ringing/buzzing/having overtone issues. Get those techs to work!

Yes, Polish Radio journalists are saying that there something wrong with bass on the Fazioli, but not heard complaints about mid or high registers. Btw all pianos are probably best ones that factories had in hand at the very moment. And there is lie 12-15 (something like that) techs involved to take care of the piano.