It appears to me the European players put too much effort into making a "pure" and "beautiful" sound. This affects the flow of music. You can not play a whole concert using nothing but "pure" and "beautiful" sound. The net effect will be boring and a lack of contrast.

Someone was coughing like a madman during Ning Zhou's (not that great, in my opinion) performance of the Miroirs towards the end.

Why is it that I can go weeks without hearing a single person coughing yet when you're in the recital hall suddenly everyone has a bad cold.

Vacatello: jaw-dropping Petroushka. She was truly stunning. What amazing technique and gorgeous sound! Very impressive.

I must say that the European Schools of piano ruled the day (perhaps the competition so far) with the Czech Vondracek and the Italians Deljavan and Vacatello.

Did I forgett to mention mechanical? That seems to be in the European tradition too.

I'm listening to Vondracek again, and I must confess I cannot understand where you are coming from.

I remember when I was in High School and was part of a combined (over multiple schools) choir of several hundred singers. To make a point, the conductor did a warmup exercise involving leaving out various notes from rapidly sung scales(e.g. do-silence-me-fa-so-la-ti-do). The point was that even though each individual singer got almost all of the silences correct, for most of our first few runs at least one person sang the omitted note. As everyone else was silent, that one person resounded over them.

It's the same way at a concert. Even if each individual person manages to hold in their coughing with only a single exception over the course of 3 entire hours of recitals, the net result will be a chorus of coughing.

He played great, but his program was a heavy one.

It seems that the powers that be at the Cliburn have decided to no longer tell us who the teachers of the competitors are. Hmmm...I guess I'll just have to assume that they are all students of jury members.

Now there's someone who knows the competition business.

I wondered about that yesterdy. In my Memorial weekend idleness, I tallied up the schools of the competitors (undergraduate and graduate). Well 10 have been or are at Juilliard, 6 at Curtis and one each at Oberlin, Eastman, Manhattan School and Yale.
US schools are the most represented (14) followed by Germany (5, 3 of which are the Hanover Hochschule) and Russia (3).
Each of Italy, Japan and China had 2. (The numbers do not represent individual competitors; some went to 2 or more schools).

Most interesting though is the fact that at least 2 of the competitors (Di Wu and Soyeon Lee, both of whom are Cliburn returnees)are being taught by a Jury member, Kaplinsky!! And there is no discussion that I noticed about how the Cliburn Foundation handles this gross conflict of interest!.

There are at least two members on the panel that have several students in this time. It's less blatant than in 2005, but what can you do?

My picks for the semis so far:

Beus
Dank
Myer
Tsujii
Vacatello

Do you mean Kalichstein? Who are his students?
Who are Dank and Varvaresos' teachers?

Generally the Cliburn handles students of jurors by simply forbidding jurors from scoring their own students. Since the voting is also done without discussion (each juror just gives each competitor a score from 1-25 and a computerized averaging system kicks in), jurors don't have too much opportunity to push their own students before votes are in.

I'll agree, and add Vondracek and Wu. If I were on the jury, I'd also vote for Kunz, but his program was, well, a bit controversial, and the Bach didn't capture quite the same magic that the Haydn and Scarlatti did.

I saw Vondracek live in my city performing the Prokofiev 2 last year - unbelievable. Apparently his parents were both pianists and he started at age 2? Talk about grooming.

those who're self-taught earlier on should see some hope from Feng Zhang, who taught himself to play from age 9, and only started having a teacher later at 15. from what i see, he has such great techniques and the best trills in this competition.

I have been quite satisfied by the well executed trills of all the competitors. Nothing irritates me more than a poorly executed trill.

Daniel

best Mozart so far from Bozhanov... his playing is captivating. no wonder my teacher mentioned him.

Distortion still there. What a shame.

Liked Bozhanov's Mozart until he got to the final movement, where it felt some of the dance-like character was being lost due to his habit of connecting everything together even through rests on the score.

That character I was looking for came back with interest in the Chopin Rondo though.



I've switched to the KTCU feed, which seems to have better sound.

Yeah, Kunz was great until the Chaconne. He seemed to lose concentration and couldn't regain it, though. Vondracek's personality and playing were compelling, but I wasn't blown away by him. Di Wu's Haydn was so frustrating. The second movement was one degree shy of Prokofiev!

YMMV, of course.

Where might I find that?

http://www.ktcu.tcu.edu/

audio-only, unfortunately

Can't find a single reference there to the Cliburn.

Click on "turn it up...listen live" in the upper right

I found Myer a bit too restrained, aloof, too clean-cut..
My picks so far :
Vondracek
Vacatello
Beus
Tsujii
Kunz (may be.. weirdprogram. but leaves yo uwanting to hear more)
Deljavan
Bozhanov ( a poet and a master sound maker..)

I've been watching and listening to the competitors off an on. Does everyone get a standing ovation? It seems so.

if i would pick only one, that'd be Bozhanov, who's just fantastic.

Bozhanov's Chopin Sonata was frustrating for me. It had some of the loveliest moments I've heard so far (the entire 3rd movement) as well as some that just did not work for me at all (the way he barreled through the 2nd movement, and some of what he tried in the final movement). I'd still like to see him through to the next round, just because I want to hear more of how he approaches things. (EDIT: Especially now that I've seen he's scheduled to play Schubert's D960 in the semis...the first movement should be extraordinary).

I'm actually surprised he hasn't programmed any Rachmaninov in his solo recitals. It seems like his sound would be very suited to that.

Bulgarians like Russians are always good at Rachmaninov. they're pretty much share the same Russian style.