He has a performance available on YouTube, and the same performance is available on his website. I think his performance of the piece last night was definitely more exciting. Joyce Yang's performance of the piece from 2005 is also available on YouTube. Interesting for comparison.

I only heard the first 5 pianists from yesterday, but they were all so wonderful. In the end, I wonder if I'll care who the winner is... Maybe once it narrows down, it'll be easier to pick a personal favorite.

Daniel

I agree this first day had tremendously talented people, and very individual non-generic performances. I am not sure how they will manage to choose among them. Chetan Tierra was a discovery for me. I had not heard of him previousy but he is brilliant.
I have attended the programs of a few other contestants in the last several months (Di Wu, Soyeon Lee, Varvaressos, Zhang Zuo), all of whom were remarkably talented, but essentially all of yesterday's contestants were better (to my humble ears but I am no kaplinsky and definitely no Marcello Abbado.. Boy is this jury intimidating!!)

I was sort of iffy about Tierra at first but his Ginastera was fantastic! Myer was excellent, very solid performance of the Vine.

Everyone from yesterday EXCEPT Kunz is archived for on-demand viewing. I wonder why he's not on there? (His is the one performance I didn't get to see, darnit). I wonder if they have the final say on whether their performances can be archived. (It would seem to me that they sign away their rights when they agree to enter the competition.) Someone mentioned that Kunz was not satisfied with his performance yesterday. I wonder if that's why he's not archived like the rest. I enjoyed all of them very much - excellent playing. I LOVED Ran Dank's Beethoven.

Yeah!! I stand corrected...just checked back at cliburn.tv and Kunz is now on there as well. Plan on listening to him right now before the next round begins in two hours. Looking forward to Lee's Albeniz and Schumann Carnaval.

OP updated with the KTCU audio information.

The stream is on for Soyeon Lee now!

Hey, no comments on Di Wu? A legendary performance IMHO, the best I've seen so far (and I concur with Daniel and Andromaque that this is just a fantastic piano festival given the many wonderful performers). She appears to be a very modest and nice person. She looks quite calm and very controlled at the piano, but is also capable of extreme outbursts of energy. The Ravel was so full of colors and nuances.
These interviews immediately after the performance are a cruel thing. You can't drag people in front of a microphone after they have been immersed for 40 minutes in trance-like state.

I loved Di Wu's recital! Superlative in every respect. Right now, Mr. Vassilis Varvaresos's Liszt Bm is equally fantastic, IMHO.

don't know what to say about Di Wu, who obviously played very well, especially the last 2 pieces. i'm not crazy about her Haydn though.

strange this afternoon, everyone played so far has something good or something i don't care.

On another "note", has anyone made use of the "Email to a Performer" feature?

Di Wu plays well. She also seemed to have the right kind of personal touch. A competition looks for people who can go out and represent them well. She is looking for her big break.

Loved Di Wu's Haydn, but couldn't figure out what Varvaresos wanted to program the Moonlight Sonata for. Surely it wasn't just to show how fast he could play the last movement?

Did anyone else want to reach right through his or her computer monitor and brush all of that hair out of Soyeon Lee's face? I can't imagine trying to play with hair in my face like that. It was really rather distracting. Her facial expressions were also a bit much. I thought she was musical and expressive and there were definitely some exciting moments. However, her playing was just a tad sloppy in places - and I have no idea how much that impacts the judges' decisions. Don't get me wrong - if I could play 1/1000th as well as she can, I'd be a happy camper. But the excellence level is so high at this competition...does one really have to be close to note perfect AND have everything else they are looking for?

I thought it was a smart decision. Sure, it is a very familiar piece (the first movement in particular), but he pulled it off very well. I loved the way he began quietly (with "Moonlight" 1st Movt.) and ended quietly (with the end of the Liszt Bm).

I guess what I meant by my (somewhat snarky) comment is the main thing I took away from the Moonlight Sonata was how fast he tried to take the last movement, and how muddy parts of it became because of that. I found very little memorable in the rest of the sonata.

Well, I will admit that he did not surpass Kempff (who, IMHO, has the definitive performance, which available on YT) in that particular sonata.

actually, it's brave for any pianist to play Moonlight in a competition, since it's such a familiar piece and easily to be criticized for this or that, and unless you really have something to say about this sonata, you don't want to play it. unfortunately, Varvaresos didn't break any ground with it, a very typical performance, imo. his Liszt sonata was much better.

Di Wu plays well. She also seemed to have the right kind of personal touch. A competition looks for people who can go out and represent them well. She is looking for her big break.
---------------agree!!

From a thread-starting post elsewhere that really belongs here -



Why shouldn't it be both a video production and a piano competition? Because, in fact, it is both. Hiding equipment to pretend a recording is not being made would be silly. The piece of equipment that does seem a little unnecessarily intrusive from the performers' point of view is that video camera right to the left of the keyboard - surely they could have positioned it a little further away and simply zoomed in a bit.

I'm not sure what is "ridiculous" about the performer portrait videos. Care to explain why they are? Oh, wait, I think I get it - we shouldn't care about the actual person, just about the music, right? If that's what you mean, it is a valid point of view, I think, but not one that pleases the PR-besotted Cliburn competition.

The "foolish twit" is the guy who has been the announcer/MC for the Cliburn for eons. I dare say that almost anyone put in that position of talking to the performer immediately after the performance would probably come off as a foolish twit. It's a horrible idea, probably borrowed from sportscasting, and we should all let the Cliburn people know we think it stinks. Performers are usually in no condition to be making inane small talk mere seconds after such an intense experience, and asking them to do so demeans their performance and the music. And yeah, I was wondering what would happen if a performer simply refused to play along.

Of course, this is in Texas, where being aggressively provincial while wielding enough money to get world-class attention is an art. I'm waiting for the movie - "Borat Does the Cliburn". That could be fun.

Nice. I'm checking some performances out of interest and maybe to get to know some new music... so now I also know what Boulez sounds like.

I'm getting a lot of distortion, like it's recorded/amplified too loud. Aaarg this is really, really annoying. Everytime it gets louder I get big distortion.

Has anyone listened to Noboyoku Tsujii, particularly the Debussy? He had quite a program; All 12 of Chopin' etudes Op.10, which I did not catch entirely, debussy's Images Book I which was wonderful and a very good La Campanella.
i was particularly impressed with his Debussy. I happened to have hooked up my computer too a good sound system, and the effect was wonderful. Lots of color, beauty, and sensitivity.. AS you may know, this performer is blind since birth, but he is a true master.

Regarding the Cliburn TV "coverage, well it is reminiscent of the NBC coverage of the Olympics but it makes up in interest what it lacks in elegance and style. It humanizes these prodigiously talented contestants and reduces the "untouchable" image they might project had the been kept in isolation from the public. It also may serve to generate interest in piano competitions and classical music, which is not a bad thing. I think I would be a bit permissive here..

Is there any way to fast forward the video from the recitals of the contestants who have already performed? I don't see the usual ways of doing this on youtube.

Regards,
Computer Challenged

I was also getting distortion in the left ear of my earbuds. I thought for sure that my headphones were going out until I tried them on some other music. Maybe it's the video player?

Yes I think it's the video--I got it too.

Assuming you're watching this on www.cliburn.tv through the Silverlight player...

If you watch one of the archived performances and click somewhere on the timeline, the rectangle marking the position will go to that point. However, I get one shot at it. If I'm not where I want to be and then try to move again, the video freezes and I have to reload it.

Not a great player, but hey, it's Microsoft.

And I'm getting static in the louder passages from the left speaker only, whether on my built-in laptop speakers or on my headphones. I didn't notice this on day 1 of the competition, but did notice it last night. I just checked a few videos and I only get the static/distortion in loud passages from the May 23 (day 2) videos, not from the May 22 (day 1) videos.

If you're using the Silverlight program, it should work as it does on youtube. The time meter comes up when you scroll your mouse over the video. After trying to forward it, it sometimes glitches by stopping the video completely, in which case, I reclick the performer on the bottom of the window and skip to whatever time I want to forward to. And... if it glitches again, well I try again! Hope this helps

I just reported both the search/fast-forward issue and the left side distortion for day 2 videos to the website. They were quick with support issues on day one for the slow stream issues they were having (if you tried, it was awful...you'd get a few seconds of video, then pixelation and freeze, then maybe 15 seconds later you'd get another couple of seconds and it would start all over again.). They seemed to have fixed that problem entirely.

I thought that his playing had alot of clarity. Really nice touch. Gotta watch this Player Profile.
Matt

Agree 100% (except that I don't think the performer vidoes/stories before their performances decrease the elegance).

Just caught up with some of the performances I missed. I have to say I absolutely loved Di Wu.