But I can't really find fault with most of these from a musical standpoint. I thought the boy in the first clip was really very good, even if his emoting was thoroughly over the top. But as long as kids are coached to integrate that kind of faux-expressiveness into the music, or see it in other performers and emulate it themselves, I don't expect the trend to change. We live in an age of indulgence, after all, not restraint.

I really can't see the slightest example of over the top emoting from #1. He reminds me a little of Haochen Zhang, recent Van Cliburn winner, in terms of his degree of emoting. I also don't think that many young pianists are coached to do this or that it's faux expressiveness. I think more often than not young players are coached to reduce their expressive movements.

These are my picks, what are yours?

This is my pick. One of my idols. And I honestly wish I had half this guy's talent.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qblN-ILuiyQ

I had to look that up to be sure
"Slang: an amateur or incompetent performer, esp. an actor who performs with showy exaggeration"
No to amateur or incompetent performer, yes to showy exaggeration in most cases.

SCENE II. A hall in the castle.

Enter HAMLET and Players
HAMLET
Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to
you, trippingly on the tongue: but if you mouth it,
as many of your players do, I had as lief the
town-crier spoke my lines. Nor do not saw the air
too much with your hand, thus, but use all gently;
for in the very torrent, tempest, and, as I may say,
the whirlwind of passion, you must acquire and beget
a temperance that may give it smoothness. O, it
offends me to the soul to hear a robustious
periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to tatters, to
very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings, who
for the most part are capable of nothing but
inexplicable dumbshows and noise: I would have such
a fellow whipped for o'erdoing Termagant; it
out-herods Herod: pray you, avoid it.

First Player
I warrant your honour.

HAMLET
Be not too tame neither, but let your own discretion
be your tutor: suit the action to the word, the
word to the action; with this special o'erstep not
the modesty of nature: for any thing so overdone is
from the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the
first and now, was and is, to hold, as 'twere, the
mirror up to nature; to show virtue her own feature,
scorn her own image, and the very age and body of
the time his form and pressure. Now this overdone,
or come tardy off, though it make the unskilful
laugh, cannot but make the judicious grieve; the
censure of the which one must in your allowance
o'erweigh a whole theatre of others. O, there be
players that I have seen play, and heard others
praise, and that highly, not to speak it profanely,
that, neither having the accent of Christians nor
the gait of Christian, pagan, nor man, have so
strutted and bellowed that I have thought some of
nature's journeymen had made men and not made them
well, they imitated humanity so abominably.

This is my pick. One of my idols. And I honestly wish I had half this guy's talent.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qblN-ILuiyQ

....There's nothing that could convince me that such drama is authentic to a 10-year-old boy.....

Bad picks.

Here's a great one:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZ8WP4YkGY0

Oh kissin didnt get mentioned?

8) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0sPxr539mts
(I can't tell what's worse, his acting or his hair)

You're right! But I was one once ... and no ordinary one either.

nm

Kissin isn't "acting". He's far too serious a musician to do that. Kissin almost always moves his body in a circle while playing(as do some other terrific pianists)...I never gave it a second thought. His facial expressions(nothing much in the particular video you gave)are really only noticable in close up camera views at an angle not really seen by audience members who see him mostly in profile.