Uh oh, he ended the Rhapsody with a wrong note, not good for him.

yea, he did..

I just started watching this afternoon. Would be great to have an English translation of the commentary after the performances.

Looked back through the earlier posts and found a link to the English version.

Wow Anton's cadenza really resembles the 1st concerto...

GReat ending! He actually hopped off the bench!

LOOK AT THAT APPLAUSE, Anton won it, no doubt. THE POWER OF THE RED BEARD!!!

I completely agree!

The cadenza .. simply took my breath away.

That was amazing

i think Salnikov is the best, and his cadenza sounds pretty operatic.

I heard the rhapsodies .. my opinions

First: Technique
no.1: weaker than the other two
2nd: better but what annoys that he missed the last chord
3rd: as no.2 or better but with more wrong notes

Second: Music
i liked no.2 then no.1 then no.3 (no.3 started some sections fast then slows then fast again ... that was bad)

Third: Cadenza
1st: did not like it
2nd: the best musically
3rd: the best 'virtuosically' with the first part reminding me of the ocean etude


My favourite version: No.2 , the chinese guy

The guy with the beard (is he anton u are talking about?) has certainly the most powerful cadenza

i agree with u

they played in this order:

1 - Christiaan Kuyvenhoven
2 - Yingdi Sun
3 - Anton Salnikov

I'm inclined to think Sun's performance was the best, musically and technically, in spite of that final chord. Salnikov would easily win in a lookalike competition, though.


David

Yea, despite the nice ending to Salnikov's rhapsody, the middle section was a bit disorganized ... and I agree, the tempo was uneven through Salnikov's performance. But, oh, the finish! Thank God for the finish.

Sun wins it. Deservedly, IMO.


David

I preferred Anton's performances, but, congratulations to all the finalists and to Sun Yundi!

I also enjoyed Anton Salnikov's performences more, but they all did great so I can't complain.

Anybody know if they're gonna make these finals available online?

You guys had me thinking Yundi Li won the last one, but he was actually third in the second to last competition link

The comp was way too political. Salnikov should've won it, Kuyvenhoven was good too. Sun IMO was just playing the notes, there was no point to his playing, like taking a book, and ripping out random pages, so you dont understand whats happening. My favourite contestant was Gulyak, who deserved to go further.

C'mon Max, do you really have a reason for calling the competition "political"? You're accusing the judges of acting in accordance with their own power interests, rather than awarding the prize to the pianist they preferred. That's a serious charge, often made by contestants who don't like the results.

I think Salnikov has a little bit of Cziffra in him. He's an entertainer, but oftentimes this does not translate to pleasing the jury. He could do fine in his career. Yundi placed 3rd in the '99 competition, look at where he is now

I dunno, I really did not enjoy Kuyvenhoven's performance of either the concerto or the Hungarian Rhapsody too much. But note that he is from the Netherlands. Just a thought.

Salinkov was probably the most musically interesting of the finalists, and had the best cadenza, but was not as good technically as Sun.

One thing I noticed though--Salinkov only missed notes in flourishes and very difficult passages, where we'd expect anybody to miss some .
Sun nailed those parts--double tempo, perfectly even, and crystal clear--but missed the really important notes, like the last note of the rhapsodie.