By Mike Winter

The evening session of the concluding semifinal day was not as surprise-packed as the afternoon session discoveries from Tsujii and Lifits.  The high point of the night was the concluding Brahms Piano Quintet by Yeol Eum Son and the Takac, my favorite chamber performance, along with Andrea Lam’s Dvorak.  (Are two favorites allowed?  Yes, this year let’s have a tie for best chamber music performance).  Kyu Yeon Kim also performed the Brahms, an energetic account, but her dymanic level was mostly the same, and she was slightly ahead of the quartet at times.  Alessandro Deljavan followed.  He was not one of my favorites, and this recital confirmed why.  As he worked his way through a shapeless Schubert D major sonata (all 35 minutes of it), I couldn’t help thinking of what several other pianists who didn’t make the cut could have done with those minutes.  Oh well. 

Overall the jury and I agreed on five of the six finalists I hoped would make it, the one disagreement was over Lifits.  Yes, there were some wrong notes, but at least we got his semifinal recital.  The jury preferred Di Wu, my only reservation being her sound, not her playing.

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