Hi, y’all competitive piano moving… er music fans,

There really had been a lot of buzz about the second evening of the Finals.

Needless to say, Tsujii stole the evening.  Many comparisons with Bozhanov’s earlier performance of the same concerto have been made, and I don’t think we could have heard more different approaches.

Tsujii’s reading was very intimate and personal.  Remember that Chopin wrote the two concerti when he was twenty years old.  The music here was presented with innocence and sincerity, with a touch of youthful naïvité. The dynamics level was at least a couple of notches lower than the earlier performance, but 1830 was still just a few years after the death of Schubert and Beethoven. The style in which the music is written is still decidedly early-Romantic, and Tsujii brought out the clarity and intimacy like no other.

Clearly, the audience appreciated it, and was on the feet even before the orchestra concluded the closing cadence.

Son’s recital opened with a loving reading of Bach-Petri.  The lyrical line was projected above the warm backdrop.  The piece segued into Schubert’s Impromptu in the same B-flat major key, and the transition was seamless that some in the audience not familiar with the repertoire may have been fooled into thinking that it was the same piece.  Son’s signature of the clear lyrical line continued throughout the two Schubert Impromptus.

The Beethoven Op.111 was presented with much reverence.  As I noted earlier, the audience was in total silence for a few seconds.

Zhang gave us a solid reading of the Mozart. It was unwavering with determination, and the quality of the sound was more Beethoven than Mozart: not surprising as he chose to perform the cadenzas by Beethoven. Being one of the two concerti in minor keys out of 27, it has a much heavier side than the others. I am suspecting that Zhang is planning to show two contrasting colours, with this Mozart and Prokofiev.

Ken Iisaka

This entry was posted on Friday, June 5th, 2009 at 2:46 pm and is filed under 2009 Competition. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.