Leeds International Piano Competition 2024

[LMcD]

Which also seems to be the Competition’s official feed via YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/live/lNaU58S...6C-gezcNvicvyC

First shown live on Medici TV in 2018

[jch48]

I have been many times since my teens when it was a great way to hear more repertoire and I made an afternoon for the 2nd round.

At this level I find it hard to separate my liking for a piece from the quality of the performance. i believe the jury's decision is based on all the rounds.

Regarding hand span there is an article on the gramophone website by Rhonda Boyle. I find it convincing and it matches my experience as a smaller-handed male pianist.

I don't know how the votes were cast, whether it was close or clear-cut. History tells us that it's not always 'winner takes all'

i leave it saying my number 1 did not win.

PS. I'm also interested in the idea of pianists offering A and B programmes for the jury to select. Whether that is fair and how they feel about it and also the chamber music and concerto options

[Ein Heldenleben]

I heard most of the Beethoven and Rachmaninoff in the car while travelling between a rehearsal and concert. The Beethoven sounded very poor. Very garbled passage work as though he was playing it faster than he could, sounded inexperienced, first time playing with an orchestra? Certainly not up to the standard I would have expected at the Leeds. Then Lucy told me how wonderful he was!
The Rachmaninoff seemed better but it was just on the car radio and I didn't hear it all.

Listening to the performance this evening I have to say I agree with Lucy . I couldn’t hear anything wrong with his “passage work “ a term which doesn’t do justice to Beethoven’s inventiveness in this concerto. Apart from two tiny smudges in the first movement cadenza I don’t think he’s played a single wrong note! He also has a phenomenal trill and double trill - so impt on this concerto which is strewn with them - and they need to be played differently on occasion. I think he sounded a tad prosaic coming out of the first movement cadenza which really needs a dreamy time standing still feel with those triplets and those wonderful bits of almost jazzy right hand noodling against regular rhythm in the left - but that’s just my taste.

The Rachmaninov was excellent and indeed the Bartok . How the jury separated these performances I have no idea . I can only assume they can take into account earlier rounds.

[Beresford]

...Tomoharu Ushida from Japan (the one who got through to the semis) did not make it to the final, despite a scintillating performance of Schubert D960, which had the audience in the hall standing, and many in tears of gratitude. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=orjEuP17f4g

Delighted to report that Tomoharu won the Audience Prize. I wonder how he would pair up with Bryn Terfel in Schubert?