UK pianist makes it to Tchaikovsky third round
NewsToday’s qualifiers in the piano section are:
Stanislav Korchagin (Russia)
Xuanyi Mao (China)
Sergei Davydchenko (Russia)
Ilya Papoyan (Russia)
George Harliono (United Kingdom)
Angel Stanislav Wang (USA)
Suah Ye (South Korea)
Valentin Malinin (Russia)
The violin contestants are:
Daniil Kogan (Russia)
Gyehee Kim (South Korea)
Yiying Jiang (China)
Elena Tarosyan (Russia)
Chaowen Luo (China)
Ravil Islyamov (Russia)
And the cellists:
Stepanov Vasily (Russia)
Lee Dongyeol (South Korea)
Zaitseva Maria (Russia)
Lee Youngeun (South Korea)
Sendetckii Ivan (Russia)
Park Sanghyeok (South Korea)
Interesting. In each division, for each contestant from another country, there’s a contestant from Russia. For each instrument, Russia has an 50% chance of a Russian advancing or winning.
If this UK pianist and his colleagues think they’re going to get a lot of admiration, cheers, and support, then I’m afraid they are all sorely, sorely mistaken.
Frankly, they’d take part in a music competition if it were organised by ISIS.
What a magnificent player he is. But is it unusual that he seems to be personally acquainted with the head of the jury?
Shame to all. Souleless robots lacking decency.
Drum roll: Now we see who can really play Rachmaninov, which seems to be the ultimate purpose of these stupid events.
Why let a “special operation” hold your career back? The thought of travelling to Russia to take part in a music competition whilst this war rages is at best highly misguided or at worst utterly bereft of a shred of human decency. Let them enjoy the fruits of their labour.
Substitute USA in 2003 and your post makes sense. Otherwise, it’s just hypocrisy.
The US has nothing to do with this. We are not even involved in most international music competitions.
Rooting for George Harliano: a pianist taking on Tchaikovsky’s N⁰2 at that tender age has got to be a winner! And he looks very prudently but with personality!
Yes, he’s my favourite along with Suah Ye.
I’ve watched every session except the final grouping for stage 3 – where your favorite, Ye, will be performing..
Early Prediction…
Davydchenko is going to run away with this unless Suah Ye surprises us in the Concertos.
Imo, no one is even close to Davydchenko so far. He has everything: an impeccable polished technique with a marvelous touch, a wide range of emotions, deep incite and dynamics, ravishing tone and clarity. HIs Tchaikovsky 1 was excellent and his Prokofiev 2 was breath taking! And he’s Russian in a Russian competition! In comparison to recent winners of the Chopin and Cliburn Competitions, he’s slightly more gifted than Bruce Liu but not as gifted or as spectacular as Yunchan Lim.
Harliono was supposed to challenge, and he’s impressive. But he sort of ran out of steam with his Rach 2. I don’t think he’s going to win. But he may be among the top 3.
Papoyan played very fast, but he was also surprisingly sloppy with his Tchaikovsky 2 and underwhelming in his Rach 3 ( the Cadenza was among the dullest I’ve heard among today’s young pianists).
The surprise of the Concerto session was the American Angel Wang. He played after George. And I think he upstaged George. If he didn’t mess up his Lizst B minor sonata, he could have placed.
We shall see if Ye can challenge Davydchenko’s concerti performance with her Tchaikovsky 1 and the Rach 3. Imo, he was superior to her in the solo rounds.
Yes! Harliono seems like an interesting musical personality. There’s been a lot of positive buzz about him from audience members. I’m looking forward to hearing him play!
Well, Rach 3 is not everywhere among the finalists. Perhaps a wise choice. Some years ago I happened to meet Geniusas and he mentioned it was a mistake to have chosen Tchaik 2 & Rach 3. At the end of such a competition one can easily run out of steam (not everyone is Matsuev), especially playing two concertos back to back, and Rach 3 carries on and on beyond the cadenza. Prok 2 seems to be a very risky, but better choice, because of the contrast to Tchaikovsky. Sadly Rach 4 is rarely around … Where Scriabin (Valentin Malinin) ends up, remains to be seen; at least it’s different and should fit his style. The last three competitions were won by pianists who don’t play like the jury chair Matsuev, so probably one doesn’t have to be a flamboyant master of Rach 3 after all.
I personally find the concerto section the least interesting in piano competitions; the best part is already over for me.
There is no web page in this world with such despicable commentators who are spitting hatred like spitting Cobra all the time. These inferior people can’t but show their intelectual deficiency and ethical misery rooted in theirs ignorance about greatness of Russia. Russian traditions, it’s culture, it’s art, music, it’s literature, it’s performing arts in opera drama and ballet, it’s grandiose theaters and orchestras all of it is to much to comprehend and appreciate for hillbillies and red necks.
I WELCOME CENSORING OF MY COMENT in showing the respect and glory to the FIRST AMENDMENT.
Sic.
I was struck by that grandeur myself during one of the intermissions when we were shown inside one of their palatial performance venues.
I’ve never doubted Russian’s fabulous cultural history; it’s the politics which aren’t flash: in this respect Russia is anything but ‘great’. At any minute I expected troops from the Wagner group to get up on stage and send everybody home!! Fortunately that didn’t happen.
These young musicians know that winning the Tchaikovsky provides a foothold on the ladder of an international career. I wish them well.
I agree! Well said!
Mr Šicel, you seem to be somewhat confused, so let me help you. Being critical of this competition and those who take part in these exceptional circumstances is not in any way disparaging of the culture that has given us such crown jewels as Rachmaninoff, Tolstoy or Kandinsky (you may need to Google the latter).
Perhaps you are unable to separate the Russian State from its culture? This is somewhat understandable perhaps given the way the State operates so pervasively in the Arts, of which this competition is a prime example.
What a pathetic, patronising comment.
I appreciate your attention to my comment and your advice to Google some great Russians that my liberty of over 2,500 books and my classical musical collection of 4,500 LOs and CDs is full of.
At the same time, I’ll, respectfully take a liberty to ask you to Google about the wars in Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Korea, Burna, Afganistan, Iraq, Siria, Libia, Yemen…… FYI, in these wars, 25 milion people were killed after WWII and war crimes and crimes against humanity were committed. Where were reaction then!?
Punishing governments is never without heavy repercussions for people of that country. Sanctions are causing suffering of regular people and in many cases in history caused death of the people out of hunger and illnesses. Kids were victims as well.
All this tragedy can be easily avoided.Lets give up on colonialism, exploitation and greed and let’s build the world in principals of peace, nonaggression, respect and non influence in internal political matters of other countries, and let’s stop shameless arrogance against all of those that doesn’t fit our preekosieved vision how world has to mirror our own picture.
“Russian tradition”
Yes, ruzzia does have a long tradition of killing and raping.
But that’s like a really bad thing, you know?
Yes, like in Vietnam, or Abu Graib, or keeping people in cages in Guantanamo Bay for decades without any presentable proof of guilt, or being the Country with the highest crime rate in entire world, or killing President who wanted piece, or commiting genocide against Native Americans with poisoning them with infection diseases, and so on and so on……
“Its”. Plural has no apostrophe. We are literate hillbillies.
Thank you for giving me great compliment. If the only error in my writing was “it’s or its”, I have all the reasons to be very proud of my command of English language as my second language. I appreciate your comment Mr. Hillbilly.
Anon – “Its” is not plural. It’s a possessive adjective.
Ah, yes, thank you! I was so annoyed by the apostrophes it came out wrong.
I most sincerely apologize for annoying you with to many apostrophes in my attempt to be literate. By best.
50% of the finalists are Russian!! I’ve been watching the first two rounds and the standard has been high. There was one clunker from Serbia, and a couple of others who are heavy-handed – one of these on the finalist list!
First of all, the clunker was not from Serbia but rather from Kazakhstan.
Next, I get the impression that this is a political jury rather than a bona fide musical jury. Case in point: Angel Wang got lost for quite a few seconds in the middle of Liszt’s Sonata in B minor. But the jury still advanced him to the finals.
In this day and age of super technical pyrotechnics, Wang should have immediately been shown the door.
Two more deserving finalists would have been Alessandro Villaval who played a superb Brahms Op.116 and an amazing Precipitato movement of Profiev’s 7th Sonata. Or Nicolai Kuznetsov, whose Mussorgsky and Ginastera were both excellent!!
Great observation about Allessandro Villaval! I was watching the Russian audience comments & there was a lot of indignation that he didn’t pass.
George won this same competition when he was 15 years of age.He always said that he enjoyed the experience.Now he once again wants to enjoy this experience. Let him do so.
Harliono has never won the senior Tchaikovsky Competition.
He participated in the 2019 or XVI edition but did not get past the first round. At that edition he played wrong notes in nearly all the works he presented. And he had the bad habit of making inappropriate facial expressions throughout his performance.
This time around he has cleaned up his playing which is note perfect. And he has gained better control of his facial expressions.
He is a much improved pianist since 2019. And he is very prepared. He launches into his pieces without any delay for whatever reason.
Well done George! A well deserved second prize. You will go on to do great things.