Re: WAYLTL 2025!

On Mon, 26 May 2025 2:13:21 +0000, Al Eisner wrote:

On Sun, 25 May 2025, DeepBlue wrote:
>

On Sun, 25 May 2025 5:48:57 +0000, Al Eisner wrote:
>

 On Sun, 25 May 2025, DeepBlue wrote:
>

 On Sat, 24 May 2025 20:53:14 +0000, Al Eisner wrote:
>

  On Sat, 24 May 2025, DeepBlue wrote:
>

  On Sat, 24 May 2025 0:18:46 +0000, Al Eisner wrote:
>

   Magdalene Ho (of Malaysia)

>
  Note however that she was born in the US,
  is (at least half) Chinese, and studied
  mainly in the UK with Patsy Fou. I guess
  the only thing Malay about her is one of
  her passports. ;-)
>
  Cheers!
>

  Looks like she did not make it through to
  the round of 18.  Of the few I watched,
  one I thought quite poor did make it.

>
 I am not entirely surprised. The Clickburn
 is an unfriendly environment and ecosystem
 to pianists who display too much nuance or
 subtlety. It has been going downhill since
 Radu Lupu won in 1966.
>
 To make matters worse, the Clickburn does
 not even provide decent instruments. The
 Stoneway they use has a shallow hollow
 tinny metallic tone.
>
 I am very disappointed.
>
 Cheers!
>

 From Ben Laude, whom I've found to be an
 astute listener:
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jRQU--cC_vQ

>
Yes, indeed. Ben has good ears. He is also
rather naive about how competitions really
work. The main reason Magdalene Ho was not
promoted to the next stage is that she does
not study (or appears to have studied) in
any of the "top" US conservatories, or with
anyone who is in the jury or even taken a
master class with any of them. Color me
cynical, I don't care.
>
Who are your favorites so far?

>
I'm not doing this systematically, and have
only heard a minority, whole recitals if I
can tolerate them.  In the prelims, apart

I don't listen to the streamed live sessions.
My strategy is to wait for the recordings of
the complete sessions to be posted on YT and
indexed. I then listen to key fragments. This
is very efficient.

from Ho, I especially liked Elia Cecino -
you might not have, since the central work
was LvB, played rather straight but with
considerable lyricism. But I was less
impressed by his quarterfinals, in part
due to his choice of program.

Cecino made it into the semi-finals. I did
not like him.

Of the six quarterfinals I watched, the
mosg satisfying were those by Piotr
Alexewicz and (your earlier choice)
Chaeyoung Park. I would give an automatic
pass to the next round to the pianist whose
program consisted of the Hammerklavier.

I would not! I would throw them out! ;-)
Cheers!