At the Tchaikovsky competition, the second round of most specialties has ended and the finalists have been determined

In the piano nomination of the Tchaikovsky Competition there will be not six, but eight finalists. That was the decision of Denis Matsuev, heading the jury of pianists at Tchaikovsky for the third time, and each time more and more boldly violating the rules of the competition. Under his leadership, the jury over and over again favorably allows not only more contestants to the second round, giving them the chance of one more performance in front of the public in the Great Hall of the Conservatory and in front of an online audience (including the producer), but also increases the number of finalists and laureate awards. The results of the second round are commented Irina Mikhalkina.

It should be noted that such generosity of the jury, which has already become expected in the piano nomination of the Tchaikovsky Competition, has not yet touched other specialties. As, for example, Alexander Knyazev noted when announcing the results of the cello tour, a competition is a competition, and everyone knows what he is getting into. In the cello category, six players (three each from Russia and South Korea) were allowed into the final: Ivan Sendetsky, Maria Zaitseva, Vasily Stepanov, Yol Lee Don, Eun Yong Lee, Hyuk Pak San. The jury of the violin competition also chose six finalists: Daniil Kogan, Ravil Islyamov and Elena Tarosyan were from Russian musicians, the second half of the finalists were from Asia: Kim Ke Hee (South Korea), Jiang Ying and Luo Chaowen (China).

Meanwhile, the day of summing up the results of the second round and the competitive performances that were still ongoing was alarming for the competition: in Moscow, the CTO regime was introduced in the morning, and it was not clear whether the competition would continue at all and whether the third round would take place in such extreme conditions. But the organizers decided to continue working as usual, so at the auditions at the Moscow Conservatory, the audience filled the halls with the same activity as on other days.

The pianists arranged the programs of the contestants in the second round in a more free format: no longer according to academic school patterns – Bach, sonata Viennese classics, etudes and the obligatory Tchaikovsky, but at the choice of the contestants themselves, taking into account hourly timing. So, the young Sergei Davydchenko chose two sonatas for the second round at once – Liszt’s B minor and Prokofiev’s eighth. And the young pianist, who had recently won children’s competitions and was indeed richly endowed with pianistic qualities – the beauty of sound, technical freedom, fresh emotionality – performed both of the most difficult compositions convincingly and confidently. And the remarkable Japanese pianist Koki Kuroiwa, who did not qualify for the final, built his program exclusively on Russian music, which included both the puzzling Pletnev version of Tchaikovsky’s Concert Suite from the ballet The Nutcracker, and Rachmaninov’s Second Sonata, and Scriabin’s Fantasia, and simple in text, but the subtly interpreted Nocturne by Balakirev (No. 3, D minor).

One of the most “atmospheric” moments of the last round was the performance of Marcel Tadokoro, a student of Rena Shereshevskaya, who did not make it to the final. The charming charismatic pianist literally captivated the audience with absolute freedom of performance, transparent, purely French sound coloring and non-canonical interpretations (for example, Tchaikovsky’s sonata in C sharp minor sounded like a melancholic improvisation). And the chanson “En avril a Paris” (“Spring in Paris”) by Charles Trenet and Alexis Weissenberg performed at the end of the program, unexpected for the competition format, left a slight nostalgic trail of “violet” Paris.

In the final, you won’t even hear the Italian Alessandro Villalva – as it seemed, one of the unconditional contenders for the competition podium, brilliantly prepared for the competition, an established artist, with a very individual and lively understanding of the musical text. He played Prokofiev’s Seventh Sonata in a key close to the interpretations of post-war avant-garde music, articulating the experimental spirit of the composition in an extremely interesting way.

Among those who made it to the final are George Harliono from the UK, who surprised with a filigree, as if on a petit scale, performance of fragments from Stravinsky’s Petrushka ballet, and Angel Stanislav Wong (USA), who performed Liszt’s B minor sonata on a large romantic scale, two interesting pianists from Asia – Mao Xuanyi (China) and Yeo Soa (South Korea), as well as four Russian pianists – Sergey Davydchenko, Ilya Papoyan, Stanislav Korchagin and Valentin Malinin. In the final they will play two piano concertos with the Svetlanov State Orchestra (conductor Alexei Rubin). Seven finalists have chosen Tchaikovsky’s First Concerto, and only Ilya Papoyan will dare to play his Second Concerto, with which the Frenchman Alexander Kantorov triumphantly won at the last competition.

Usually, by the third round, representatives of musical management arrived from different countries, who, on the spot, signed engagements with the winners and participants of the competition: this was the main point of the latter – to launch an international career for young musicians. This year, such prospects are hardly possible, but the question of who will undertake to promote the current winners of the Tchaikovsky Competition outside of Russia becomes more and more urgent as the final draws near.