16th International Fryderyk Chopin Competition

The competition only happens every five years! It's been going on since October 3, now. The finals start in two days! This is basically the most prestigious piano competition that exists today. Martha Argerich (a former winner of the competition) is one of the judges! Participants must be between 17 and 30 years old. By the time one gets to the finals, they will have learnt nineteen pieces (all by Chopin) from a selection of about... 40? Ten people qualified for the finals, and there were 80 at the start. For the final, they have to play one of the two concertos, with an orchestra instead of a second piano reduction, I think.

There's a live broadcast going on (resumes on Monday); it's definitely worth a listen. The Chopin concertos are super-awesome. I'm currently learning one of them, Op. 11 in e.

As an aside, Yundi Li (李云迪), who I'm going to hear play the Tchaikovsky concerto in the Spring in SF, won this competition at 18. He was the first person to win the first prize in 15 years.

Prokofiev concerto 2 and Flight of the Bumblebee

This must be the most technically impressive piano playing I've ever seen in my life. Here's Wang Yujia (王羽佳) playing the second movement of Prokofiev's second concerto and, for an encore, Cziffra's arrangement of Flight of the Bumblebee. In the Prokofiev, by the way, that movement has the right hand and left hand playing almost 1500 16th-notes each in under 3 minutes, or basically 10 notes per second, both hands together.

That's the kind of finger independence each pianist wishes for: each finger on each of her hands is controlled completely individually! And look at how relaxed her hands are throughout! It's just astounding. Check out 6:55-7:00, especially.

By the way, that's Michael Tilson Thomas conducting -- he's the head conductor of the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, a nearby orchestra I go to often (just heard Beethoven 7 and on Oct. 24 is Beethoven piano concerto 4).

Beethoven Op. 81a

There's a YouTube video of Daniel Barenboim playing Beethoven's 26^th piano sonata! First movement and part of second here, and here's the rest of the second and the whole third movement (attacca).

He plays the first movement with a crazy amount of rubato, but it is a very Romantic-style movement, and, after all, he's Daniel Barenboim; he can do whatever the heck he wants. His playing of the second and third movements is absolutely perfect. Look how relaxed his hands are! What an incredible pianist.