Thoughts on the Leeds Piano Competition Finals - Day 1

If there's anything I learnt from all this, it is never to make an overnight (16-hour) journey, arrive in the city early in the morning, and watch a concert on the same evening. Making things much worse was the number of things I had to get done during the day - lug a huge suitcase to my accommodation, open a bank account, pay school fees, register at a medical practice, shop for the bare necessities, and finally find the Leeds Town Hall.

the Leeds Town Hall, where the Finals were held

Tickets were sold out for the second night, so I only managed to watch the first, and here are my extremely exhausted and jet-lagged thoughts of the evening.

 Outside the hall was the BBC trailer

and the Hallé Orchestra trailer

Opening the concert was 24-year-old Swiss pianist Louis Schwizgebel's rendition of Beethoven's Concerto no. 4. From the opening bars it was evident that he was an extremely introverted and sensitive musician, and the Hallé orchestra responded just as thoughtfully, directed by Sir Mark Elder. All through the concerto the blend between soloist and orchestra was delightful and perfectly balanced. The second movement was fragile and delicately handled, and the third, a show of agility without being too flamboyant.

A change of mood ensued, with Chinese pianist Jiayan Sun's account of Prokofiev's second concerto. The youngest of the (all male) finalists, he launched into the concerto as if impatiently, later on getting almost aggressive, bringing out the jerky, mechanical textures that are typical of Prokofiev. In a performance that bordered on insanity, Sun drew out the resonance and the brilliance of the piano, aided punctuations from the timpani and brass.

The Emperor Concerto, played by Australian Jayson Gillham, was a tad too pedantic and lacked the warmth and majesty usually associated with this work. The orchestra sounded a little out-of-sync at parts, as if unable to agree on a tempo. Even the second movement lacked the lyricism and sounded calculated.

I don't know if it was tiredness setting in or lack of sleep impairing my judgement, but this was nevertheless an exciting start to my year-long stay in Leeds (: