The Finalists

Antonii Barishevskyi – The young competitor from Ukraine played Liszt’s piano concerto No.1 for his first final performance with orchestra. I immediately noticed a particular artistic individuality in his playing, when performing Liszt and later also Rachmaninoff piano concerto No.3. He demonstrated to understand the polyphonic structure of the musical score, but his technical skills were not developed enough to use them with a better knowledge for the interpretation. We come to the conclusion that Barishevskyi is still looking for his own pianistic identity, but his approach to a polyphonic playing could guide him to a good development according to the good old German-Russian piano tradition.

Anna Bulkina – The young Russian lady showed her pianistic character right after performing Liszt’s piano concerto No.1. I missed a certain long-vibrating piano sound, her playing was generally too dry, nevertheless her technique could perfectly fit to Prokofieff’s concerto No.2.
Conclusion: Bulkina’s performance was too accurate, no musical shaping of the Prokofieff’s concerto, her musical expression was just based on a technical aspect. Appropriate to Prokofieff’s style, not for the other works of the wide piano literature.

Tatiana Chernichka – Clear technique, appropriate pedalizing, a good team-work with the orchestra. Chernichka performed well both with Liszt’s piano concerto No. 2 and Rachmaninoff concerto No.3. Sometimes her playing was too “nice”. Rachmaninoff Concerto No.3: her interpretation was not creative enough, her playing remained closed but not intrinsic, which is actually a demanding character particularly by Rachmaninoff.

The “other” prize winners

Three further participants were not admitted to the great final stage of the Busoni competition: Alessandro Taverna, Min Soo Hong, Sun-A Park. It was not difficult to guess their artistic profile just by listening to the orchestral performance with Liszt’s piano concertos. Each of them presented a very personal interpretation of the work, according to a romantic Franz Liszt’s style. Particularly Alessandro Taverna showed sometimes polyphonic playing.

The jury’s decision

The international jury at the last Chopin piano competition in Warsaw 2010 (Martha Argerich was joining the jury), expressed an absolutely incompetent vote by awarding Evegeni Bozhanov only fourth prize. His playing was brilliant, of a high-professional polyphonic technique and a maturity in his interpretations.
We have a similar combination at Busoni competition: the jury, with Argerich as a president and other members as Mrs. Stephanovich, showed again their limited art of voting, especially when they did not recognize the polyphonic signs in Barishevskyi’s or even Taverna’s playing. This led finally to a not-awarded first prize.
Ferruccio Busoni was acclaimed and recognized as the most polyphonic pianist all-time. Right for the Busoni competition I would have wished a jury with a deeper pianistic knowledge.

I am not speaking about simple piano playing, what I often prefer to define as a pushing down of keys, depressing pedals like the accelerator of your car with a typewriter technique. Not at all.
It is very important not to strive after a quite impersonal and unattractive style of playing.

How do you consider your being a pianist?
Did you set your own mission statement about your personal musical development? If not, believe me, you should.
Unless you want to play rather for yourself in your free time and not for public.
But remember: being a pianist is only the step before you become an artist…

Thepianist.com starts with Glenn Gould, the eccentric Canadian pianist who certainly set a milestone in the history of the piano and pianists.

A large source of information has been written, spoken, broadcasted about Glenn Gould.
It will not be necessary to put more information about him, as it is already available. And everybody knows that there are controversial opinions about his interpretations.
Let us simply remember Glenn as someone who wanted to change the old patterns of classical music, to bring more life in the masterworks of great composers, to suggest new and original approaches to the score.

Glenn´s personal note was doubtless his conducting the music he was playing (when one of his hands was free, of course) and, last but not least, his permanent humming over the notes, the phrases or the bass-line, whatever he thought it was right to do.

Another personal note was also his polyphonic playing.
He perfectly understood how to study the score, how to read the voices in the context of the composition, how to analyze the structure and finally how to play like a string quartet or even an orchestra.

My personal recommendation to all pianists:
Don´t try to be a second Glenn Gould, the world has already one and he is enough. But you can take him as an example.
You can also decide to continue his purpose.
Be yourself, like Glenn was, and your style will develop in the right direction.
“Thank you Glenn, for showing us what to do, what not to do, how to do it, how not to do it.”

Oh my God, this terribly sounding word…our teachers threatened us with it, I am sure that the more your piano teacher repeated this word during the lessons, the less you wanted to do it.

I practiced up to seven hours a day during the time of my former music education, not only because my teachers said that, but also because I felt that spending many hours at the piano was necessary to get an appropriate technique.

However, practicing should not be just a matter of being a diligent student. If you consider your daily practice like a passionate exercising, you will be improving both your finger technique and your entire personal expression as a pianist.

Practice is the secret of being good in life.

If you repeat every day a task you are still not experienced with, you will be able to discover the strong power of practicing.

Practicing is repeating, repeating is learning, learning is living. And living is knowing more and more who you really are.

Maybe you are now fascinated by reading this and you want to know more about efficient piano playing.

But we will make a break now.

Do you know why?

Because we go practicing…