Monday, May 30, 2005

Cliburn Chatter: Meet the Finalists

Here are the judges' picks for finalists (in bold-red are those competitors Well Tempered Blog predicted as the judges' final picks.

Davide Cabassi
Sa Chen
Chu-Fang Huang

Alexander Kobrin
Roberto Plano
Joyce Yang

Sa Chen! Wow. Both Sa Chen and Huang were on my personal wish list, but I didn't think the judges would select them. But they did and I am so happy to be hearing more of them.

To be honest, I believe Yang was a bad choice for a finalist, she seems to me to be a fine young pianist but who has yet to fully mature musically and communicate a moving artistic vision. What she delivers, as I hear it, are fleet fingers and a repetoire of muggings that create a kind of audience appeal. I could go on, but let's just say she's not my cuppa tea. Nontheless, she has made it quite far and that merits credit. Still, in her place, I would have placed Martinez as she is to my ears a better musician. Different ears. Different choices.

For those of you following it, here's some of the other predictions from the blogosphere (correct choices in bold-red):

Mike Winter' s (from the official Cliburn blog) pegged the following as finalists (bold-red for those actually selected): An, Feng, Martinez, Mazo, Plano, Yang

Carl Tait's (which is purportedly more or less identical to that of Thomas' from Klassic): Yang, Plano, Martinez, Feng, An, Kobrin

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