Thanks so much for posting this... I had every intention of watching it, but October slipped up on me! At least I only missed a day. I've enjoyed watching so far - some great playing already.

(By the way, I appreciate your sig line. )

I have only watched bits and pieces of the competition on previous days, but today I watched a little more. What I found most interesting were the comments from the judges and commentators regarding the subject of interpretation. Seems some of us (especially your administrators ) are not the only ones who hold tight to the notion of sticking to playing what's on the music and not going off on some personal and very different interpretation. Alas, one of my countrymen, an American pianist, played this afternoon and received quite a lot of negative comments because his interpretation was just a little too 'off' to be considered acceptable. At least by all the Chopin experts! We PS admins have taken some flack in the past from not having accepted certain members' Chopin recordings because they were too different than from what Chopin wrote. So...well...I feel a little vindicated now.

You're welcome, Sarah. There are a few remarkable pianists among the contestants. My preference goes to Bozhanov, but he doesn't really belong to the Competition, I won't be surprised at all if he doesn't get the first prize (or another, for that matter).

All the past broadcasts can be watched on demand here (but not during the live broadcast):
http://konkurs.chopin.pl/en/edition/xvi/video/archive
and some can be listened here:
http://konkurs.chopin.pl/en/edition/xvi/chronicle/13

So, if your countryman (you mean Tyson, don't you) submitted here his Chopin stuff you could safely reject it on the strength of those comments by the jurors and the commentators at the Chopin Competition...

Seriously, about knowing things, my conviction is that sometimes we know wrong.
There's a very knowledgeable blogger who's following the Competition: http://www.michael-moran.com/2010/10/xv ... hopin.html.
Happy reading.

Yee-haw... I'm back. (your fault, Alfonso.) (blueberries.... )

So, as I was about to say a moment ago - Ok, I exaggerated a little bit. Of course if he submitted his Chopin, at least the stuff I heard the other day, I would surely put it up. It's not that far off as far as interpretation goes. But even with that said, several of the commentators still had less-than-flattering things to say. Which really did surprise me, because I thought the trend these days was to insert a little more individuality in one's playing. I guess there is a very fine line between what is acceptable and what is not. Can you just imagine what those commentators would say if they got to hear some of the 'unusual' Chopin recordings that pass by here on PS? Actually, they could not say much because they probably would have had a coronary!

Btw - Evgeni Bozhanov is very good - I like him much of the time, (but not to look at, yuck!) but he also received negative comments like, "The commentators did not share the audience's enthusiasm and they had some doubts whether his interpretation was in Chopin style. He is generally a controversial artist whose playing arouses mixed feelings." Wow!

Also, Tyson made it to the third round! I give up....

Well, the results sure were interesting! Out of the American pianists I really liked Huangci, and hoped she'd make it to the finals, but she didn't.

Yes, quite a surprise ending! Girl Power!!!