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The piano auditions for Stage I of Round II began on June 21st in the Great Hall of the Conservatory.

There were performances by the first six musicians:  Sergey Redkin (Russia), Maria Mazo (Germany), Reed Tetzloff (USA) in the afternoon session; and Ilya Rashkovsky (Russia), George Li (USA), and Lucas Debargue (France) ended the day’s contest.

Stage I of Round II requires a full-fledged solo recital lasting 50 minutes to an hour.  The competitors play a programme that they choose themselves according to their tastes and preferences.   The only restriction is that they are required to include at least one composition by composers on a list announced in advance.

Right from the first day the audience heard a broad range of styles—from Baroque to jazz.

The Russian Sergey Redkin began the day’s auditions and was the only one in Round II to play a piece by Bach, the Toccata in C minor, which immediately lent his performance a serious intellectual and philosophical aspect.  After a lyrical interlude (Liszt’s transcriptions of Schubert’s lieder) Prokofiev’s Sonata No. 8 seemed to follow logically.

The next two musicians—Maria Mazo and Reed Tetzloff—seemingly built their programmes entirely on the principle of maximum diversity.  Mazo played Scriabin’s Sonata No. 4. Then came “Katschei’s Infernal Danse”, “Berceuse”, and “Finale” from Stravinsky’s Firebird followed by Beethoven’s Sonata No. 29.  Reed Tetzloff offered the “Prélude, Chorale and Fugue” by Franck, Scriabin’s Sonata No. 7, a Scarlatti sonata in B minor, a sonata Charles Griffes (an American composer of the late 19th and early 20th century) and Nikolai Kapustin’s jazz-influenced “Variations” (played with very evident pleasure and panache).

The evening auditions started with Ilya Rashkovsky, who took some risks in his programme by including Schumann’s extremely challenging “Phantasie” and two late sonatas by Scriabin (the No. 10 or “Trill” sonata and No. 5).  It was soon clear, however, that this pianist had made a good choice, one that suited the Romantic side of his artistic personality.  This performance, which was finely integrated, passionate, and full of elevated feeling (in Schumann) and rapturous expressiveness (in Scriabin) was the first of the day to resonate emotionally with the listeners, who then gave the competitor a sincere and lengthy round of applause.  

The 19-year-old American, George Li, was quite properly counting on his phenomenal technique when he included in his programme works written by concert virtuosos—Liszt’s “Hungarian Rhapsody” and Chopin’s variations on Là ci darem la mano from Mozart’s “Don Giovanni”. He played both pieces with incredible ease and brilliance.  However, Li had already shown in Round I that his artistic arsenal held far more than mere technical mastery.  Rachmaninov’s “Variations on a Theme of Corelli” was grand and full of dramatic contrasts while the two Tchaikovsky pieces, “Méditation” and “Valse de salon”, came as a delicate lyrical intermezzo before the Chopin at the end.  This American’s playing had quite an impact on the audience, and the pianist went off stage to wild applause and shouts of “Bravo”.

However, it was French pianist Lucas Debargue who got the real ovation.  He is a delicate and mercurial lyricist who qualified for Round II because of his exceptional gifts (he began studying music only at age 11!), his striking and unusual conceptions, and his independence from any of the existing performance styles which then translate into a spellbinding naturalness and reverence that he brings to everything he offers on stage.  All these qualities were clear displayed in his programme that began with Nikolai Medtner’s F minor sonata and ended with Ravel’s Gaspard de la nuit that was interpreted with true insight.  The audience was reluctant to part company so soon with the Competition’s new favourite and stood applauding even after the house lights were dimmed.

The violin auditions for Stage I of Round II began on June 21st in the Small Hall of the Conservatory.

Six musicians took to the stage of the Small Hall.  The afternoon session featured Pavel Milyukov (Russia), Alexandra Conunova (Moldova), Mayu Kishima (Japan), while the evening edition offered Younguk Kim (South Korea), Stepan Starikov (Russia), and Bomsori Kim (South Korea).  Round I performances had consisted almost entirely of mandatory pieces.   In contrast Round II gives the competitors a chance to present a full-fledged solo recital.  According to the rules of the Competition it must incorporate at least one piece by a Russian composer; and one of the violin sonatas of Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Schuman, Brahms, Franck, Ravel, Richard Strauss, Bartók, Prokofiev, or Shostakovich; one virtuoso piece; and one piece that the performer is completely free to choose.  On this day in the Small Hall there were six hour-long solo recitals that were almost entirely different from each other.  Because the mandatory composers for Round I had been Bach, Paganini, and Tchaikovsky, it was natural that the musicians in Round II would favor 20th century music.  There were four compositions by Prokofiev, two each from Ravel and Ysaÿe, and one each from Sibelius, de Falla, Richard Strauss, Hindemith, and Schnittke.  Four of these had been on the programme in Round I at least once.  These were Saint-Saëns’s “Introduction and Rondo capriccioso”, Ravel’s “Tsigane”, Tchaikovsky’s “Meditation”, and the Schumann-Kreisler “Fantasie”.

The first day of Round II showed the difference between diligence and mastery.  Not many of these six played at the same level as in Round I; nearly all of them made significant advances.  This was true of Pavel Milyukov, who launched his programme with the Beethoven Sonata No. 7 and ended with “Tsigane”.  In between them he played Schnittke’s “A Paganini”, a virtuosic and dramatic work that suffered some interruptions by outbursts of applause and shouts of “Bravo” as has been all too common during the violin auditions.  It was also true that Alexandra Conunova’s playing was even better than in Round I.  She performed Grieg’s Sonata No. 3, Ysaÿe’s Sonata No. 3, and Saint-Saëns’s “Introduction and Rondo capriccioso”.  The highlight of her programme was Prokofiev’s “Five Melodies”.  And Mayu Kishima was no exception either as she interpreted Ysaÿe’s “Poème élégiaque”, de Falla’s “Spanish Dance”, Richard Strauss’s E-flat major sonata, and the “Five Melodies”.

As luck would have it, a single Prokofiev composition would turn up twice in a row in the evening auditions too.  Younguk Kim and Stepan Starikov both began with that composer’s Sonata No. 1.  Kim continued with Tchaikovsky’s “Sérénade mélancolique”, Ravel’s “Tsigane”, and “Honza Nori”, a rarely heard piece by Korean composer Young Jo Lee.  Starikov offered the Schumann-Kreisler “Fantasie” in C major and Paganini’s “La campanella”.

A high point in the evening session was Bomsori Kim’s performance, which was the most diverse and thoroughly planned.  It started with Hindemith’s very effective Sonata No. 1 and went on to Beethoven’s Sonata No. 8.  That might have been the finale of the programme, but there was still more than half to go!  The lyrical centrepiece of the programme was Tchaikovsky’s “Meditations” and two pieces by Sibelius.  For dessert there was Waxman’s “Fantasia on Themes from Bizet’s Carmen”.  In Round I it was her technique that astounded the public, but this time she painted a picture like an artist so that for ten minutes all the most dramatic moments from a great opera came before our eyes.

Also on this day the Competition’s press club was launched.  Its first guest was juror Ilya Kaler, an acclaimed soloist, teacher and winner of the Paganini Competition (1981) and the Sibelius Competition (1985) and the Tchaikovsky Competition (1986).  He fielded questions from journalists and described how the jury reaches its decisions, what factors in a competitor’s performance are to be kept in mind, and how the preliminary auditions were done.  The discussion turned quite interesting when it turned to the meeting of the jury with the competitors who did not advance to Round II.  Kaler affirmed that the meeting went very nicely with no ill feeling and that it was valuable for all the competitors.

On June 22 auditions for Round II continue with performances by Yu-Chien Tseng (1:00 pm), Clara-Jumi Kang (2:00 pm), Yoo Jin Jang (3:00 pm), Haik Kazazyan (7:00 pm), Sergei Pospelov (8:00 pm), and Christoper Tun Andersen (9:00 pm).  As on the previous days, the performances will be streamed online by medici.tv.

The cello auditions for Stage I of Round II began on June 21st in the Small Hall of the Saint Petersburg Philharmonic.

Anastasia Kobekina’s programme started the afternoon session, and her playing seemed a gift to the audience which gave her well-deserved applause and shouts of “Bravo”.  Anastasia then probed the boundaries of the lyrical with Rachmaninov’s “Elégie” and Schubert’s “Arpeggione Sonata”) and of virtuosity with Paganini”s ‘Introduction and Variations’ on a single string based on a theme from Rossini’s “Moses in Egypt” for a single violin string. She was followed on stage by Pablo Ferrández-Castro of Spain with a serious collection of pieces including the last two movements of Prokofiev’s Sonata No. 119 and the Cello Sonata No. 2 by Brahms.  Leonard Elschenbroich, who might well be regarded as an already established artist, closed the afternoon session with a programme that was almost a repeat of Pablo Ferrández-Castro’s with works by Prokofiev, Brahms, and Paganini.

Stage I of Round II includes a chamber programme as Stage I did and lasts two days concluding on Monday evening. Two more jurors, Mario Brunello and Mischa Maisky, will be added as they arrive for the beginning of the next stage of the Competition.  On Tuesday the competitors who are still in competition will have rehearsals, and on Wednesday they will appear in the Small Hall with a chamber orchestra to play one of Joseph Haydn’s concertos.