Image: (c) Jean-Baptiste Millot
French pianist Alexandre Kantorow was announced as the big winner of the 16th Tchaikovsky piano competition for 2019.
Kantorow (22) has already recorded few well-received albums for the BIS label, the latest of which, a hybrid SACD of Saint-Saëns three Piano Concertos with the Tapiola Sinfonietta conducted by his father, Jean-Jacques Kantorow, was reviewed on these pages.
The final round requires all participants to play two concertos consecutively, one by Tchaikovsky (either the first or the less-heard second concerto), and another concerto chosen by the participant. In this years’ finale, Kantorow was the only pianist out of the seven finalists to play the Second Concerto. In addition, he played Brahms second Piano Concerto.
Unfortunately, this years’ piano competition will mostly be remembered by a significant blunder that causes pianist Tianxu An to misunderstand the order of the concertos he had to perform. The confusion, which the competition’s organizers claimed caused by the evening announcer’s error, was widely discussed and can be seen below, with Mr. An expecting the longer introduction of the first Tchaikovsky piano concerto and surprised to hear the opening of Rachmaninov’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini:
Although offered to perform the entire evening again, An declined. He was placed fourth in the competition, but was also compensated by a special award, giving for “courage and restraint”.
The jury of this years’ competition included renowned pianists and past winners such as Denis Matsuev (Jury Chair), Michel Béroff, Barry Douglas, Freddy Kempf, Boris Petrushansky, Menahem Pressler and Nelson Freire.
The Tchaikovsky Piano Competition is held every four years in Moscow, and is considered one of the more prestigious competitions in the world, alongside other events like the Van Cliburn Competition (Texas) the Leeds Competition, The Chopin Competition (Warsaw), The Queen Elisabeth Competition (Brussels) and the Arthur Rubinstein Competition (Tel-Aviv). Recent winners of the Tchaikovsky competition included Daniil Trifonov (2011) and Dmitry Masleev (2015).
A full list of the prize winners can be seen here.
