THE second round of the Guardian Dublin International Piano Competition, which took place at the RDS on Wednesday and yesterday, is not at all like the first. It's not just the freedom of programming allowed by the 40-minute recitals (10 minutes longer than those of Round 1). The first round is an initial encounter, the second is the extension and development of an acquaintance.
For instance, Frenchman Philippe Castaigns, who had played Beethoven's Eroica Variations in Round 1, showed a different frame of Beethovenian responsiveness in the Sonata in C, Op. 2 No. 3. And, after her soft-centred Barber Sonata of Round 1, Tamara Anna Cisclowska (Australian, in spite of the name) showed a more aptly probing attitude to Messiaen and Scriabin.
On the other hand, Canadian Libby Yu surely undermined herself with the blurriness of outline she brought to Schubert's Wanderer Fantasy, as also did Korean Jung-Eun Kim by taking Scriabin's Second Sonata too firmly and consistently into the world of Chopin.
In Brahms's Variations on an Original Theme, Op. 21 No. 1, American Max Levinson delivered some of the dreamiest and limpest Brahms I've ever heard. But, unlike the other players already mentioned, he managed to win favour with the jury. He'll be heard in the semi-finals; they won't.
It's a moot point how much juries like or dislike - playing which diverges from familiar norms. The exceptional keyboard displays of the Italian Massimiliano Ferrati, in a powerhouse reading of Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition, and the Japanese Seiko Tsukamoto in a hair-raising performance of Prokofiev's Seventh Sonata certainly topped the end of one particular scale in the second round, and they'll both be heard in the semi-finals.
The post-Boulez and Xenakis dynamics of Tsukamoto's playing struck me as a stylistic solecism; in this piece, I far preferred the more musicianly instincts of the Ukrainian Yevgeny Morozov. Prokofiev of altogether greater refinement and sophistication, and no less potent an impact, was to be had in the Georgian Elisso Bolkvadze's performance of the Second Sonata.
The most rewarding developing acquaintance of the second round, however, has been the playing of the Greek-Russian Katia Skanavi.
She followed up her monumentally-conceived first-round Schubert (the Sonata in A minor, D784) with a most wonderfully alive and responsive telling of Schumann's Scenes of Childhood, miraculously acute in characterisation and cunningly delivered with a mask of apparently effortless simplicity.
There's been good news, too, for Dubliner Finghin Collins, who has become the first Irish contestant to reach the semi-finals of this competition. You can catch up with him at the NCH on Sunday afternoon, in his 50-minute programme of Berg, Kinsella, Brahms, Chopin and Liszt.
