In Saturday’s (11/7) Calgary Herald (Canada), Bob Clark writes, “By all accounts, the Honens played beautifully—music to the ears of all who took part, whether they were organizers of the 2009 Honens International Piano Competition, audience members or actual participants in the event’s almost patented search for ‘the complete musician.’ And no one could have been happier with the way things went than the 21-year-old ‘complete musician’ chosen after an hour’s deliberation at the end of the competition on Friday, Georgy Tchaidze of Russia. As First Laureate, Tchaidze—who brought the audience to its feet with the urgency and passion of his interpretation of Prokofiev’s Third Piano Concerto—won a $35,000 cash award, plus a three-year artistic and career development program. … Named Second and Third Laureates, respectively, were Evgeny Starodubtsev, 27, also of Russia, and 28-year-old Swiss pianist Gilles Vonsattel. For the capacity audience gathered at Jack Singer Concert Hall on the second night of the concerto round finals with the Calgary Philharmonic—which played brilliantly, under conductor Christoph Campestrini—Tchaidze’s very popular win capped two weeks of mounting listener enchantment with the consistently high quality of music-making.”
Posted November 9, 2009
