Released By Popular
Demand runs the rubric on the cover
booklet of this release of the Concerto
Finals of the 1992 Sydney International
Piano Competition of Australia, to give
its full title. Do people not know where
Sydney is – or are there similar ones
in Adelaide and Melbourne? (Organisers,
drop the of Australia – if they
don’t know where Sydney is they shouldn’t
be competing). Anyway there were the
usual pianophile shenanigans in Sydney
over a decade ago – not least the disqualification
of Vitaly Samoshko (on technical grounds
not drug testing – he’d prepared the
wrong concerto and read from a score
which is not allowed under the rules).
Compassionately, or pragmatically, the
jurors allowed him to play his Rachmaninov
at the finals – otherwise Cazal and
Gifford (the eventual winner) would
have had things to themselves in a very
short programme. I’m not sure, to return
to the beginning, quite how popular
demand must be to encourage commercial
release but here we have those three
concerto performances, accompanied by
the local orchestra and Edvard Tchivzhel.
The performances? Samoshko,
19 at the time, lets a few notes slip,
but in the context of a competition
final that’s surely better than studied
text book piano playing – not the same
thing as pianism. There’s a breach of
co-ordination between soloist and orchestra
from time to time but he has a fine
touch, is sensitive even though he does
go into overdrive at the end. Maturity
will have taught him to pace with greater
care. Gifford turned up with the E flat
major Liszt and he is strong on poetic
reverie as well as the more virtuosic
elements. There’s certainly fine clarity
of articulation even in the heat of
battle. One of the favourites was the
Frenchman Cazal who it seems was so
peeved with second place that he replaced
his Haydn in the Prize Winner’s Concert
with the Funeral March from Chopin’s
B flat minor sonata – such amour
propre from the thirty year old
Frenchman. He certainly plays the Prokofiev
with verve, at a Katchen-like tempo,
though the finale isn’t taken at excessive
speed but is well controlled. The playing
has great dash, even if at times the
first movement is a touch faceless.
There’s clearly demand
for a souvenir of this competition and
for admirers of the pianists I’m sure
there will be interest. The recording
is rather uncomfortably boomy and lower
frequencies are indistinct – also the
string sound swirls alarmingly at certain
points and is rather recessed. I don’t
think, however, that considerations
of that kind will weigh heavily. This
is strictly for admirers.
Jonathan Woolf
ABC
CLASSICS 476 227-4 [70.09] 
