After the long ceremony, the flowers, the photo shoot, the official speeches, the music finally took place. The Russian candidate and winner Nikita Borisoglebsky (24 years old, 3rd price) has a presence, a great personality that you feel through a strong self-confidence. He played the first movement of Tchaikovsky’s concerto for this Gala. He barely made few errors (intonation in some very difficult passages) but overall his performance was quite solid and he delivered a powerful Tchaikovsky.Nikita is also the winner of the imposed Canadian work by Kelly-Marie Murphy “One for Solitude”. The piece is for violin solo and a piano (without a pianist). Actually the grand piano pedal (I believe the sustenuto) was forced down allowing the violin to resonate in the piano body and the violinist was somehow exhaling from time to time creating an echo effect in the open piano; this is also written in the score. Apparently this effect was totally lost from other areas in the hall (and I was in the middle of the 3rd row). It’s really hard to describe this piece; it was interesting somehow even though I had a hard time with the exhaling part.
The tiny German winner did an outstanding job. He’s very strong technically and delivered a decent concerto starting with the strange passacaglia and finishing with a live and agitated presto. It’s something you wouldn’t expect from such a frail looking young man.
Audio and video clips of the candidates and winners performance could be heard on Radio Canada website: http://www.radio-canada.ca/Espace_Musique/cmim2010/
