Page 278 - Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Coverage Book 2023-24

The competition, which has run every three years since 1961, this time held its finals
in Bradford, due to Leeds Town Hall being closed. St George’s Hall has much the better
acoustic, and the event tied in happily with Bradford’s upcoming stint as UK City of
Culture 2025. Here assembled the final five survivors whittled down from an initial 65
participants.

Competitions are often termed the Olympic Games of music, but in the Olympics it’s
obvious who has crossed the finish line first. In music, once you take technical
accomplishment for granted, the rest is about finer details and personal taste. It is also
down to the jury’s method of decision-making. The Leeds jurors, a distinguished group
headed by Dame Imogen Cooper, do not discuss their opinions before each awards
individual marks.

Junyan Chen performs during the finals of the Leeds International Piano Competition
(Photo: Frances Marshall)

The finals took place over two evenings, heroically accompanied by conductor
Domingo Hindoyan and his Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra.

First came a sympathetic if sometimes heavy-handed account of Bartok’s Piano
Concerto No. 3 from a UK contestant, Julian Trevelyan; a reverential Beethoven No.
4 from Kai-Min Chang from Taiwan; and a finely mercurial Rachmaninov No. 4 – a
rare and tricky piece to pull off so convincingly – from Junyan Chen of China, who also
shone as more of a ‘stage animal’ than some of her peers. Before the Brahms on the