Page 279 - Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Coverage Book 2023-24

second night, Khanh Nhi Luong, the first-ever Vietnamese Leeds finalist, played an
exhilarating Prokofiev No. 3.

And Izik-Dzurko? He played Brahms’s outsize Piano Concerto No. 2. He has a basically
excellent sound and can clearly play anything under the sun, yet his performance of
this grand-scale, almost symphonic concerto – a work that admittedly does not lend
itself well to a competition – felt undercooked: sluggish and episodic, with
questionable pacing of dynamic control and occasionally some lumpy voicing.

Chen was placed second, Luong third. An overblown controversy had been confected
over the Leeds’ efforts to prevent unconscious bias against women (it’s a big problem
in the piano world and Leeds has only twice been won by a woman).

Chen and Luong both roundly deserved their awards, minimum. Chen also won a
special prize for chamber music and the Alexandra Dariescu Prize for the best
performance (in the semi-final) of a work by a female composer. Chang won fourth,
Trevelyan fifth.

An audience prize went to a pianist who was not in the finals. Tomoharu Ushida from
Japan, deeply poetic and with a large following of fans, had sparked a real buzz before
being eliminated at semi-final stage. Ryan Zhu of Canada won a special Henle Award;
he, too, was a surprise elimination, given his great expressivity and vivid range of

sound-colour.

Izik-Dzurko has won not just a large cash prize but also an enviable list of performing

and recording opportunities. He himself must now prove that the jury made the right
choice. It’s a beginning, not an end.