Wu Di (chamber music)

The evening finished with Di Wu doing the Dvorak quintet. Everyone else in the press room seemed higher on this performance than I was, and I like her skills. I thought she overplayed almost as much as Eduard Kunz, though when you think about the difficulties in taking musicians who've trained as soloists and trying to make them over into chamber musicians, a certain amount of this seems inevitable. It's like taking a thoroughbred racehorse and asking it to run a steeplechase. The pianists who have experience in chamber music will be easy to spot, and they'll have a significant advantage in this phase of the competition.

I detected less energy but more precision from the Takacs players. The third movement missing the scherzo's joie de vivre, and the overall interpretation seemed indistinct. You know what, though? With all the weight of the voices against me, and with the goodwill I have left over from Di Wu's first-round performance, I'm going to listen to this performance again when my ears haven't been burdened with having listened to the same piece two hours earlier. Stay tuned.