I normally post during the weekend, but this couldn’t wait.
The final round of the Leeds International Piano Competition is being livestreamed for free today and tomorrow on the Medici.tv streaming platform. Click the link in the previous sentence, or go to the YouTube livestream here:
This competition, which is held every three years, began back in March. Contestants who had been accepted into the competition performed alone in studios in their home countries while judges watched online. Those who made it to the second round came to Leeds in the UK last week to perform onsite.
Ten performers were chosen to move on to the semifinals, which were going on earlier this week. Now we’re down to the final four contestants. Two will perform this afternoon (CT), and two will perform tomorrow afternoon.
During the second round, the performers played alone in front of an audience and the judges. In the semifinal round, they played one solo work and one chamber work. The finalists will perform a concerto with a full orchestra. In order, they’ll do concertos by Beethoven, Rachmaninov, Prokofiev, and Brahms.
I have been watching these livestreams off and on since last week, and I have enjoyed them immensely. (Longtime readers of this site know I am a sucker for chamber music, so I particularly enjoyed the semifinal round.) Medici.tv normally doesn’t allow non-subscribers to watch replays of events, but for this competition all the replays are accessible. You can go back and watch every performance from the first two rounds and the semifinals, but of course there’s a certain excitement that goes along with watching the livestream.
The first finalist is scheduled to perform at 1:25 p.m. CT today (in about 15 minutes as I write this), and the second finalist is scheduled for 2:20 CT. The third and fourth finalists will perform at the same times tomorrow (Saturday).
If you have any liking at all for classical music (and you should), do yourself a favor and listen to some of the world’s best young pianists perform major works today and tomorrow!