Shishkin is a pianist who’d only seriously interest me in things like Liszt/Pag-4, but he does play really well. Clarity, precision, drive, and he’s also begun to shape the music more than when I last heard him. His sheer willpower is both his greatest asset and his greatest enemy - it gives him character and makes everything he plays sound really acute and sharp, but it also means that his playing never really settles and finds calm. His Op.53-II was well conceived, but the execution sounded as if he just had to get through this to get to the next Presto - and the outer movements too were clearly taken at a slower pace than was natural to him. Also, sound… colour…?
Still, he is 27, a competition pianist on steroids, and has qualities far above the usual. I think he’ll go far, but I hope they find someone with more of an inner world to win this.
I’m browsing around among the other pianists from the day here. The precision and snappiness they have is really incredible, they must have practiced these programs 12 hours a day for months. Tianxu above all is really good and so far the only one I’ve heard who’s shown some imagination, but he too is a real Terminator at the piano (and maybe too many mistakes, but 45 thumbs up for not playing it safe out there). Yasinsky good too, solid Bach, but he’s ultimately too nearsighted for me and without the mojo of da Shish and the Tianxu-3000.
