24-year-old Montreal pianist Xiaoyu Liu, trained at the Conservatory by Richard Raymond and at the University of Montreal by Dang Thai Son, gleaned his place on Saturday evening among the twelve finalists of the Chopin Competition. He will perform there on Wednesday.
The feat is immense for the Montreal training sector, which places two of its students in two successive finals of the most prestigious piano competition in the world. The Chopin Competition, which is held every five years, once featured Maurizio Pollini, Martha Argerich and Krystian Zimerman.
In 2015, Charles Richard-Hamelin obtained the 2e price. He was then the first Canadian winner of this competition created in 1927 and whose 2020 edition has been postponed for a year. The highest distinctions gleaned then by young pianists from here had been the 1er Louis Lortie prize at the Busoni Competition 1984 and the 2e André Laplante’s prize at the Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow in 1978.
In 2015, another Canadian candidate, Tony Yang, 16, had finished 5e. Once again, Canada has another finalist: 17-year-old Torontonian, JJ Jun Li Bui. Xiaoyu Liu, who now goes by the name Bruce (Xiaoyu) Liu, under whom he competes, is a well-known artist here. At the age of 15, in 2013, he won the OSM competition and, at the age of 17, he won the Prix d’Europe, which each year recognizes the best musical hope in Quebec. In 2014, he reached the final of the Montreal International Musical Competition, of which he was the youngest participant, Charles Richard-Hamelin winning the 2e price of this edition.
The final, the concerto event, begins Monday, and Bruce (Xiaoyu) Liu will once again have the chance to close the competition on Wednesday at 8:30 a.m.Montreal time. As on the 3e tower, which he illuminated with a fascinating version of Variations on “La ci darem la mano”, he chose the opposite of Charles Richard-Hamelin. The latter had opted for 3e Sonata and the 2e Concerto. Bruce played the 2e Sonata and will try to make its mark in the 1er Concerto.
The 2021 Chopin Competition is already a musical webcasting phenomenon: 5.6 million views for the 1er tour, 7.3 million views and over 1.3 million hours of viewing for the 2e tower. Out of more than 500 entries, 164 pianists were admitted to a preliminary round in July, and 87 have been invited to compete in Warsaw since October 3.