Imagine this: you’ve made it all the way to the finals of one of the biggest competitions in the world, you’ve prepared all year for this moment, and you are ready to show the world what you’ve got. You take a deep breath, put your hands down, and wait for the orchestra to play its opening five bars — except that there aren’t five bars, because the orchestra thought you were playing a different concerto. Pretty unlikely, right? Yet this is exactly what happened yesterday at the finals of the 2019 International Tchaikovsky competition. Chinese contestant Tianxu An entered late during the opening of the Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, after which he was visibly upset, and baffled. It appears that the misunderstanding happened during the announcement of the program (shown in this video), in which the announcer announced the name of another concerto, Tchaikovsky Concerto No.1, first. This announcement was met by an expression of confusion by the conductor, Vasily Petrenko. The announcer then said something in Russian and quickly announced Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody. Mr. An clearly did not get the memo that he was to start with the Rachmaninoff, and the rest is history. How will this affect his final ranking, and what does he think of this gaffe? Piano League will follow up with the competition and also Mr. An.
UPDATE: (June 26, 2019) the competition committee released an official statement regarding the incident: “Due to a gross error committed by an employee of the State Academic Symphony Orchestra “Evgeny Svetlanov” on June 25, 2019, before the Competition performance of An Tianxu, the musical scores by Pyotr Tchaikovsky and Sergei Rachmaninoff for the orchestra and the conductor were arranged in a reverse order which differed from the pattern requested by the participant. In this connection, the performance began with failure, because the participant was unable to immediately understand what had happened, and switched to another musical piece already during the performance. By a unanimous decision of the Jury, Denis Matsuev, the Jury Chair in the Piano category, officially invited An Tianxu to re-play his program. The participant officially refused. After this blatant incident, the Administration of the State Academic Symphony Orchestra “Evgeny Svetlanov” decided to suspend the employee from work.”
