Charlie Liu’s Blog

In the just-finished Steinway Society Scholarship Competition, Charlie won the 1st place in group I (age 7-9)! Charlie performed Haydn Sonata XVI/28, first movement, and Tchaikovsky October. Of course he improved much from the Youtube videos linked above.

Charlie did a very nice Haydn, with clear and nice dynamics, clean technique and good music. And his Haydn’s among the most difficult classic pieces played in the competition. If I were to pick on it, a bigger dynamic range would serve him better.

But the October, wow, Charlie did a marvelous job on it! It was very mature, with fantastic musicality and detail, nice and clear dynamics and pedaling, it was almost perfect - except for one left hand mistake that came out of nowhere (many did not notice it but the judges sure would). Later I asked him why he had that mistake, he told me it’s because he sneaked a peek at where the left pedal was and made the mistake. Well, that’s the price you pay when you don’t form a good habit of checking everything you might use before starting to play! Anyhow, I was sure that Charlie would get 1st place listening to his October until the mistake - I didn’t know how much the judges would weigh that mistake - it certainly didn’t affect the piece much, but what if the judges feel that the beautifully done piece is now imperfect? Well, I guess the judge gave their answers - they love Charlie’s playing too and one inopportune mistake won’t take it away from him!

Anyway now Charlie would happily put his time on preparing for next week’s Carnegie Hall performance! But hold on - first stop is games of course!

PS: I don’t know if you noticed or not, this is actually the first and the only solo competition Charlie took part in this year. In case you wonder - we already decided at the start of the year that we’re not doing any solo competitions that we did last year (except for NJMTA audition which Charlie’s teacher always sends everyone to). So far Charlie only took part in two concerto competitions (under-18 age group) and this one solo competition, which he didn’t do last year.