vagfilm
Glad you liked him 👍🏻 I discovered him a few years after the 2010 competition which I didn't watch at all. At the time I was still mostly interested in jazz (and I have always played classical music but hadn't gone as deep as to watch competitions or read reviews, etc.). Since he's a Bulgarian and has the same first name as me, he caught my attention later when I stumbled upon an article about his controversial participation in the 2010 Chopin competition. He quickly enchanted me with his Chopin that is very emotional, his hands are so independent, there's this dreamy quality, never static, accentuating some hidden internal lines, it's just pure magic! Wasn't very difficult for me to become a die-hard fan since then 🙂 I even went alone to Hamburg to listen to a concert where he played together with Martha Argerich. BTW she was one of the jury members who consistently gave him highest scores. I believe there were others though, who gave him low scores. Martha is herself a bit controversial and she likes similar pianists, rebels, starting with Ivo Pogorelich who also stirred controversies in that competition in the past 🙂
Now, I found a lot of similarities between Osokins and Bozhanov and when I shared about that in the Evgeni Bozhanov's fan page on Facebook, the admin of the page assured me they are friends and they studied with the same teacher. As I said, Osokins is a bit more extreme, maybe he didn't want to be an exact copy of his friend (and mentor?) Evgeni and decided to exaggerate even further some of his characteristics. Of course I still prefer Bozhanov but I find them both on the same side of how they approach Chopin. BTW, there are two records of Osokins I shared and they are IMO more balanced. I think Osokins may have gone a bit too far in the competition.
A journalist described Bozhanov's Chopin as that of Horowitz and Ignaz Friedman. I've been more familiar with the former, but for the last few days I also listened to what is available by the latter (not much though, but there's something like 2 CDs-worth collection of his Chopin recordings) and amazingly he's very similar to Bozhanov indeed. I wouldn't be surprised if Evgeni researched those golden age pianists. If you have time and are curious, have a listen to Friedman. For today's ear and current standards, his Chopin is also too weird, changing tempos, accentuating some lines too much, sudden dynamic contrasts, etc very much unlike the current ultra-smooth and precise playing.
Speaking about golden age pianists, I think my other favorite Chopin interpreter is Alfred Cortot. He's a student of the last Chopin's student Émile Decombes, and that's probably the closest we get to hearing the authentic Chopin intentions (if we assume Decombes managed to teach and show to Cortot how Chopin himself sounded and taught him). And I would say Cortot is also in the same team where Chopin is played so freely and with the two hands always being very independent, almost like two musicians, one playing an accompaniment and a singer, where the latter takes liberties and goes ahead or behind... It's very odd that this 19th century style of playing is almost lost but luckily a few current pianists have researched this style and try to reintroduce it. An honorable mention is Hubert Rutkowski who has recorded a CD where he describes the process of researching those golden age pianists, as well as 19th century pianistic practices.
