[1] The events surrounding Lubyantsev received attention in the national and international press, where he was referred to as “one of the audience’s favorites”[2] and “the cause of the most controversy.”[3] One journalist drew a parallel with Ivo Pogorelich’s famed appearance in the 1980 Chopin Competition.
Alexander Lubyantsev was born 1986 in the village of Roschino (Leningrad Region), Russia, where his father was the director of a local music school.
Reporting on the competition in the Russian newspaper Pravda, music critic Natalya Zimyanina wrote: “Lubyantsev won the first two rounds, all the while smiling with the joy of sharing his pristine emotions with the public in the magnificent Great Hall of the [Moscow] Conservatory, where the audience listened to him with their breath held.” However, according to her, the third round did not go as well because the orchestra did not give way to him sufficiently “in the places where he was used to playing intimately, in his own way.”[9] According to Zimyanina, “no one had really heard of him before” and “he had no partisans on the jury.” Likewise, she had "the impression that he didn’t care much about the outcome.” Nonetheless, “the hall immediately fell in love with this delicate, young man, who lacked the affectations of a hardened performer, calling him an ‘angel.’... [He] was one of the most unusual pianists of the competition, and he became its revelation and discovery.”[9] In 2011 he returned to compete in the XIV International Tchaikovsky Competition.
Evidently remembering him from the previous edition, the audience greeted him with a standing ovation upon his first entrance on stage, and after his first-round performance called him back for three bows.
[10] Russian daily Rossiiskaya Gazeta commented that from the beginning “the crowd effectively greeted him as the victor.”[11] Asked about the enthusiasm the public showed him at the outset, Lubyantsev answered: “It was very pleasing and very unexpected for me, and so it was surprisingly easy to play freely, despite the fact that I had gotten sick several days before.”[11] The Guardian, calling him one of the “favorites” of the “fervent Muscovite public,” described how, backstage after his performance in the second stage of the semifinal, “Lubyantsev was mobbed like a pop star by groups of photographers, journalists and teenage girls.”[2] A description of the events in the magazine Snob recounted how, as the names of those to continue to the final round were read out without his, “a dense crowd of curious visitors to the competition gathered around him” and this “ovation” lasted twenty minutes.
And after we announced the finalists there were cries of ‘Shame on you’.”[14] Speaking later in an interview, another eliminated competitor recounted that not reaching the final and hearing the crowd in the foyer chanting “Lubyantsev” was a “double blow” and a “priceless experience in how to hold inside oneself the pressure of the circumstances.”[15] Music critic Yaroslav Timofeev, writing in the Russian newspaper Izvestiya, wrote that at the closing concert, cries of the name “Lubyantsev” could be heard from the gallery.
[17] The award was in recognition of “clear artistic individuality and a fresh approach to the art of performing”[18] and limited only to the piano competition.
But, on the other hand, the number of invitations I’ve received now are three-hundred times greater than after the previous [Tchaikovsky] competition.”[20] In another interview he stated: “Everything that happened at this contest became the culminating moment of my life.
[25] Pianist, pedagogue, and jury member Dmitri Bashkirov described Lubyantsev's playing as having a “fresh and fantastical manner.”[26] The critic Natalya Zimyanina in the newspaper Pravda wrote: The hall immediately fell in love with this delicate, young man, who lacked the affectations of a hardened performer, calling him ‘an angel.’… Lubyantsev was one of the most unusual pianists of the competition, and he became its revelation and discovery…Lubyantsev is principally a re-transmitter of feelings about which we, in our cruel age, have even forgotten to think[…][9] Speaking in a radio interview after the competition, critic Yuliya Bederova said that Lubyantsev has a “striking and unusual sound” which is “controversial: some are disconcerted by it, while others are captivated and enchanted…”[18] She continued: One can hear that he is unusual; yet, he is not extravagant.
[18] Speaking in a radio interview after the competition, jury member Mikhail Voskresensky commented: “Lubyantsev played a very strange version of Mozart Piano Concerto no.
Nonetheless, he concluded: “[Lubyantsev] is an incredibly interesting personality and I understand the audience’s enthusiasm, but truth is worth more.”[28][Note 4] Music critic Yaroslav Timofeev in the newspaper Izvestiya wrote: “Lubyantsev plays maturely from the point of view of technical expertise and comprehension of the musical text,” but it was his “childlike whimsicality and discernible ego” that “simultaneously won over the public and scared off the jury.”[16] Elena Chishkovskaya writing in the newspaper Rossiiskaya Gazeta, wrote: The audience remembered him [from the previous competition] as an exceptionally gifted pianist whose mastery of sound and ability to penetrate to the core of the music he is playing evoked comparisons with Richter and Pletnev.
[10] Music critic Melinda Bargreen of The Seattle Times wrote of Lubyantsev's performance of Tchaikovsky's First Piano Concerto with the Seattle Philharmonic Orchestra: Lubyantsev can play fast and loud with the best of them, but he also has a highly distinctive way with a phrase, and plays some of his solo passages so delicately that they sound like a private reverie.
[29] Of the same performance, critic Philppa Kiraly wrote: [H]e does not force the sound out, but allows it to happen easily with a fine light touch and mastery of the notes.