The three concertos featured on Saturday afternoon’s last of the four Final Round concerts couldn’t be more different from one another, yet all require huge virtuosity and musicianship.

In this regard, Vitaly Starikov’s Schumann Concerto disappointed. Attempting to probe for profundities within each unaccompanied opportunity, Starikov’s contorted rubatos never rang true, while lyrical phrases meandered without direction. His Paderewski-style left-hand anticipations seemed more random than purposeful. The Finale’s cross-rhythms rarely locked in between orchestra and soloist on account of the pianist’s tendency to rush. Starikov must not be easy to accompany, yet Marin Alsop did her best to anticipate and field her soloist’s every erratic move.

Carter Johnson gave the Cliburn’s first ever performance of Ravel’s Piano Concerto for the Left Hand. He excelled in the brawny recitative-like sections and drove the marching parallel chords like a train engineer determined not to be delayed. The introspective passages seemed to emit from two separate pianos in two separate venues, while the orchestra’s first-desk woodwinds strutted their dark, ghoulish stuff.

Compared to Johnson’s intellectualised and line-oriented Prokofiev Second Concerto on Wednesday night, Philipp Lynov’s interpretation stresses sound and pianism in the best possible way. His driving intensity in the outer movements and Scherzo defines command and authority, as if he knows exactly how everything will sound before his hands touch the keys. The pianist’s power chords, dead of centre arpeggios and exactitude of voicing throughout the lengthy and difficult first-movement cadenza and the mercurial Finale simply beggared belief. The orchestra played with more assurance and rhythmic vivacity than on Wednesday, brilliantly conveying the music’s defiantly acerbic core.

We reconvened at 7pm for the Awards Ceremony. Bronze Medalist Evren Ozel and Silver Medalist Vitaly Starikov were runners up to Gold Medal victor Aristo Sham. With the Final Round performances fresh in my inner ears, the verdict at first surprised and disappointed me. On the other hand, one must remember that the jury base their decision on the whole picture, from Preliminaries to Finals. Indeed, when I looked over my earlier blog posts, I saw that I largely enjoyed these medalists’ solo rounds. Yet unlike in 2022 – when Yunchan Lim’s extraordinary Semi-final performance of Liszt’s complete Transcendental Études signalled a surefire Gold Medalist (clinched by his equally remarkable Rachmaninov Third Concerto) – I could never have predicted 2025’s outcome. In any event, let’s wish the three medalists well, while I give special shout-outs to Carter Johnson, Philipp Lynov, Chaeyoung Park, Jonas Aumiller and, it goes without saying, to the genius of Magdalene Ho.

Gramophone is a Media Partner of The Cliburn International Piano Competition