Van Cliburn Competition

There are lots of blog postings and tweets out there about the 2009 Van Cliburn Competition, which is under way right now. It's interesting that two previous winners of this competition are now major advocates of Villa-Lobos's music:

• José Feghali: the gold medalist from the seventh competition in 1985. Feghali is best known for his involvement in the Nashville Symphony's complete Bachianas Brasileiras set from Naxos.
• Cristina Ortiz: the gold medalist from the third competition in 1969. Ortiz plays the piano in Choros #5 and #11 in the recent BIS series of the complete Choros. Her set of the five piano concertos on Decca is a classic.

Live streaming of the competition is available on the web at http://www.cliburn.tv.