I don't think Liu had previous Chopin Competition winner Seong-Jin Cho's "elegance" or "dynamics" with this concerto, but his playing without competition pressure was still near top drawer..... Tadaaki Otaka/NHK Symphony put forth a world-class accompaniment.... Although I thought Tadaaki put forth a heavy hand in the final movement accompaniment to the secondary melody, robbing the pianist of dynamic freedom.... (It was also nice to hear flutist Hiroaki Kanda in this accompaniment..... Maybe the most-important part outside the pianist, in the opening movement.)

This was the first part of a concert, the following work was Tadaaki conducting the Shostakovich Five.... It was a solid performance, superlatively played, but lacking the "depth," in the first two movements, of a Valery Gergiev or other Russian champions of this composer. But the last two movements were as good as it gets. (There was another work performed after this Shosty Five, but I don't recognize it. Maybe someone here can clue me in.)

The Chopin concerto starts at 3:00 in the video, the Shostakovich symphony starts at 55:20, the "unknown work" starts at 1:46:05. This is to skip over the narration, which is in Japanese.

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0VFoBg9RMY