Did Audience And Biography Sway Van Cliburn Jury?

Nobuyuki Tsujii, one of this year’s two winners of the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, “riveted the audience. And juries, even at the highest level, are not immune to audience responses.” Did the 20-year-old’s blindness play a role? “If all the contestants had performed behind a scrim, if no one had known anything about them, if they had been judged purely on musical values, I honestly believe some other pianists would have advanced ahead of Tsujii.”