Texas Tech University

Coming out of COVID and playing my first full, live concert since March 2020 was a joyous occasion. I was happy to have broken the fast for my good friend Daniel Delpino at Texas Tech School of Music, where Daniel is establishing some wonderful piano traditions! The audience was sparse but enthusiastic, due to the restrictions, but it was also livestreamed, and votes came in from remote audience members as well. The vote looked very similar to others - Chopin wins (54% to 43%, but Mendelssohn overwhelms somewhere (Round 3), and generally garners more votes overall in the rounds - 52% over Chopin 46%.There was a super majority of piano players in the room tonight, and we can see that there is more appreciation of Mendelssohn by those who play - a pianist’s composer! This Smackdown definitely needs more data to figure out what’s going on! Thank you for voting.