You know when I started my professional music career I didn't think too much about my hurdles. I find if you think too much about your struggles and challenges while you are trying to forge a path ahead you can get depressed, scared of taking the risk. I had to push aside earning big bucks from engineering and follow a path of love. A music career is like owning your own business, no different one bit! Some people think they have to make their product so good, winning competitions, studying 20 hours day (or whatever
) , studying with the best teachers in the world etc etc.
Where the reality is many pianists miss out on how to promote their product, how to make people interested to experience their music. I have watched winners of the Sydney International competition (a major world piano event) and fallen asleep at the concerts because they have no idea how to present, they just simply play. If you love your music you will want to talk about it to your audience, give them some insight into the music and what it means to you how it moves you and how they can attach their emotion to what they listen to.
Chopin etudes are (for me at least) played too much, I generally get bored listening to them because I have heard them so often, but they are amongst the most (if not the most) important etudes for all serious pianists to develop technique with. However you can entertain your audience a great deal more exploring other wonderful repertoire that there is out there. I prefer going to concerts where it is rare or impossible to find what is presented, these days with the internet people have seen everything and heard everything, it is good to surprise and educate them.
Playing concert standards are a good way to start out with but where do you plan to go from there? How do you intend to talk about what you play for your audience that is the 2nd half of your concert and something which most international performers even fail at (especially some famous ones because they have rested on their fame their whole life, public speaking is a skill all performers should study and work as hard at as they do their instruments)! So do a better job connecting with your audience and they will enjoy you a lot more. I have had people come to me after concerts saying that it was the best piano concert they have ever attended and start rattling names of famous pianists they have seen in concert. Why do they feel inspired to say this? Is it because I played better than these pianists? I really don't think so, we all play differently not necessarily better, but what I am sure I am better at is talking to my audience. I can get them to laugh, to sigh, cry etc simply by relating them to the lavish stories and lives of the composers beg to be told, their pieces express "hidden" meaning which you can reveal to your audience. They will love you for it being able to listen to music in a more educated manner. I am of course only talking for an Australian audience which I have most experience, but I have done similar concerts over seas as well (Turkey, Germany) and received the same results.
Of course how you play must be unique, interesting, it has to capture your audience. People are not interested in the right notes being hit. After 10 minutes of seeing mad virtuosity the effect generally wears off the audience, people want to hear the music they don't care about how difficult it is to play the piece (most concert goers anyway). Your Chopin etudes are technically very strong but musically they to be formed. Take a risk on how you want to interpret these etudes, to me it seem you want to take no risk and thus your perfomance is too bland, it could be a lot more, you have a very solid basis to move to any musical direction at a whim, good musical direction or your own experimentation will produce results that reflect your personality more.
I caught a listen of you playing Ondine from Ravel. This is a good example of your accuracy of playing but at the same time since this piece is filled with musical interpretation your "non-light" touch and evenness actually takes away from the music. In your Ondine there are notes which should be held back but they challenge the melody (for example the opening tremolo vs the melody). 3:17 and also when the water spirit and the man dive into the water 3:35 you have to work on your lightness of touch, you hit the right notes but they are slightly harsh, not quite with the correct musical context.
Your improvements mostly need to be musical as your technique will be strong enough to bend to whatever musical concept you have in mind. This is a most enjoyable but probably the most difficult part of shaping our music. Especially if you are on your own you are forced to be able to listen to yourself critically which is quite difficult as we can be quite biased.
Topic: Regarding the general stupidity of the Van Cliburn competition judging...