This is where you got lost in your otherwise excellent observations.  I am one of those conservatory people and I never heard the type of artistically pinpointed details and comprehensive structural awareness that she has displayed in everything she has played in this competition at my conservatory!  Or any  other, for that matter.  Because she doesnt moon over phrases as some do, or extend the boundary of the bar line, we get to see the wonderful Turner-esque landscape of the *composer* in exquisite detail as he conceived it, and not her own amateur paint-by-number dabblings.