The Cliburn Report 17: Les Adieux

Fort Worth, Texas

Share on Google+

The 14th Van Cliburn International Piano Competition is now history and I’m winging my way home, using the flight time to record some post-competition thoughts.

First, I want to congratulate the Cliburn organization and the Fort Worth Convention and Visitors Bureau for making our delegation from the Music Critics Association of North America feel so welcome and for doing such an impressive job of catering to our every need.

Our Cliburn contact, Maggie Estes, was unfailingly helpful, as were all of the volunteers back in the pressroom. How helpful? Well, on Sunday night, a button popped off my sports coat on the way to the awards ceremony. Not wanting to look like a slob at the black tie reception afterwards, I asked a volunteer if she could locate a sewing kit for me. Within minutes, one of the mangers had located a lady identified as the “backstage mother” who repaired the coat for me in time for the ceremony. That, I think, is going above and beyond the call of duty.

The Cliburn organization also threw one heck of a party for everyone Sunday night at the Worthington Hotel.

CVB’s Jessica Dowdy also threw a great party for us at the Zoo, bought us a first-class dinner at Reata, and gave us a chauffeured tour of the Fort Worth museum and stockyards districts. She even took my wife and I to CVS. I’d heard great things about Fort Worth’s hospitality towards journalists in advance of our trip. Clearly, they were all true.

Seen outside Ball Hall Sunday

Fort Worth itself proved to be a fascinating city. Their downtown comes to life after dark with restaurants and bars, and we all felt completely comfortable walking back to our hotel after the concerts. Bass Hall is an excellent concert space, with good sight lines and acoustics, and conveniently located. My wife, the naturalist of our family, also had a great deal of praise for the city’s botanic garden and nature areas.

The Cliburn is a great source of pride to Fort Worth, and understandably so. It brings the world to Texas every four years and is one of the highest-profile piano competitions on the planet. That said, I found myself wondering what impact it and other competitions have had on the larger concert world.

A Cliburn medal, as Joseph Horowitz pointed out in his 1990 book The Ivory Trade, is no guarantee of a concert career. When asked at the Friday symposium whether or not he would offer a concert engagement to the Cliburn gold medalist, for example, Maestro Leonard Slatkin said he would not—but that he might make an offer to “one or two” finalists. Indeed, if you look through the list of prior winners in the Cliburn’s fat press information book, you can’t help noticing that most of them have not achieved particularly high-profile careers, and many left public performance altogether.

To a certain extent, that’s unsurprising. There’s no reason to believe the Cliburn jury is any better at predicting the future than any other group of professionals—including those who make their livings at it (economists, for example). But I think it’s also possible that piano competitions don’t prepare their participants for concertizing so much as they prepare them for entering piano competitions. In much the same way that our public school system seems to be creating generations of professional test takers, piano competitions may be creating generations of professional competitors, many of whom go on to careers teaching the next generation of competitors. It starts to look like a keyboard circle game.

That’s not to say being a Cliburn winner (or finalist, for that matter) isn’t important. It provides international exposure, and the medalists get three years of valuable career guidance. I just can’t help wondering whether or not the concert piano world is better or worse off for the many competitions that take place every year. It’s an unanswerable question, of course, but that doesn’t stop one from asking it.

Cliburn Final Round, Fourth Concert: Vadym Kholodenko, Tomoki Sakata, Sean Chen

Beatrice Rana, Vadym Kholodenko, Sean Chen
Photo: Fort Worth Star-Telegram

Share on Google+

If you’ve been following the 14th Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, you know that yesterday (Sunday, June 9th) the big three awards went to Vadym Kholodenko from the Ukraine (gold), Beatrice Rana from Italy (silver) and Sean Chen from the USA (crystal). I’m happy with that, in part because I feel they deserved their awards and in part because the judges’ ranking exactly mirrors my own. Alas, I didn’t have enough confidence in mine to make it public beforehand (via Twitter I predicted in advance that the those three contestants would get medals without specifying which ones) so I can’t claim bragging rights for my prediction.

It probably doesn’t matter now, but here are my thoughts on the fourth and last final round concert with the Fort Worth Symphony under Leonard Slaktin, which concluded yesterday at 5:30 PM. I didn’t have time to post anything yesterday since the awards ceremony and reception started at 7 and I had to walk back to the hotel to change into my suit.

Mr. Kohlodenko opened with a very neat Mozart Concerto No. 21 (once known as the “Elvira Madigan” after a popular 1960s film that made extensive use of the second movement). It was stylistically on target, smoothly played, and featured two cadenzas that Mr. Kohlodenko wrote on the flight to Fort Worth. The first one had some impressive fugal passages and showed off Mr. Kholodenko’s abilities without being overly flashy. As in his Prokofiev 3rd Friday night, Mr. Kholodenko’s concentration and involvement with the music were unshakable.

Tomoki Sakata (the youngest finalist, at age 19) had some rather unfortunate episodes during a generally decent Tchaikovsky 1st. Some were his fault (flubbed and/or smeared notes) but some (apparently) were Mr. Slatkin’s (most noticeably a botched entry by the trombones in the first movement). The orchestra also played less well, to my ears, than it had for other soloists. They just did the Tchaikovsky back in February, so perhaps they overestimated their preparation.

Sean Chen brought everything to a rousing close with a Rachmaninov 3rd that had the crowd not just standing (which they did for every performance) but cheering loudly. Mr. Chen got five curtain calls and deserved every one. I had good things to say about Fei-Fei Dong’s Rach 3 on Thursday (a minority view among the critics, as far as I could see) but Mr. Chen’s was clearly the superior performance, with volcanic power and finesse—and none of the banging that showed up in his “Emperor” concerto Friday night.

If you want to see what the medalists looked and sounded like, by the way, the Cliburn organization is making all of the concerts (including the final four) available as on-demand video at their web site.

The Cliburn Report 16: The Impresario

Leonard Slatkin conducts the
Prokofiev 2nd with Nikita Mndoyants
Photo: Fort Worth Star-Telegram

Share on Google+

Not all the important events at the Cliburn Competition involve making music; some of them involve talking about it. This morning’s event, for instance, was a free public symposium with Leonard Slatkin, hosted by Fred Child of PRI’s Performance Today (which will broadcast a performance by the gold medal winner on Monday, June 10). Mr. Slatkin is a familiar and much-loved figure in St. Louis, of course, since he led the symphony here for many years. He’s also conducting the Fort Worth Symphony for the final round concerts and had some interesting insights on that process.

Mr. Slatkin has expressed some skepticism about competitions in the past, once noting that he normally avoids “this display of music as sport,” but observed this morning that competitions can still offer opportunities for performers and producers alike by focusing attention of promising artists. In the case of the Cliburn, he was moved to participate in part by a personal appeal from the late Mr. Cliburn himself.

Asked if he has any advice for competitors, Mr. Slatkin said they should always try to satisfy themselves first rather than try to second-guess judges. Ask how you can best grown within yourself, he noted, and everything else will follow.

Mr. Slatkin recounted a number of fascinating and funny anecdotes from his years growing up in a Hollywood musical family. His parents played for film orchestras, his father conducted the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra, and his uncle provided the piano tracks for many films, including the classic Warner Brothers cartoon sting to “That’s All, Folks”. As my fellow St. Louis residents will recall, Mr. Slatkin is quite the raconteur. I won’t attempt to repeat them here, as I couldn’t do it nearly as well. Fortunately, the Cliburn folks recorded the whole thing and will be streaming it at their web site.

Returning to the competition, Mr. Slatkin noted that conducting for the final round is a somewhat thankless task. He only gets fifty minutes rehearsal with each pianist. Since the concerti themselves are usually over thirty minutes long, this means he’s usually calling out directions to the pianist and orchestra while they’re rehearsing. He see establishing rapport with the orchestra and supporting the soloist (who might not have ever had a chance to hear his or her piece played by a live orchestra) as his primary task. They’re called concertos for piano and orchestra, not orchestra and piano, he noted.

Mr. Child pointed out that in concert last night, Mr. Slatkin’s gestures were economical but that his face spoke volumes and asked why he decided to work without a baton. The answer: he forgot to bring it (a reminder of the influence of chance on art, I think).

This led to a discussion of the changing role of the conductor. Mr. Slatkin feels the end of the era of the conductor as autocrat is a good thing and feels the relationship should be more collaborative, as it generally is now.

Mr. Child put Mr. Slatkin on the spot a bit by asking if he would offer the gold medalist an engagement with one of the orchestras he conducts. His response: no, but there are one or two finalists (whom, of course, he could not name) who might get an offer.

Asked about how he listens to music, Mr. Slatkin said that he always asks why a performer has made a particular decision, as this tells you a great deal about the performer’s intent. He asks the same question of his own decisions. If you can’t answer that question, he said, it suggests you haven’t really thought through the piece you’re performing.

Asked about his attitude towards YouTube, social media, and related phenomena, Mr. Slatkin said that while piracy—making money from someone else’s work without their permission—is always wrong, he doesn’t see any problem with making audio or video recordings of performances available for free. He noted that the Detroit Symphony streams all their concerts live and, rather than reduce their audience, it has actually increased it.

This segued into a discussion of the dire straits in which many orchestras now find themselves and possible remedies. Mr. Slatkin feels strongly that community involvement and musical education are the keys. If a community values its arts institutions, it will find ways to support them. He acknowledged that this is not always easy, but it is nevertheless essential.

Regarding the inclusion of new music on programs, he feels this is a good thing, but also feels that orchestras should not allow this to crowd out the classic American composers of the 20th century such as Ives, Schumann, Harris and the like.

Asked about how he feels conducting works that have already been recorded by their composers, Mr. Slatkin noted that most composers are lousy conductors and not always the best advocates for their own music. Works of music are living things, and there is no one “perfect” performance of anything.

Tomorrow’s morning symposium will be with the competition judges. Expect some interesting questions at that one.

The Cliburn Report 14: 40 Great Unclaimed Melodies

[Thanks to The Firesign Theatre for the title of this post. If you haven’t heard the hilarious 1970 sketch in question, you owe it to your sense of humor to check it out. Some of you may even be old enough to remember the commercial—featuring Jack Benny’s long-time announcer Don Wilson—that inspired it.]

Share on Google+

[Note: this has been corrected based on information obtained from tinyurl.com/cliburn2013rep; viz. the anonymous comment]

"Is there any other point to which you would wish to draw my attention?”
'To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time."
"The dog did nothing in the night-time."
"That was the curious incident," remarked Sherlock Holmes. - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, “Silver Blaze”

“I would while away the hours / Conversin’ with the flowers,” but instead I chose to devote the time spent in transit to the finals of the Cliburn International Piano Competition noting the musical canines that were silent, or very nearly so—that is, composers whose work was poorly represented or entirely absent during the three rounds of preliminary and semi-final recitals.

Let’s start with the dogs that didn’t bark at all.

One of only two known
photos of Alkan

Charles Valentin Alkan – Not a household name but certainly known among pianists. Granted, most of his stuff is fiercely difficult, but somebody could have taken on (say) Aesop’s Feast, the Sonatine, or the Barcarolle (with its prescient “blue” notes)—any of which would have been well within the capabilities of these technically proficient pianists. Besides, none of them appeared to shy away from technical challenges; Stravinsky’s thorny Trois mouvements de Pétrouchka was heard often as were works by Liszt (including 11 of the Transcendental Études by Vadym Kholodenko).

And, speaking of Stravinsky, the Pétrouchka suite was the only work of his on the bill.

François Couperin – Yes, he wrote for the harpsichord and organ rather than the piano, but so did Bach and that didn’t keep him off the program (although he didn’t appear that often either; three performances including a Siloti transcription).

John Field – Nothing from the inventor of the nocturne. In fact, no nocturnes at all. Maybe everyone was afraid of putting the audience to sleep?

George Gershwin – He's marginal in this context, perhaps, but surely his Preludes would have made an interesting addition.

Charles Ives

Charles Ives – Ives only wrote two piano sonatas, but they’re amazing pieces—and would surely have been appropriate for a competition held in America. Indeed, American composers were poorly represented in general.

Dimitri Shostakovich – Granted, Shostakovich might not be as well known for his piano works as Prokofiev (see below), but his Twenty-Four Preludes and Fugues are real gems. It would have been nice to see a few performed.

These dogs, meanwhile, barked so little you could easily have missed them.

Albèniz – A prolific and popular composer for the piano, he’s represented only by Book 2 of Iberia (Tomoki Sakata)

Bartok – Again, a composer well known for his piano works, but represented by only three performances: the 1926 Sonata (Luca Burrato), the Étude, op. 18, no. 3 (Alexy Chernov), and Out of Doors (Beatrice Rana).

Grieg – Another prolific and popular composer of piano miniatures and one massively popular concerto, Grieg is represented by a whopping total of three pieces (two waltzes and a valse-impromptu, Alexey Chernov). I find this odd, to say the least. Is it because most of his work doesn’t offer the kinds of opportunities for flash that one finds in the work of (say) Liszt (who is very well represented)? Or has he simply fallen out of fashion?

Mendelssohn – Only three works: the Fantasy in F-sharp Minor, op. 28 (Scottish Sonata), the Sonata no. 3 in B-flat Major, op. 106, and Variations serieuses, op. 54.

Schubert – Only two Schubert works (if you count the Drei Klavierstücke as one piece, which I am)? Seriously? And not even major works at that: Variations on a Waltz by Diabelli, D. 718 (Alessandro Deljavan) and Drei Klavierstücke, D. 946 (Claire Huangci). Truly a head scratcher.

Liszt by Lehmann

So who is well represented? Well, after Liszt, the biggies were Chopin, Schumann, Beethoven (including the challenging “Hammerklavier” sonata), Brahms, Rachmaninov, and Prokofiev.

Ravel looks to be well represented—sixteen performances—but those performances covered only five works including the multiples of Gaspard de la nuit. Still, they’re major works, so maybe that’s not a big deal.

What, if anything, does this mean? The Cliburn and other competitions have been criticized for encouraging safe repertoire and performance choices—a kind of reversion to the mean, in which idiosyncrasies are weeded out. I didn’t see enough of the preliminary and semi-final rounds to comment on the performance side, but it certainly does appear that, given the ability to choose their own music, contestants tend to go with the tried and true. What do you think?

The Cliburn Report 11: Im Chambre séparée

Claire Huangci
Photo: Ralph Lauer

Share on Google+

[I will be covering the final round of the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in June for 88.1 KDHX. Meanwhile I’m picking the best of the current press coverage for you dining and dancing pleasure.]

The semifinal round of performances kicked off this afternoon with recitals by Claire Huangci and Nikita Mndoyants flanking a performance of the Schumann Piano Quintet by Beatrice Rana and the Brentano Quartet. The evening brought the Dvorák Piano Quintet with Nikita Abrosimov, a recital by Tomoki Sakata, and the Franck Piano Quintet with Vadym Kholodenko. Recitals will alternate with piano quintet performances through June 4th, at which point each one of the dozen semifinalists will have done one of each and the six finalists will be announced.

Scott Cantrell of the Dallas Morning News was most impressed with Mr. Mndoyants, somewhat less so with everyone else. Gregory Isaacs at TheaterJones, by way of contrast, lavished praise on Ms. Rana and the Brentano for their Schumann but was less taken with Mr. Mndoyants.

Nikita Mndoyants
Photo: Ralph Lauer

Both, however, agreed that Mr. Abrosimov was totally out of his depth in the Dvorák.

In this round, all the contestants are being asked to play a new work (Birichino) by Christopher Theofanidis. Jan Farrington of TheaterJones has an interesting interview with Mr. Theofanidis about his composition and his reaction to the performances he has seen so far. The only piece of Mr. Theofanidis’s that I know is his entrancing Rainbow Body, so I’m looking forward to catching this new work.

On the blog scene, David Stabler of The Oregonian notes that the live webcast is "addicting." Too true. So is the Cliburn's YouTube channel, where you can see archived versions of the pereliminary round recitals.

The Cliburn Report 10: Luftpause

Share on Google+

[I will be covering the final round of the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in June for 88.1 KDHX. Meanwhile I’m picking the best of the current press coverage for you dining and dancing pleasure.]

Well, the twelve semifinalists (pictured) have been chosen. Starting on June 1st, each will play one solo recital and one performance of a piano quintet with the Brentano String Quartet. The Cliburn folks have thoughtfully provided a complete schedule of the semifinal round along with a list of what each of the semifinalists will play.

Meanwhile, it seems that I missed a couple of important blogs in my last roundup. Allow me to correct that error now.

For some reason, I completely overlooked the Cliburn’s own competition blog. Since it’s a more or less official outlet, I have the sense (skimming a number of the posts) that “never is heard a discouraging word”, but even so it offers an interesting perspective. More of the posts are by Mike Winter, but there are also some contributions from “visiting German journalist” Christoph Hiller.

The Brentano String Quartet

TheaterJones, meanwhile, provides coverage that goes beyond Gregory Isaacs’s reviews of the recitals. Contributor Jan Farrington has been providing the blog equivalent of sports “color commentary” with backstage interviews, a look at the skilled Steinway piano technician team, and even an amusing look at competitors’ hair. You can see their complete Cliburn coverage here.

The Cliburn Report 9: It's getting very near the end

[I will be covering the final round of the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in June for 88.1 KDHX. Meanwhile I’m picking the best of the current press coverage for you dining and dancing pleasure.]

Alessandro Taverna

Share on Google+

The preliminary round of the competition is just drawing to a close (the final recital will end today at 5:30 central USA time; just a half-hour away as this is being written) but it’s already apparent what some of the prizes will be. As reported today in the Waco Tribune, the Cliburn gold medalist will play a concert with the Waco Symphony on April 10, 2014. It’s just part of the gold medalist package, which includes three years of tours, recordings, and concert management.

Gregory Isaacs’s coverage for TheatreJones continues. His favorites from the first, second, and third Wednesday sessions were:

• Alessandro Taverna (29, Italy) – “He did a remarkable job and should get extra credit for programming music by composers of our own time.”
• Alessandro Deljavan (26, Italy) – “Originality is at a premium in today’s prepackaged and predigested world. Deljavan is a refreshing—and infuriating—example. Would that there were more like him.”
• Jayson Gillham (26, Australia/UK) – “Gillham appeared to be enjoying the entire experience, and that translated to the audience through the music-making.”

Alessandro Deljavan

Scott Cantrell of the Dallas Morning News singled out only one contestant for uniform praise in his morning, afternoon, and evening reviews: Alessandro Deljavan. Mr. Cantrell described him as “the rare contestant who actually seems to enjoy himself.” All the others got notices that were, at best, mixed.

The Cliburn Report 7: Da Capo

Claire Huangci

Share on Google+

[I will be covering the final round of the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in June for 88.1 KDHX.  Meanwhile I’m picking the best of the current press coverage for you dining and dancing pleasure.]

No matter where you stand on the question of the validity of piano competitions in general and The Cliburn in particular, you must admit that the folks behind the Fort Worth-based competition/festival are always looking for ways to improve it and raise public awareness of it (not necessarily the same thing).

This time around, for example, they have doubled the length of the preliminary round by allowing each contestant to perform two 45-minute recitals instead of one as they used to do.  It’s more work for the pianists and (especially) the jury, but it does give every performer a second chance.

François Dumont

For an example of the importance of that second chance, one needs look no farther than Claire Huangci (23, USA), who opened the Phase II preliminary session Monday afternoon.  As Gregory Isaacs notes in his TheaterJones review:

Her performance of excerpts from Tchaikovsky’s ballet The Sleeping Beauty, in a virtuoso arrangement by the Russian pianist Mikhail Pletnev, has surely caused the judges to reconsider her. Marquis said that the second recital might make up for an off day in the first round. In this case, it allowed Huangci to have a spectacular day after a good one. Also, it helped to make up for her falling, by luck of the draw, into the dreaded first position in the competition.

As it happens Ms. Huangci’s Sleeping Beauty suite was one of the few performances I’ve been able to catch on the Cliburn’s live webcast, and I heartily second Mr. Isaac’s comments.

Alex McDonald

Meanwhile, wall-to-wall coverage by Mr. Isaacs and Scott Cantrell of the Dallas Morning News continues.  In addition to Ms. Huangci, Mr. Isaacs’s favorites from the first, second, and third Monday sessions were:

• François Dumont (27, France) – “His ability to switch musical styles was remarkable, from an understated Mozart to an explosive Chopin with a highly colored Gaspard in between.”
• Yury Favorin (26, Russia) – Another pianist who demonstrated facility in different musical styles (Schubert, Wagner as arranged by Liszt, and a contemporary work).
• Beatrice Rana (20, Italy) – “In my earlier review of Beatrice Rana, I commented that I heard remarks in the audience such as ‘here is a real artist.’ After today, we heard ‘she might be a winner.’”
• Alex McDonald (30, USA) – “[H]e turned in a wonderful performance, with some truly remarkable moments, that validated the trust many have in him.”  I watched the tail end of this one and was pretty much blown away by his bravura performance of Stravinsky’s Trois mouvements de Pétrouchka.

Mr. Cantrell's morning, afternoon, and evening reviews singled out:

• François Dumont – “awesome technical command—not merely speed and power but also fastidious clarification of gentle rustles and cascades.”
• Claire Huangci – “one of the most impressive performers in the first phase, got the second off to a fine start.”
• Beatrice Rana – “after a fairly generic recital Friday, thrust herself among the frontrunners Monday.”

By way of contrast, he named Mr. Favorin “most annoying player so far.”

And so it goes.

The Cliburn Report 6: First movement coda

Jayson Gillham
Photo: Ralph Lauer

Share on Google+

[I will be covering the final round of the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in June for 88.1 KDHX. Meanwhile I’m picking the best of the current press coverage for you dining and dancing pleasure.]

As some of you may know, this is the first edition of the Cliburn in which the thirty semi-finalists are given a literal second chance to show their abilities as soloists. Previously, the field was cut from thirty to twelve after only one round of recitals. This year, each contestant gets to perform two forth-minute programs, beginning today. That’s a classic good news/bad news scenario, as Fort Worth Star-Telegram writer Tim Madigan observes. “For all the positives,” he writes, “the new format has brought scheduling challenges and intensified the already grueling nature of the preliminary round. In past competitions, with just one recital per competitor, the preliminaries started to feel like a slog for the media and audience members committed to sitting for every note.”

Alexey Chernov
Photo: Ralph Lauer

Mr. Madigan also has a nicely balanced article on what winning the Cliburn does—and doesn’t—mean to a young pianist’s career. It’s well worth a read.

Dallas Morning News music critic Scott Cantrell continues his coverage of the competition with reviews of the Sunday evening recitals as well as the morning and afternoon performances at the paper’s arts blog.

The pianists he singles out for special praise this time are Jayson Gillham (26, Australia-U.K.), Alexey Chernov (30, Russia; “the most riveting contestant so far”), and Sara Daneshpour (26, U.S., who “gets the prize so far for the most ravishing playing”).

Sara Daneshpour
Photo: Ralph Lauer

Gregory Isaacs of the Music Critics Association of North America continues his more detailed coverage of the first, second and third rounds on Sunday at the TheaterJones site. He shares Mr. Cantrell’s enthusiasm for Jayson Gillham, Alexey Chernov, and Sara Daneshpour, but has positive things to say about many of the others as well.

Phase two of the preliminary round begins as I’m writing this today at 3 PM central. You can view the entire series live at cliburn.org, hosted with great charm by pianist Jade Simmons.

The Cliburn Report 5: Morning, Noon, and Night in Fort Worth

Nikolay Khozyaninov

Share on Google+

[I will be covering the final round of the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in June for 88.1 KDHX. Meanwhile I’m picking the best of the current press coverage for you dining and dancing pleasure.]

Note-for-note coverage of Phase 1 of the preliminary round continues with Dallas Morning News music critic Scott Cantrell’s reviews of the Saturday afternoon and Saturday night recitals at the paper’s arts blog. None of his reviews are unqualified raves although his comments on Russia’s Nikolay Khozyaninov (age 20) include praise for his “pretty amazing performance of Ravel’s Gaspard de la nuit.” He also singled out Italy’s Alessandro Taverna (age 29) for the way he “managed to find some surprises in that Cliburn cliché, the Three Movements from Stravinsky’s Petrushka.”

Lindsay Garritson

Meanwhile, my fellow member of the Music Critics Association of North America, Gregory Isaacs, continues his coverage of the first, second and third rounds on Saturday at the TheaterJones site. He has something positive to say about nearly everyone, but his favorites so far are Ukraine’s Oleksandr Poliykov (age 25; Mr. Isaacs loved his Pictures at an Exhibition); Taiwan’s Kuan-Ting Lin (21), who did well by Liszt; American Lindsay Garritson (25) whose performance of Prokofiev’s Sonata No. 7 in B-flat Major, Op. 83 earned a standing ovation; Nikolay Khozyaninov (he loved the pianist’s Ravel as much as Mr. Cantrell did); and Italy’s Alessandro Deljavan (27) whose outrageous stage persona (he grimaces and hums along, a la Glenn Gould) nevertheless appears to come with good musical judgment. “Weird facial expressions matter not a whit,” notes Mr. Isaacs, “and he received a standing ovation.”

The Cliburn Report 4: Morning Mood

Beatrice Rana

Share on Google+

[I will be covering the final round of the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in June for 88.1 KDHX. Meanwhile I’m picking the best of the current press coverage for you dining and dancing pleasure.]

If you missed the first day of the Cliburn’s seven-day marathon of preliminary round recitals, never fear; the Fort Worth Star-Telegram has a huge photo gallery of the contestants in action, along with an article by Tim Madigan describing some contestant and audience reactions to opening day. Mr. Madigan isn’t doing any handicapping yet, but he did describe 20-year-old Italian pianist Beatrice Rana’s recital as “a highlight of the first day, particularly her exquisite sonata composed by Muzio Clementi…The piece featured slow, pianissimo passages requiring a delicate touch, interspersed with fast music that allowed Rana to showcase her speed and dexterity at the keyboard.”

Nikita Mndoyants

Scott Cantrell of the Dallas Morning News, on the other hand, is doing mini-reviews of each recital. His Friday report is less enthusiastic about Ms. Rana than Mr. Madigan’s (although it’s still mostly positive). His praise of Russia’s Nikita Mndoyants and Italy’s Luca Buratto mostly mirror my own impressions from the webcast (although I’m less bothered by Mr. Buratto’s presentation eccentricities than he is). His blog coverage of this morning’s concert singles out Taiwan’s Kuan-Ting Lin as “one of the most impressive performers so far, sensitive to melodic shape and harmonic nuance,” although he also has praise for the Ukranian Oleksandr Poliykov.

My fellow Music Critics Assocaition of North America member Gregory Isaacs is also doing wall-to-wall Cliburn coverage at the TheaterJones site. The link will be updated as he adds more reviews, so it's worth a bookmark.

Finally, those of you wishing to escape the hype around the Cliburn (and competitions in general) might want to check out Brad Hill’s curmudgeonly (but thought provoking) article at Huffington Post. You may or may not agree with all of it, but I think you’ll have to admit he makes some telling points.

The Cliburn Report 3: Trial by Jury

Share on Google+

[I will be covering the final round of the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in June for 88.1 KDHX. Meanwhile I’m picking highlights of the current press coverage for your dining and dancing pleasure.]

This is the second in the grueling seven-day marathon that is the preliminary round of the Cliburn competition. Each of the thirty contestants will perform two 45-minute recitals in front of a live audience in the 2,056-seat Bass Performance Hall, located in the city’s Modern Art Museum on Commerce Street, and for a world-wide audience via the Cliburn Foundation’s professionally-produced live webcast at cliburn.org.

The concerts start at 11:00 AM and run, with two 90-minute intermissions, until after 10 PM each day. It’s a killer schedule that reminds me of nothing so much as the old “continuous vaudeville” shows of a century ago.

For those of you who might not be familiar with the term (i.e. pretty much anyone who hasn’t made a study of the Vaudeville era), “continuous vaudeville” was an arrangement devised by producer Benjamin Franklin Keith in the early years of the 20th century whereby vaudeville theatres were kept open for twelve hours per day, with entertainment being offered continuously. The same bill of acts would cycle three of four times, with audience members coming and going at will. As Rick Easton notes in his on-line vaudeville history site, “[t]he continuous provided the illusion of a constant and thriving business, eliminating what Keith saw as ‘hesitancy’ on the part of patrons to enter the theatre until they were ‘reassured by numbers.’” It was a great deal for Keith; less so for his acts, who had time to do little else than perform and (maybe) sleep.

The Cliburn’s schedule may not be as punishing to performers as Keith’s was, but it seems to me that it must be every bit as hard on a group that’s equally as critical to the competition: the judges. They’re obliged to not just listen to almost eight hours of recitals per day but to listen attentively as well—a daunting task, to say the least. In his backstage look at the 1989 Cliburn, The Ivory Trade, Joseph Horowitz neatly summarizes the hazards of such a schedule: “Impressions, sharp at first, blur and refocus intermittently. The mind wanders. The ears tire.”

John Giordano

And yet listen they must, and with care. When the preliminary round is over, they’ll have to vote to advance twelve of the thirty contestants to the semifinals. If they take their jobs seriously (as I presume they must) they have to make sure that no nuance of any performance is missed. They need to feel confident that their twelve choices are, in fact, the best of the bunch.

I don’t envy them that task. Listening to some of the live webcast last night, I was struck by the stunningly high level of pianism on display. If asked to pick a “best” among the few I heard, I’d be hard pressed to do it with any degree of assurance. The members of this jury—headed by Fort Worth Symphony director emeritus John Giordano—have their work cut out for them.

The Cliburn Report 2: Preludes and Fugues

Image from cliburn.org
Ironically, only 5 of the 30 contestants are women

Share on Google+

[I will be covering the final round of the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in June for 88.1 KDHX. Meanwhile I’m picking highlights of the current press coverage for your dining and dancing pleasure.]

The first notes are only now being played by the first pianists in the preliminary round of recitals, which began today at 11 AM central time (the order in which they’re playing having been determined by a lottery on Wednesday the 22nd), but there has already been plenty of press coverage. Here are a few interesting items.

Back on May 19th, Stephanie Allmon of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram assembled “14 Burning Facts About the 14th Cliburn Competition”, an article that is essentially a FAQ list for those attending in person.

The day before, Christopher Kelly of the New York Times did a brief piece on how the death of the competition’s namesake might affect it. He includes an overview of some of the controversies that have dogged the Cliburn over the years (including the high management turnover rate), which makes for interesting reading. A similar piece in the Idaho Statesman by Tim Madigan of the Star-Telegram is more sentimental and concentrates on memories of Cliburn by those who knew him.

Looking for a one-stop overview of the competition, including social media links? Dallas News music critic Scott Cantrell (who will be covering the entire event from start to finish) had a nice summary yesterday as does Katie Womack in The Dallas Observer today. The day before the Observer had a profile of hometown contestant Alex McDonald by Ms. Womack, a fellow Dallas Music Teachers Association member.

Can’t get to Dallas but curious as to what the concerts look and sound like? Never fear. The Van Cliburn Foundation is streaming the entire business live. You might want to bookmark that one.

More to come.

The Cliburn Report 1: Background Music

Van Cliburn in Moscow, 1958

Share on Google+

As some of you may know, I’ll be jetting down to Fort Worth, Texas, in June for the final round of the fourteenth Van Cliburn International Piano Competition as part of a team from the Music Critics Association of North America. Although my live on-site coverage doesn’t start until then, I’m doing my homework by scanning news coverage of the event right now and sharing here what I see as the highlights.

I’m going to start with some not-so-deep background.

For those of you not familiar with the event, here’s a very condensed and superficial overview. For more details and complete streaming media coverage of the competition, check out the Van Cliburn foundation web site. You can also check my favorite classical radio program, PRI’s Performance Today, which will broadcast competition highlights.

The Cliburn is an international piano competition held every four years in Fort Worth. It’s named after the famed concert pianist (and Fort Worth native) Van Cliburn, who stunned the world by placing first in the Tchaikovsky Competition at the age of 23 in 1958. It was seen as a major cultural victory in the Cold War since no non-Russian had ever placed first in the Tchaikovsky and, in fact, it was generally held that the entire business was rigged to guarantee that result.

Cliburn went on to a high-profile (if somewhat erratic) career. His victory sparked a determination to create an American equivalent of the Tchaikovsky competition. Heavily funded by Fort Worth’s movers and shakers, the Van Cliburn competition made its debut in 1962 and is now held every four years. It has not been without controversy. Probably the most notable of its critics is musician, artistic consultant, and teacher Joseph Horowitz, whose 1990 book about the Cliburn, The Ivory Trade, makes fascinating reading.

This year’s will, sadly, be the first one held without the public participation of its namesake; Mr. Cliburn died of bone cancer in February.

The first preliminary round recitals won’t begin until tomorrow (May 24th) at 11 AM, but the weeding-out process of hopeful pianists from around the world began back in January and February when a panel of five judges traveled to Hong Kong, Hannover, Moscow, Milan, New York City, and Fort Worth to hear the 133 applicants for this edition of the competition perform a 40-minute recital. Thirty from that pool were chosen to compete from; you can see a complete list, including pictures and profiles, at the TheaterJones web site.

That might seem like an unfair process since it eliminates any pianist who can’t get to one of that handful of cities, but there’s probably no way to do something like this in a completely fair manner. Past attempts to use audio and video recordings submitted by hopefuls have had their share of problems as well. At least this way the judges get to see the contestants in a real-world setting with an actual audience.

Texas and international media are already cranking out coverage. I’ll skim what I see as the cream and post it here.