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

Tonight was the second of the four concerts in the final round of the Cliburn Competition. All concerts feature the Fort Worth Symphony conducted by Leonard Slatkin.

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The Friday concerts were marked by generally strong playing all the way around. Thursday night we had, in my estimation, two good performances and one disappointing one. Tonight we had two that were very good and one that was so outstanding I had to stop taking notes and just listen.

Tomoki Sakata (Japan) got things off to a fine start with a very persuasive Mozart Concerto No. 20 in D Minor, K. 466. Mr. Sakata and the orchestra adopted a brisk pace in the first movement that made the most of its drama (although his first entrance was a bit hesitant) and included a fine performance of the Beethoven cadenza. The second movement Romanze was elegantly played but a bit too slow for my taste and never quite took flight, but the final movement flowed along nicely. Overall it was a well-proportioned reading and neatly played.

Mr. Sakata is not a demonstrative performer (a rarity in this group, it seems), choosing to express himself entirely through his music.

Sean Chen (USA) took on the Beethoven Concerto No. 5 in E-flat Major (Op. 73), known as the “Emperor.” His performance was marked by extreme dynamic contrasts and, at one point towards the end of the first movement, a bit of banging away at the keyboard that distorted his sound. For the most part, though, this approach worked well for him and enhanced the work’s grandeur. Tempi were a bit slow, but not so much so that the music ever lost energy, and the second movement (Adagio un poco mosso) was quite lovely. As with Mr. Sakata’s Mozart, this was not a flawless performance, but quite a fine one nevertheless.

Unlike Mr. Sakata, Mr. Chen is not shy about playing to the audience. This is neither good nor bad as long as it serves the music, which (mostly), it did.

Judging from his Prokofiev Concerto No. 3 in C Major (Op. 26), Vadym Kholodenko (Ukraine) is a powerhouse of a pianist who is also capable of great delicacy. His concentration was intense and he seemed to be entirely caught up in the music. The Prokofiev 3rd is the music of youth, with ample wit, nose-thumbing cheer, and some ridiculously difficult writing for the soloist, especially in the final movement. Mr. Kholodenko captured all of that, and did it with precision and flare. There seemed to me to be a real joy in his playing that communicated itself to the highly appreciative audience. It certainly won me over.

The third concert of the final round is tomorrow night (Saturday, June 8). It will feature Mozart’s 20th again (with Nikita Mndoyants), Beethoven’s 4th (Fei-Fei Dong), and Prokofiev’s 2nd (Beatrice Rana; I’m very much looking forward to that one).

Cliburn Final Round, First Concert: Beatrice Rana, Nikita Mndoyants, Fei-Fei Dong

Tonight was the first of the four concerts that make up the final round of the Cliburn Competition. All concerts feature the Fort Worth Symphony conducted by Leonard Slatkin.

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Beatrice Rana (Italy) got things off to a lovely start with a nimble, elegant, and beautifully executed performance of Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No 3 in C Minor, Op. 37. This is a work full of drama, lyricism, and good cheer—all of which were present in abundance in Ms. Rana’s thoughtful and impeccably executed reading. Her communication with Mr. Slatkin was good and she was clearly very much “in the moment” at every point. If she does as well with her Prokofiev Piano Concerto No. 2 in G Minor (Op. 16) on Saturday, she could be a real contender for a medal.

Speaking of the Prokofiev 2nd, Nikita Mndoyants (Russia) seemed to be having problems with his performance of it tonight—somewhat surprising, given the generally good notices he got in his preliminary and semi-final round work. He did capture much of the concerto’s grotesque humor, especially in the second movement, but was clearly working hard all the way through. Jeff Dunn, a fellow critic who is intimately familiar with the work, felt that Mr. Mndoyants was over his head technically—which might explain why the performance felt rather monochromatic to me. It was still fascinating to see, as Prokofiev’s concerti always are, but to my mind true virtuosity should never appear as difficult as it actually is. Like Fred Astaire’s dancing, it should seem effortless when, in fact, it’s just the opposite.

Fei-Fei Dong (China) concluded the evening with a Rachmaninov Piano Concerto No. 3 in D Minor (Op. 30), that really rocked the house. You wouldn’t think the diminutive pianist could generate that much power (and, in fact, she actually rose from the bench once or twice for a little extra muscle), but she took everything Rachmaninov could throw at her and made it not only rock but sing. Her entrance in the second movement lacked just a bit of the hallucinatory quality that I associate with that section, but otherwise this was another potentially prize-winning performance. Like Ms. Rana, she was obviously listening closely to the orchestra and paying close attention to Mr. Slatkin throughout.

Watching these concerts is a rather unusual experience, by the way.  The Cliburn is streaming them live at their web site, so there are multiple video cameras capturing everything.  The video stream is also shown on a large screen suspended above the stage, so everyone can get close-up views of the pianist's face and hands, as well as of Mr. Slatkin and the orchestra.  The massive boom-mounted camera suspended above the stage—the one used for the panning shots—can be a bit distracting at first, but I soon learned to ignore it.

Bass Hall has excellent acoustics, by the way, so you can also hear every note with great clarity.

The Cliburn Report 15: The Yellow Rose of Texas

Twin Gabriels flanking the
entrance to Bass Hall

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It’s now the afternoon of my first day here in Fort Worth, Texas, for the finals of the Cliburn Competition. I haven’t heard a single note yet (the first final round concert isn’t until tonight), but it has already been an interesting experience.

It started with the party at the Fort Worth Zoo thrown by the Cliburn for visiting media, contestants, and local host families, backers, and other prominent folks. It was pure Texas—big, elaborate, and loud. We were picked up at the hotel by the kind of high-end party bus usually reserved for rock stars and the like, with comfy swivel chairs, a kitchen, and big-screen TVs (which I quickly figured out how to mute, to the relief of everyone in the bus) and whisked to the zoo, which as closed down for the party. There was an open bar, plenty of Texas-style food (jalapeno beans, mac and cheese, port sliders, hamburger-style sliders, and the like), a live country band and line dancers. Welcome to the Lone Star State, y’all.

Today there was a critics symposium hosted by Scott Cantrell of the Dallas Morning News and featuring some of my fellow critics from the Music Critics Association of North America. Since most of the panelists were from the print media world, the discussion largely focused on the dilemma of print media in the digital age and the ways in which this was changing the role of the critic. It was suggested at one point that the very role of the critic might be an artifact of a time when it was possible to write longer pieces and take more time with them. I’m not so sure that’s true—we have no length limitations on what we write for KDHX’s on line presence, for example—but there’s no denying that the interweb tends to favor those who publish early and often vs. those who take time to consider.

There was general agreement that the role of the critic is changing, though, and that these days it often includes the role of arts advocate.

In a subsequent private meeting among the MCANA members, the discussion turned towards issues specific to musical competitions and their relevance (or lack of same) in the broader musical world. The consensus was that the career path for a concert pianist is not, perhaps, what it once was, and that in any event the judges at competitions like the Cliburn are no more capable of predicting the future than the rest of us. There were discussions of the pros and cons of open vs. pre-selected repertoire for contestants, the value of having a mandatory commissioned new work (as there was this season), and the degree to which the conductor can make or break contestants in the final concerto round.

I wouldn’t say there was widespread agreement on much of anything (this was, after all, a group of critics….) but the talk was lively and filled with amusing anecdotes from our resident Canadian, William Littler.

For now it’s on to a dinner at Reata courtesy of the Fort Worth Convention and Visitors Bureau, followed by concerto round 1 with the Fort Worth Symphony and Leonard Slatkin at Bass Hall.

The Cliburn Report 12: The Unanswered Question

[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.]

Cliburn in Moscow in 1958

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The semifinal round of performances, in which recitals will alternate with piano quintet performances, runs through tomorrow (June 4th), at which point each one of the dozen semifinalists will have done one of each and the six finalists will be announced.

By that time each of those finalists will have played three 45-minute recitals and performed a piano quintet with the Brentano String Quartet. Starting on Thursday the final round, in which each one of them will play two piano concertos with the Fort Worth Symphony under Leonard Slatkin, will commence. The winners are announced at a ceremony on Sunday evening, followed by a black tie party at the Worthington Hotel.

It’s a punishing schedule and raises an interesting (and ultimately unanswerable) question: if he were alive today, could the 23-year-old Van Cliburn, who took the world by storm when he won the Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow, win the competition that carries his name?

The evidence is ambiguous and scanty. Looking at the works Cliburn played in concert and on record, he was clearly at his strongest in the romantic Russian repertoire. His 1958 Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto No. 3 with Kirill Kondrashin and the Symphony of the Air is legendary. As cited in Joseph Horowitz’s 1990 The Ivory Trade, Aram Khachaturian called Cliburn’s performance “better than Rachmaninoff’s; you find a virtuoso like this once in a century.” Cliburn’s subsequent Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 1 went platinum—the first classical LP to do so.

Outside of the Russian romantics, though, he fared less well. Here’s how Mr. Horowitz describes the situation:

Cliburn’s recordings add contradictory impressions. He never made another as ardent as his 1958 Rachmaninoff Third—unless it was the Rachmaninoff Second Sonata, also recorded in concert, in Moscow in 1960. In American studios, he recorded sixteen concertos eleven sonatas, and a variety of shorter solo works. Here, the Cliburn imprint remains sonorous and expansive. He majestically sweeps through his “Favorite Encores”—by Chopin, Scriabin, Rachmaninoff, and Schumann/Liszt—in love with their stormy rhetoric. Elsewhere, the lustrous sheen and monumental architecture attain a sort of embalmed perfection.

Fei-Fei Dong

Cliburn also had no interest at all in chamber music. Add that to his limited musical interests, and one wonders how we would fare today in a competition that demands a variety in repertoire, including the piano quintet. Would he ever make it to that final round? One wonders.

Meanwhile, back at the competition, a bit of controversy has spring up around the revelation that Yoheved “Veda” Kaplinsky, the teacher of competitor Fei-Fei Dong, is sitting on the Cliburn jury. And she’s not the only one. As Andrea Ahles reports in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram today, “Two of juror Arie Vardi’s students, Claire Huangci and Beatrice Rana, performed Saturday. Jury member Dmitri Alexeev’s student Nikita Abrosimov played Saturday, too. In all, nine of the 30 competitors who started the 14th Van Cliburn International Piano Competition were current or former students of the individuals adjudicating it. Four of the jurors’ students advanced to the semifinal round, which started Saturday.”

This turns out to be far from unusual, not only at the Cliburn, but (as Ms. Alhes reports) at competitions in general:

Although it may seem like the world is filled with concert pianists and teachers who could adequately judge a piano competition, [former Cliburn chief Richard] Rodzinski said, there actually is a small pool of talent to draw on for contests at the highest levels. Therefore, he said, it would be impossible to eliminate teachers altogether from juries like the Cliburn’s or the Tchaikovsky’s.

“I think [the criticism of the Cliburn] is a little bit unfair,” Rodzinski said. “There are certain master teachers and obviously, Veda [Kaplinsky] is a master teacher. She’s also a wonderful juror.”

My feeling is that Mr. Rodzinski (son of the great conductor Artur Rodzinski) may be right. When it comes to competition-level pianists, teachers, and judges, “it’s a small world after all.”

The Cliburn Report 10: Luftpause

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[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 8: Here, There, and Everywhere

Jade Simmons

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[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.]

I'm a bit late with this one, but I have an excuse:  I had to write up and record a review of the tour of Anything Goes that's playing the Fox Theatre locally.  That's the disadvantage of being both a music and theatre critic.

Anyway, I’ve been concentrating on mainstream media outlets so far, but I don’t want to give you the impression that the blogosphere isn’t paying attention to the competition as well. Here are  a couple of recent examples:

Chang Tou Liang’s Pianomania blog has been covering the competition at least as assiduously as mainstream critics Scott Cantreel and Gregory Isaacs (see below). It’s interesting to compare their picks with his.

I have mentioned the fine job pianist Jade Simmons has been doing as host of the Cliburn live webcast. Her Emerge Already! blog is worth a look (and listen—it includes audio blog entries).

Giuseppe Greco
Photo: Ralph Lauer

Back on the mainstream media beat, The Fort Worth Star-Telegram continues its daily photo coverage of the competition, including both performance and backstage pictures from day 6 (May 28th).

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

• Nikita Mndoyants (24, Russia) – “The best word to describe his performance is ‘classy.’” Scott Cantrell liked Mr. Mndoyants’s Phase I recital quite a bit as well.
• Giuseppe Greco (23, Italy) – “Giuseppe Greco is an anomaly. He is a fine pianist with remarkable skills who played an excellent program, yet he doesn’t command the kind of attention that some of the other, equally talented, pianists seem to attract. It is hard to understand why this happens. However, in listening to him play his second round program, we were constantly reminded of what a fine pianist he is.”
• Oleksandr Poliykov (25, Ukraine) – “This was an exceptionally thoughtful performance” of Liszt’s arrangement of Isoldens Liebestod and Brahms’ Sonata No. 3 in F Minor, op. 5.
• Nikita Abrosimov (24, Russia) – The pianist’s program of 20th-century Russian music included Rachmaninov’s Prelude in D Major, No.4, which Mr. Isaacs called “the most beautiful single performance of the competition to date.”
• Vadym Kholodenko (26, Ukraine) – Mr. Isaacs was most taken with the Stravinsky’ Trois mouvements de Pétrouchka, a piece that has been popular with the contestants this year. “We have heard it played impeccably, note-wise,” he writes, “as did Kholodenko, but this was the first time the music came to life in all its delightful grotesquerie. He made faces, bounced on the bench in rhythm, hunched over, leaned into the instrument and generally had a grand time. He played the music, but he also played the intent, and that is a rare quality. Suddenly, this work stopped being an elaborate étude and became a piece of theater music.”

Oleksandr Poliykov
Photo: Ralph Lauer

Scott Cantrell of the Dallas Morning News singled out the following contestants in his morning, afternoon, and evening reviews:

• Nikita Mndoyants – “Amid so much playing to impress, he again proved an unassuming, thoughtful musician.”
• Giuseppe Greco – “a serious contender for the semifinals”
• Oleksandr Poliykov - “opened the afternoon sessions with two of the competition’s most compelling performances so far.”
• Vadym Kholodenko – Mr. Cantrell echoes Mr. Isaacs’s praise, especially of the Pétrouchka scenes, which was “the first of five performances so far to suggest the wit, whimsy and sheer weirdness of Stravinsky’s original ballet.”

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

Nikolay Khozyaninov

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[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

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[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.