The Cliburn Report 11: Im Chambre séparée

Claire Huangci
Photo: Ralph Lauer

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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.]

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 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

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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 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 7: Da Capo

Claire Huangci

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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.]

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

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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.]

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

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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.