Sep 6th 2013

The Cliburn’s New Keyboard Crop

by Michael Johnson

Michael Johnson is a music critic with particular interest in piano. 

Johnson worked as a reporter and editor in New York, Moscow, Paris and London over his journalism career. He covered European technology for Business Week for five years, and served nine years as chief editor of International Management magazine and was chief editor of the French technology weekly 01 Informatique. He also spent four years as Moscow correspondent of The Associated Press. He is the author of five books.

Michael Johnson is based in Bordeaux. Besides English and French he is also fluent in Russian.

You can order Michael Johnson's most recent book, a bilingual book, French and English, with drawings by Johnson:

“Portraitures and caricatures:  Conductors, Pianist, Composers”

 here.

The Van Cliburn International Piano Competition ended with the results many observers had predicted, the gold medal going to a self-assured Vadym Kholodenko, 26, of Ukraine. He delivered a series of impressive performances throughout the 17-day contest, several of which had the audience whooping in appreciation, including me. 

Italian Beatrice Rana, widely tipped to finish in the money, was the choice for silver, and Sean Chen of the United States won the third-place crystal prize. All three said they planned no further competition activity.

The Cliburn is one of the world’s richest piano competitions, awarding more than $200,000 in prize money including an array of individual bequests. Kholodenko’s gold is worth $50,000 and second and third finishers win $20,000 each. Various concert tours and recording contracts are also part of the winnings. 

The other three finalists -- Nikita Mndoyants (Russia), Tomoki Sakata (Japan) and Fei-Fei Dong (China) -- each took home $10,000.

I was among the half-million Cliburn fans and critics around the world who followed the Competition on the internet webcasts, easily accessed “on demand” from odd time zones such as mine in France until it broke down the last day. 

This year’s Cliburn offered standard competition fare yet in other ways it marked a departure from the past. Founding pianist Van Cliburn, long a mere observer on the margins of the event, died just three months before the opening, in effect depriving the event of its patron saint. And a new president and CEO, Jacques Marquis of Montreal, had been appointed on the eve of the Competition, altering top management influence on the proceedings.

Requirements also changed at the Cliburn this year. Each participant was obliged to perform two 45-minute solo recitals in the preliminary round, then the field of 30 was reduced to 12 for the semifinals in which a 60-minute solo recital was required as well as a piano quintet with the Brentano String Quartet. The final six survivors played two concerti, one classical and one romantic or modern, both from memory – all tolled, a huge feat for such young artists and well beyond some professionals. 

There is general agreement in the world of piano competitions that jurors are impressed by virtuoso turns more than by depth of interpretation. But a backlash is settling in against the “louder and faster” young players.  Marquis has said publicly that he wants to rethink required repertoire for future Cliburns. There is some support for a move toward subtler repertoire – away from Lisztian pyrotechnics and toward the deeper Schubert. Other competitions would be wise to take note.

Juror's Ethics

The success of this edition was far from guaranteed. Management turmoil and multiple resignations had rocked the institution in the months prior to opening, and auditions of 132 applicants were marred by overloading the field with students of jurists Yoheved (Veda) Kaplinsky and Arie Vardi, both Israelis and close collaborators. Eight of the 30 came from their stable. Marquis told me in a pre-Competition interview that Mme. Kaplinsky and other jurors would be blocked from voting on their students’ and ex-students’ performances. Actual jury procedures were carried out behind closed doors, however, and competitions are notorious for private vote-trading.

The Competition blog was peppered with challenges to the jury’s integrity – and with emotional defenses in response.

One blogger wrote on Facebook, “And the Cliburn jurors continue to outdo themselves. Corruption, fraud, politics – these are the words that come to mind. A sad day for piano and competitions around the world.” Another had more basic complaints: “We always see the same names on the Cliburn jury and it's just getting stale, much like the competitors' playing.”

One example stands out. Silver medalist Rana has studied in master classes with Michel Beroff, Andrea Bonatta, and Mme. Kaplinsky, all of whom were on the jury. She won the 2011 Montreal International Musical Competition while Marquis was director, and her parents are family friends of Marquis. Marquis roamed the premises in a black T-shirt and tailored sport coat, looking very much the fresh face of the new Cliburn.  But he openly socialized with the Rana family, raising eyebrows among those who noticed.

Safety First?

As in most piano competitions, the Cliburn jury suppresses much of the originality competitors might try to inject in their interpretations. Prizes tend to go to safe performers who stick to the score, rigorously observe tempos and play note-perfectly.

Kholodenko clinched his victory with all the above but he also managed to shape a sparkling and carefully colored Prokofiev Piano Concerto No. 3 in the final round. It was perhaps his good fortune that the five previous concerto performances had been on the mediocre side. One critic wrote after Kholodenko’s confident interpretation was that he “sounded like the guy to beat”. And he was. 

One Italian semifinalist, Alessandro Deljavan, who carried off a Jury Discretionary Award worth $4,000, appeared to have lost his chance for a place in the finals despite one of the best piano quintet performances of the event. It was a cultural contrast for all to see. As in his other performances, he exuded an Italian joy and passion that many other competitors lacked. His remarkable Dvorak Piano Quintet in A with the Brentano ensemble was played with heart and polish despite minimal rehearsal time. His keyboard enthusiasm drew roars of approval from the audience but apparently not from the more conservative jury.

 

Prickly Management

Although comfortable financially (unlike most competitions), the Cliburn has traditionally demonstrated a provincial prickliness when criticized from outside. Based in Ft. Worth, Texas, home of the late founder, it has never risen to its potential as a mature institution despite 50 years of experience. Criticism of its management or its performances is openly resented.

The most prominent critic, Scott Cantrell of the Dallas Morning News, respected for his even-handed assessments, found himself the object of a “hostile” on-camera interview, he said, intended for an in-house documentary on the competition. Cantrell wrote in his blog that he felt ambushed by the aggressive descriptions of his critiques, and walked out of the interview. He forbade the producers from using the footage but later discovered he was being clandestinely videoed from a distance. His complaints elicited a private apology from CEO Marquis.


Telephone Teaching

If there were a prize for the longest-distance tutoring it would go to Maestro William Naboré of Rome, dubbed the Yoda of the piano world for his long record of Cliburn participation and winning players. This year, one of the five competitors from his International Piano Academy Lake Como, Italy, Tomoki Sakata, was a finalist. Most of his notices were glowing. “His Schumann Quintet sounded like Schumann, and that’s a high compliment,” wrote critic Cantrell.  Naboré had been present for the bulk of the Competition but returned to Italy before Sakata’s final was scheduled. In desperation, they spent two hours and 30 minutes on the telephone, Naboré guiding Sakata note by note through the Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 1, the same composition that launched Cliburn’s career in Moscow in 1958.

The future of the Cliburn is now in the hands of Marquis, and “The eyes of the world are on us,” Marquis told me in a pre-competition interview. He has promised to rethink “all variables”. If these include repertoire, jury ethics and the selection process, the Competition will flourish.

© Clavier Companion, 2013. Used with permission. www.claviercompanion.com 

 


This article is brought to you by the author who owns the copyright to the text.

Should you want to support the author’s creative work you can use the PayPal “Donate” button below.

Your donation is a transaction between you and the author. The proceeds go directly to the author’s PayPal account in full less PayPal’s commission.

Facts & Arts neither receives information about you, nor of your donation, nor does Facts & Arts receive a commission.

Facts & Arts does not pay the author, nor takes paid by the author, for the posting of the author's material on Facts & Arts. Facts & Arts finances its operations by selling advertising space.

 

 

Browse articles by author

More Music Reviews

Sep 11th 2022
EXTRACT: "When I try to understand my life as a critic in the dazzling world of piano music, I am at a loss. We have inherited so much over 300 years that I feel overwhelmed. There is no obvious focal point. What is at the heart of piano world? -- Personally I could not make it through the day without the stimulation of piano performance. My home resounds with music all my waking hours, constantly renewed from the thousand-odd CDs I have accumulated." ----- Picture: The author, Michael Johnson.
Jun 21st 2022
EXTRACT: "This novel is nothing short of a Tolstoian epic.   Author Lawson, a true polymath, is up to the task. He is an accomplished pianist and composer, retired archdeacon of the Church of England and author of some 14 books." ---- "Rounding out his career, Lawson is also a trained psychotherapist who has worked with several pianists, including child prodigies." ----- "I know of no other writer who can draw on such a varied and pertinent background and weave them into a single tale."
Dec 18th 2021
EXTRACT: "......, I read all the time in Russian, French and English. Right now I’m finishing the new book of my favorite Russian author Ludmila Ulitzkaya. Of course, I have read most of classics to Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Bulgakov, Pushkin, Akhmatova. I think it’s important to read Russian literature to understand Russian music, to understand the suffering and the spirituality of the characters of Dostoevsky, Tolstoy and Bulgakov in order to feel the depth of Rachmaninov’s music. I also read a lot in French and English. For me, it’s important to go from contemporary writers to the classics and back."
Dec 9th 2021
EXTRACT: Q: "Your new CD is a turning point. Why is it so important to you?" ----- "A: It is all Brahms. I really wanted to do it this way. It is very important to me because it is my first solo CD. I’ve been spending a lot of my time working on Brahms, especially the Brahms Paganini Variations and the Handel Variations. I almost grew up with them. "
Dec 3rd 2021
EXTRACT: "A musical theatre legend has died. Stephen Sondheim, the greatest composer-lyricist of his generation, passed away on November 26 at the age of 91. His dramatic genius combined a rare blend of elements, that of an astonishingly versatile and sophisticated composer, and an incredibly witty wordsmith. His extraordinary output includes a staggering 16 musicals as composer and lyricist, a further three as lyricist alone, as well as four musical revues featuring compilations of hit songs from his shows."
Nov 27th 2021
EXTRACT: "Most important  to him, he explained, is maintaining his individuality in interpretation. He feels it was a mistake in his past to pick and choose bits from different teachers and combine them into a finished performance. He has decided to create his own perspective, and 'go for it'."
Oct 28th 2021
EXTRACTS: "The 16th International Beethoven Piano Competition came to a rousing climax in Vienna on 21 October with first prizewinner Aris Alexander Blettenberg’s lyrical rendering of the Beethoven Piano Concerto No 1." ---- "The other two finalists, Austrian Philipp Scheucher and South Korean Dasol Kim, played Beethoven’s Fourth and Fifth Concertos respectively."
Sep 21st 2021
EXTRACT: "Top prize, worth 22,000 euros, went to Jae Hong Park, a flamboyant, emotive player with and a firm grasp of Rachmaninov, and second prize went to Do-Hyun Kim, who played Prokofiev’s second concerto with some considerable verve. Placing third was Lukas Sternath, a young Austrian who performed Beethoven’s Fifth Piano Concerto with cool charm -- the opposite of Park’s style."
Jul 9th 2021
EXTRACT: " .....I have to give everything in these concerts,.... "
Jun 26th 2021
EXTRACT: What do you want to be known as? --- As “Stewart Goodyear, composer and pianist”.
Mar 15th 2021
EXTRACT: Denis Pascal, founder of the French Trio Pascal: ".....recording studios began working again. We recorded our Schubert trios at the end of September. And musicians everywhere are finding that the crisis allows time for a certain introspection and questioning into the way music is performed. Music will play a much more important role after the crisis."
Feb 12th 2021
EXTRACTS: "She began her piano training rather late in life – age 8." ..... "I want to contribute a sense of joy by discovering atypical works that might surprise an educated public. I have great experience and am inclined to share them with anyone who can appreciate them, or as André Gide wrote, anyone “who has an open mind”."
Jan 31st 2021
EXTRACTS: "A new recording of Franz Liszt’s piano compositions presents ten carefully balanced pieces in a double-CD album aptly titled Between Light and Darkness, launched by Piano Classics. The pianist, the veteran French virtuoso Vincent Larderet .... Larderet opens his CD with a moving exploration of Après une Lecture de Dante with a tortured lyricism unmatched by many of his contemporaries who play it. I was stunned the first time I heard his performance. In our interview below, he describes lyricism as “an essential facet of my musical conception. The piano must be able to sing like the human voice.” "
Jan 16th 2021
EXTRACT: "Jack Kohl is an American pianist and writer with three novels and two essay collections to his credit. His new collection, From the Windows of Diligence: Essays from a Standing Pianist, has drawn critical acclaim in the U.S. and Europe. In these reflections, he examines the power of ‘hack pianism’, the metaphor of running vs. the piano, and the ‘hidden gift’ of the Covid virus pandemic on solitary practicing. Robert Beattie spoke to Kohl about his music training and how he made the transition from pianist to author. (This edited interview was first published on www.Seenandheard-international.com and is reproduced with permission.)"
Dec 17th 2020
EXTRACT: "Freedom in Beethoven’s music takes many, frequently overlapping forms. There is heroic freedom in the Eroica (1803), freedom from political oppression in the Egmont Overture (1810), artistic freedom and innovation in the Ninth Symphony (1824). Today, Beethoven’s music remains deeply connected with a true humanism, which has the principles of freedom and self-determination at its heart. The composer’s music grew out of the age of European Enlightenment, which located human reason and the self at the centre of knowledge......"
Nov 27th 2020
EXTRACT: "One of the most durable tales in Western civilization – the legend of Faust – is brilliantly rendered in a piano adaptation, performed this week by the multi-talented Australian musician of German/Slovenian parentage, Ashley Hribar. A new recording of the music, now available digitally, will appear as a CD in the New Year. Hribar calls his recording, “Faust: A Mortal’s Tale”.  It is a personal musical reflection on the Faust story, loosely based on the 1926 silent film by Wilhelm Friedrich Murnau."
Aug 6th 2020
EXTRACT: "For 60 minutes, my mind was clear, the air was clean and the sound heavenly. It was my honor and privilege to have been there."
Jul 25th 2020
EXTRACT: "Scarlatti sonatas are enjoying a popular surge in recent years, tempting pianists –Europeans, Americans, Asians -- to try to master their broad range. Margherita has some advice: “Don’t be afraid to slow down, to speed up, to play the truly singable melodies with a quasi-Romantic feeling.” "
Jul 18th 2020
EXTRACT: "The dizzying output of John Cage the musician, the poet, the writer, the thinker, the artist, was so prolific that one of his sidelines – his interests in wild mushrooms -- has been almost overlooked. A new a two-volume set of books, beautifully designed by Capucine Labarthe, packaged in an elegant slipcover, seeks to fill this gap."