Six down, six to go in Fort Worth, TX. Same six, in fact.
The Van Cliburn International Piano Competition gives each of its half-dozen finalists two opportunities to play with the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra under Marin Alsop. Having heard the magnificent six, we shall hear them again in a different concerto, and possibly reach a different conclusion about who merits a medal and who does not.
The sensible thing would be to wait and see. But, handicapping is half the fun at this famous event, watched the world over through live-streaming portals like medici.tv and cliburn.org. Many opinions have already been formed through a process of elimination that started on May 21. Perhaps some were reinforced by the performances heard in the Bass Performance Hall on two consecutive nights.
There were traces of gold Wednesday in a performance of Bartók’s Piano Concerto No. 2 by Vitaly Starikov, a 30-year-old graduate of the Moscow Conservatory. This 25-minute score of 1931 is reputed to be among hardest in the repertoire, and indeed I was once at a concert in Montreal in which the pianist and conductor elected to repeat the finale as it did not go as well as expected.
There was no such problem on this occasion as both Starikov and the Fort Worth Symphony (including the timpanist) were firing on all cylinders. Trills in the outer movements had an unearthly quality and the cadenza of the first movement was tremendous. A great technical achievement, no doubt, but the most captivating moments were in the Adagio, with its plangent piano chords and nocturnally muted strings.
Coordination with Alsop was excellent in a score that must have been new to many in the orchestra. For some reason Starikov fiddled with the piano bench before the performance started, giving the impression of personal uneasiness even if this was not the cause. No matter.
Another Moscow Conservatory alumnus, Philipp Lynov, 26, started the session with Liszt’s Piano Concerto No. 2, a work that deploys bravura in a more accessibly Romantic style. A tall figure in formal concert dress, he seemed to embody the earnest outlook, warm tone and technical security of the Russian school. Left-hand thunder and right-hand filigree were equally well attended to. Music that often comes across as episodic in performance flowed like a story well told. Alsop and the orchestra seemed to relish the opportunity to play a concerto not often heard in competitions. I detected some gold dust here.
The evening ended with the 28-year-old Canadian, Carter Johnson, in Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 2. The huge cadenza of the first movement reached a powerful climax (memorably marked tumultuoso by the composer) and the semiquavers scampered vividly enough in the scherzo. At points I wondered whether the brighter American Steinway would have made a more incisive effect — a feeling that might have been conditioned by the experience of hearing the same Hamburg instrument in five of the six performances. Carter will have to do well on Saturday in Ravel’s Piano Concerto for the Left Hand to remain in the running.
Tuesday night raised interesting questions. Can Mendelssohn’s verbose and flashy Piano Concerto No. 1, however brilliantly rendered, lead to a medal at a major competition? Aristo Sham, a 29-year-old of Hong Kong birth and substantially American training, made his case for the affirmative with playing of high spirits and technical sheen. Interesting to note that Sham gets serious on Friday by playing Brahms’s Piano Concerto No. 2.
Angel Stanislav Wang, 22, an American of Chinese and Russian parentage and silver medallist in the 2023 Tchaikovsky Competition, chose that paragon of sublimity, Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4. The poetry was there. The question in his case is whether a light smattering of smudges should significantly worsen his chances. He is heard Friday in Rachmaninoff’s Third Piano Concerto, quite a contrast.
Speaking of traditional Cliburn showpieces, Evren Ozel, a 26-year-old American, closed the Tuesday session with Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1. His approach to this most popular of all concertos was lyrical and restrained. The celebrated double octaves were free of stress. “I just think of them as a continuation of the music,” Ozel said in a post-performance interview. How will the jury respond?
This is unknowable before Saturday night, when gold, silver, bronze and an array of special awards (including best performance of a Mozart concerto, and best performance of the new work, Gabriela Montero’s Rachtime) are announced from the stage of the Bass Performance Hall.
Cheering from the friendly Texas crowd will be voluminous. This we can predict with total certainty.
The finals of the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition are available as a livestream at cliburn.org. The third and fourth sessions start Friday at 8:30 p.m. EDT and Saturday at 4 p.m. EDT. Prior rounds can be seen on YouTube.
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