The triennial Calgary contest announced its three finalists on Tuesday, in essence revealing the gold, silver and bronze laureates before they embark on the concluding trials, which determine who gets which prize.
The happy three are Carter Johnson, 29; Élisabeth Pion, 29; and Anastasia Vorotnaya, 30. It is interesting to note that they were the oldest of the 10 semifinalists. Carter and Pion were the only Canadians.
Each will be heard Thursday with the Isidore String Quartet, then Friday October 24 with the Calgary Philharmonic under the German-Japanese conductor Elias Grandy. Piano quintets are by Brahms (Johnson), Franck (Pion) and Dvořák (Vorotnaya). Piano concertos are Prokofiev’s Second (Johnson), Prokofiev’s Third (Pion) and Brahms’s Second (Vorotnaya).
Both sessions, in the Jack Singer Concert Hall, start at 7 p.m. Mountain Time (9 p.m. ET) and are streamed on the competition’s You Tube channel, which is easily reached here.
Expect the final result — i.e. the 1-2-3 order — late Friday. Gold is worth CAN $100,000; Silver, $40,000; Bronze, $20,000.
There is also a $5,000 Audience Choice Award and $5,000 for the best performance of the commissioned work, Fracture, by the Iranian-Canadian composer Iman Habibi. Non-finishing semifinalists receive $2,500 in consolation money.
Honens differs from its competitor competitions (among which we might mention the recently concluded International Fryderyk Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw) in its determination to find what it calls the Complete Artist — a species possessing qualities beyond those involved in the successful application of fingers to ivories.
“A thoughtful interpreter, a consummate collaborator, an awe-inspiring virtuoso, a communicator, a risk-taking explorer, a dreamer,” begin the Honens terms of reference. Other necessities include performances informed by “a wide cultural context” and “a fascination for life outside the practice studio.”
On-the-ground savvy is helpful. The Honens laureate (aged 20 to 30) will be “a citizen artist who is skilled in the business of music, able to recognize and seize opportunities, knowledgeable about self-care, influential in communications, and socially conscious.”
High expectations — which, if applied mercilessly 50 years ago, might have sidelined such reclusive figures as Vladimir Horowitz and Sviatoslav Richter. Of course, these pianists did not need to contend with social media and the other invasive demands of the 21st century.
In practical terms the Honens Complete Artist is a pianist who exhibits an ability — inevitably, in English — to communicate orally. One part of the protocols for finalists is a half-hour interview, which the seven jurors (under the supervision of Honens artistic director Jon Kimura Parker) are expected to take into account.
All of the semifinalists — the others are Ádám Balogh, 28; Elia Cecino, 24; Giorgio Lazzari, 25; Sandro Nebieridze, 24; Chaeyoung Park, 28; Derek Wang, 27; Yuanfan Yang, 28 — can be heard giving mini-interviews in the archived YouTube videos of their recitals.
Tributes to cooking, travel and filmgoing are common. Carter, a father of two, waxes lyrical about overseeing the barbecue while his wife attends to the sides. Pion is a Tai Chi enthusiast who led a post-performance session last March with members of the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra.
Vorotnaya watches videos of heart transplants. The pastime seems less macabre if we keep in mind that this Russian was once on track for a career in medicine.
Lazzari, an Italian, includes scuba and free diving among his extracurriculars. “You really have to be in the moment and comfortable,” he says, believably, comparing the underwater experience with life on stage.
Balogh, a Hungarian making his second Honens appearance, mentions go-karting as a nonmusical interest. “I’m not sure I’m thinking about who’s listening” was his refreshingly frank response to a question about how he interacts with the audience. It might not have helped his chances.
Candidates must write as well as speak. All were asked to supply their own program notes. Wang, an American, discusses rhythmic displacement in Schumann’s Toccata with considerable analytical precision. Park, a Korean, takes Habibi’s environmentalist agenda to heart. “From the very first fortissimo chord, the work seems to depict a world shaken at its foundations,” she writes.
Semifinal programs had to include music by a composer the competitor deemed underrepresented. For Johnson this bill was filled by the Polish avant-gardiste Hanna Kulenty, who stipulates that her AtlantissSolo is to be played “mechanically, without emotion.”
Both Pion and Vorotnaya satisfied the underrepresented requirement with the three-movement Sonata No. 2 in E Minor of Grażyna Bacewicz, 1909-69, another Pole, whose richly chromatic music is being reexamined. Pion followed the Bacewicz with Sept mers éparses, a piece of her own.
Of course, all the semifinalists were required to play the Habibi piece, a newly-written eight-minute rhapsody on the popular subject of climate catastrophe. His objective was not to produce a knuckle-buster.
“This is technically challenging, don’t get me wrong,” he says in an online interview, “but I didn’t want to make it frustratingly challenging…
“I wanted to give the competitors a musical challenge. It’s like a puzzle…You have a lot of choices as to what voices you can bring out, what leads to what.”
It has not gone unnoticed that the Honens intersected with the Chopin competition, an event that attracts tens of thousands of online viewers from around the world.
Another competitive source of interest, not least in Canada, is the Major League Baseball postseason.
Wang, a baseball enthusiast, planned to find time in the midst of the competition to watch a few highlight reels. “I’m a Boston fan,” he said, “but I’m happy to root for Toronto because you guys beat the Yankees.”
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