A good weekend for Canadians.
Yes, the Blue Jays managed only one victory in the Rogers Centre. But Élisabeth Pion, 29, a native of Saint-Hyacinthe, Québec, won Gold in the Calgary-based Honens International Piano Competition, while fellow Canadian Carter Johnson, also 29, from Campbell River B.C., took Silver.
Bronze honours went to Anastasia Vorotnaya, 30, who was born in the central Russian city of Togliatti. Vorotnaya also captured the award for best performance of the commissioned work, Fracture, by the Iranian-Canadian composer Iman Habibi. Pion won the Audience Choice Award.
The prizes ($100,000 for Gold, $40,000 for Silver, $20,000 for Bronze and $5,000 for Commissioned Work and Audience Choice) were announced late Friday (early Saturday Eastern Time) after a hard-to-rank sequence of solid performances with the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra in the Jack Singer Concert Hall. All were live-streamed and can be found on the Honens YouTube channel here.
Everyone played well. Pion brought both high spirits and nocturnal atmosphere to Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 3. The Steinway she chose (among three available) sounded to me like a high-mileage model with less than optimal brilliance in the middle range.
Johnson started the evening with a powerful, industrial-strength treatment of the same composer’s Piano Concerto No. 2. The only demerit from my seat was his slowish interpretation of the Andantino indication of the opening.
Vorotnaya applied less sheer volume to Brahms’ four-movement Piano Concerto No. 2. There was ample compensating expression. CPO principal cello Arnold Choi offered a warm solo in the Andante movement. Elias Grandy, a German-Japanese conductor, successfully contoured the orchestra to each of the contestants.
The finalists (chosen from 10 semifinalists) had already made a credible case for their abilities as chamber musicians in a program of piano quintets on Thursday night, also in the Jack Singer Hall. Vorotnaya collaborated with the Isidore String Quartet in a heartfelt performance of Dvořák’s Op. 81. Rubato was ample but appropriate. The composer’s genial and melancholy moods were vividly captured.
Contestants were required to follow the quintet with a solo encore, introduced from the stage. Vorotnaya’s choice was the Earl Wild transcription of Rachmaninoff’s Georgian Song (as Op. 4 No. 4 is often called). Playing does not come much more supple than this. Right-hand arpeggios that could easily have sounded athletic and overwrought were exquisite.
Pion, who was first up, summoned a warm tone and generous legato in César Franck’s Op. 14, a work that is mostly about delivering smouldering passion at a steady tempo. The Isidore players recovered after a shaky start. Pion’s encore, the Egon Petri transcription of Bach’s Sheep May Safely Graze, successfully cleared the late-romantic air.
The dressy crowd clapped warmly for both Pion and Vorotnaya. There were big bravos for Johnson, an affable Canadian carrot-top whose many competition experiences include a finalist finish earlier this year in the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition.
Perhaps paradoxically given his extroverted stage manner, Johnson offered a restrained and shadowy Brahms Op. 34. His encore, Brahms’s seldom-heard Capriccio Op. 76 No. 8, brightened things up. But very much part of the performance was a spoken account of how he came to decide on this piece. The narrative drew much hearty laughter. I had Johnson pegged as the audience favourite.
The main business at Honens was to crown the new Gold laureate. Another priority on Wednesday was to give an opportunity to the 2022 winner, Illia Ovcharenko, to say farewell.
Calgarians heard some wonderful playing over eight days. Ovcharenko’s recital ranks high among the highlights. Prokofiev’s wartime Sixth Sonata was propulsive and melodious in equal parts and technically as secure as could be.
The Five Preludes Op. 44 of Ovcharenko’s fellow Ukrainian Boris Lyatoshinsky (1895 – 1968) were vividly done. Rubato was natural, colours rich. The last quality was especially remarkable given the unhelpful acoustics of the Heather Edwards Theatre and the so-so condition of this particular Steinway. A consummate pro, Ovcharenko made the best of the situation.
After this, in a somewhat more resonant subterranean gallery space called the Grotto, Sir Stephen Hough (who was styled as Honens mentor-in-residence) gave what we may presume was the Calgary premiere of Música callada — Music of Silence — by the Catalan miniaturist Frederic Mompou (1893-1987).
Many of the 28 short pieces making up this hourlong cycle are marked Lento. And how. The veteran British pianist (who used a tablet) is regarded as a Mompou authority, but his playing came across as noncommittal. Perhaps intentionally? Emotional detatchment seems to be what this music is about. At any rate, a knowledgable audience including contestants and judges rewarded Sir Stephen with cheers.
I managed polite applause.
The almost unrestricted semifinal recitals offered a glimpse of what pianists like to play, or at least what they think makes the best impression. Liszt was notable for his near-total absence. Schumann, Ravel and Scriabin were abundant. Haydn and Mozart were not. Only one sonata from each.
Beethoven was represented by two performances of the awe-inspiring Hammerklavier Sonata (by the serious-minded Chaeyoung Park and the strangely good-natured Derek Wang). Sandro Nebieridze offered a romanticized Sonata Op. 28 (“Pastorale”) and Elia Cecino partnered with the hardworking cellist Rachel Mercer (who performed with all the semifinalists) in the Sonata Op 69.
Not a strong showing for the most famous and admired of all composers. Honens artistic director Jon Kimura Parker (and former juror) speculates that teachers advise contestants to avoid Beethoven because judges tend to have firm ideas about how the music of the ultimate master should be played.
Honens attracted many competition professionals from abroad. Jacques Marquis, the Canadian CEO of the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, pointed out that Calgary and Fort Worth, Texas, have three things in common: cowboys, piano and rodeo. Not necessarily in that order?
“Not necessarily in that order.”
The Honens schedule began on October 15 with a neurorecital by the 2018 Honens laureate (and neuropsychology postgraduate student) Nicolas Namoradze, a pianist of Georgian birth and Hungarian upbringing who now lives in New York.
You read that right: neurorecital. Set in a planetarium, the event featured a “glass brain” visual rendering of Namoradze’s neural activity while he played selections by Bach, Beethoven, Debussy, Scriabin and Ravel.
You can get an idea what the sellout crowd experienced here.
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