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The William Kapell International Piano Competition and Festival 2007: Pointless Ramblings ThereonMonday, July 23: Finale: Rondo alla Competitiva I managed to do a reasonable job of summarizing what happened in the competition in the Post article, so this post will be all marginalia, plus a coda:
Tidbits from the Gulyak interview that didn't make it into the paper:
Coda: I would never have thought I would enjoy going out to a festival/competition dealie every day for two weeks so much, but I sure did. Props to CSPAC, the competitors, the performers/lecturers, the whole Terp community, and my little car (for not entirely buckling under the unexpected strain). Time for all of us to have a beer. The blog is now closed.
Sunday, July 22: Keep Rising to the Top The results are in! Sofya Gulyak won! But there will be so much more information about that in the Washington Post and on the blog tomorrow, so just hold tight until then. Yes, I'm being patronizing. It's for your own good. Today I'm going to write about some ways to possibly improve the competition, most of which appear, upon further inspection, to be facetious. I never would have expected such a thing from this blog, which has throughout the competition been a bastion of rectitude and prudence. Anyway: Have a reality TV show about the proceedings and make sure it has about a zillion catty remarks. I know that we have "behind the scenes" videos in which the competitors answer innocuous questions, and I am happy that CSPAC has seen fit to provide them to us. But there should also be competitors jockeying for position among their coevals, with quotes like the following:
Make the bios more interesting. Classical music bios are impossible to read in their entirety, because they are simply lists of who the musician has studied with, where the musician has played, what the musician has won, etc. Nothing in (for example) Alexi Gulenco's blog prepares you for the storms a-comin' when he sits down to play; nothing in the much more demure (as a pianist, anyway) Ti Xin's bio suggests that she plays any differently from Alexi Gulenco. The videos address this to some extent, but I'd like more info — and not only info on their artistic approaches, but also favorite foods, dream vacation destinations, astral sign, turn-ons and turn-offs, etc. Wait a minute. Brackets. The tricky thing would be doing the seeding. I suggest basing it on how many other competitions the young pianists have won, counting from their bios. The key thing: Once you have brackets, you can have Betting. And then you've reached out to the Santa Fe/Cornerstone crowd in addition to your regular CSPAC attendees. If the past 10 years of American culture have taught us anything, it's that young people will take an unhealthy interest in anything they can bet on. We can persuade Governor O'Malley to legalize and tax it as kind of a toe in the water for slot machines. (Hey, there's four years until the next competition — slots might even become politically viable by that time!) Don't involve C.D. "Dan" Mote Jr. in the competition in any way at all. He was on stage on Saturday to help present the prizes for some reason. Everyone else may have forgotten, but I saw him fall asleep during the faculty/staff concert in Dekelboum the night before the formal CSPAC dedication in 2001. Just snoozing away in his little box. Plus he called the Maryland Cow Nipple an example of the demon of insensitivity that plagued the campus back in 2000, when he said it. I never forget anything. Identify the finalists prior to the competition so that I can make sure to attend at least one of their preliminary and semifinal rounds. If I had known Sara Daneshpour was going to be a finalist, I surely would have taken appropriate leave from work in order to hear one of her earlier performances. Actually, if they had identified her as a finalist back in 2005 or so, I could have seen her around town a couple times before that. There are a bunch of efficiency gains to be realized here. • I also wanted to touch on a few issues that were treated in a somewhat haphazard fashion earlier in the blog (perish the thought!): I was sad earlier that Akiko Tominaga didn't make it through to the semifinals both because she played the Dutilleux sonata, for which I will love her forever, and because she had one outstanding skill — her command of pianistic tone color — that I had hoped could be recognized somehow. It seems like it would be easier to build up the rest of one's skills around a central pillar of skill, or that Tominaga could just go through life playing Dutilleux and Scriabin and people like that where tone color matters. She definitely did not do as well in the preliminaries as three other people I heard, and she definitely didn't sound as good as the semifinalists I heard, either. But to say "you entered the competition and lost, go home" is a tough beat for someone who has a core skill like that mastered to such a degree. I guess this is part of the deal with having a competition. Anyway, if she makes a recording of the Dutilleux sonata, I'll buy it. The other tough thing about the competition is simply saying that one person is better than another, at least to the degree necessary to put one person in the semis or in the finals. Santiago Rodriguez expressed some frustration last night about the idea of even comparing two different artists along some made-up scalar axis. (Yes, I had a quickie interview with Santiago Rodriguez last night. And with Sofya Gulyak. Read the Post tomorrow!) It's hard to compare artists who play the same instrument but whose gifts show up in different areas, but it's even harder to compare them when they choose vastly different ways to employ those gifts, even for the same pieces of music. The record will show that I categorically disagree with Alexi Gulenco's interpretation of the Bach/Busoni Chaconne, but the very fact that I am thinking about it eight days after I heard it means that it struck a chord (so to speak). I've never heard anything like it. And it wasn't an incoherent interpretation, as far as that goes; Gulenco had apparently thought about how to approach the piece and was doing exactly what he wanted to do. If Spencer Myer approached the Rachpsody a little differently than I wished he would have approached it, that doesn't make him wrong; his reading had integrity along the lines he had chosen. There certainly exist lines that should not be crossed in terms of interpretation, but most of the time I'm willing to draw them way far away from the prototype. And so where does that leave us — balancing one pianist's golden tone against another's sparkling articulation, one's smooth, balanced reading against another's roughness and energy, one's feeling for structure against another's ability to get swept up in the moment? It's impossible. Almost everyone I heard play showed something worth hearing. Some folks showed more things than others. But to distinguish between them at the top level is an exercise in trying to compare displacement along axis after axis when you know none of the axes will ever line up. In reality, you want everything: you want to hear all the different things people can do, all the different ways to approach works, all the different ways to hear them. That's the way to get deep into music, at least as far as I'm concerned, and trying to compress all these axes into one point is inevitably both an exercise in futility and counterproductive, in a sense. Nontheless, Sofya Gulyak won the competition fair and square. Read all about it tomorrow!
Saturday, July 21: So Many Things About Which Updates Should Probably Be Provided After Anne-Marie McDermott's performance of Haydn sonatas on Thursday, she had a discussion on Friday morning with moderator Robert Sherman. During this discussion, she discussed some reviews she had received and the feeling of intense dread she got upon reading certain headlines. Sherman helpfully informed her that the reviewers typically do not actually write their own headlines. Besides helping her to learn something about the newspaper industry, this discussion also probably helped to moderate her dismay upon seeing the headline to this review I wrote of her concert. Ahem. I wish I had written the review in a more impressive fashion. Or something. Here's what I hoped to convey:
Upon further reflection, it appears that I did actually manage to convey these sentiments. Somehow their expression seems inadequate, though. I wish I had a big bell I could toll while the readers take in my thoughts. Or just a scissors to cut out the extra "e" in the review's headline. Either way. Jazzmen also came to CSPAC on Friday for the annual exploration of the American music that was much more successful than classical here. (If Copland is really our best composer, we struck out swinging. Let's just admit it.) Steven Mayer, of course, is not solely a jazzman, as his CDs of Ives and Liszt will attest, but his ridiculous technique allows him to essay both Horowitz's personal transcription of Liszt's "Rakoczy March" and transcriptions of Art Tatum's piano solos. (During the former, I almost felt that I would be bodily swept up and carried to the rafters of the Kogod Theatre from the sheer force of the sound coming from the piano.) Mayer's performances of Tatum made one appreciate all the more how astonishing was the ease with which Tatum played his stuff; after all, if Mayer can play that Horowitz thing at all, he's got better technique than most classical pianists period, and he still has to labor at getting all of Tatum's notes. Mayer paid Tatum appropriate obeisance as he explained the various influences afoot in his music, including a guest spot from Nathan Bello playing Fats Waller piano-roll transcriptions with precision that would have been more astonishing had he not been sharing the stage with Mayer. I'm pretty sure the CSPAC folks could sell out a Mayer/Bello performance/lecture in the Gildenhorn, doing a slightly expanded version of their hour-and-a-half event on Friday, with no trouble whatsoever. It was one of the more awesome things I've seen at CSPAC, and I've seen a lot of things there. And to top that, Ahmad Jamal played with his trio in the Kay Theatre on Friday evening. I wasn't reviewing, so I lack a set list, which is only noteworthy because of how incredibly little Jamal talks from stage — he just assumed everyone knew "Poinciana," for example, and didn't bother announcing it. (Of course, given his audience, he was about half-right in his assumption — they even applauded the intro when they heard the chords.) It's always a pleasure to experience the piano as played by a master who can make it do anything he wants, in whatever genre, and Jamal certainly qualifies for such a designation. (Unlike McCoy Tyner, whose performance at the Kapell in 2003 was both overblown and boring, as he pointlessly larded everything with virtuoso flourishes without bothering to take fresh approaches to the material. Ahem.) On Friday we even got some new repertoire, as Jamal played something called something like "Nighttime in Paris" (reminder: I wasn't reviewing), which featured sections of chords driving deep into bass contrasted with more conventionally nocturnish (yet still surpassingly imaginative) episodes. It was filled with intriguing shadows into which the music could either delve or disappear, and Jamal and crew took their time exploring both options. "Poinciana" sparkled in the event. The standards (a couple) were impeccably judged, as Jamal played with heartbreakingly beautiful tone and decorous elaborations; the originals traveled far afield, to a land where it doesn't really matter whether the genre you're in is jazz or classical or some hybrid. This has been a hell of a feast, these past two weeks. We get the dessert tonight. Everyone who has talked to me about Sara Daneshpour has nothing but good stuff to say. Gulyak and Myer already impressed me greatly. Who knows what'll happen. Tomorrow: Some cleanup of outstanding issues and my suggestions for improving the Kapell for 2011.
Friday, July 20: I've Run Out of Glass-Related Puns Here's a review of the Philip Glass concert from Wednesday, which has one fairly gigantic glass-related pun. Marginalia:
Wednesday, July 18: The Actual Finalists
Well, one out of three ain't bad. (Addition: Also, they'd better switch the order of Gulyak and Myer if they want a sittable first half of the program.)
Wednesday, July 18: Chamber of Horrors The right biceps and triceps of violinist David Salness and cellist Evelyn Elsing deserve about a gallon of VapoRub and a bucket of aspirin after the chamber rounds that took place yesterday and today — five trios in four hours in the first round, four trios in a row in the second. Despite the load on them, in the first chamber round (the only one I attended), they played attentively, eloquently and energetically throughout. In fact, they showed much bettter stamina playing than I did sitting on my behind in the audience listening. You hear David and Evelyn a lot if you hang around Maryland, as I have, but every single time I see them I expect to hear something good, and they almost always satisfy. With the exception of Kana Mimaki, the pianists on Tuesday did not do as well as Salness and Elsing. Mimaki's performance of the Dvorak F minor trio sounded like an actual trio performance, where the three felt comfortable enough with each other to take risks and paid enough attention to each other to make them pay off. Mimaki displayed an instinctive grasp of the Dvorak idiom, even in this most Brahmsian of his trios; the "Allegro grazioso" second movement sparkled, the dark lyricism of the opening movement and the finale simmered before boiling into broad strokes of passionate lyricism, and the Poco adagio was touching. I'd heard a lot of praise for Mimaki from my fellow attendees — well, specifically, I'd heard praise for "that Japanese girl," which I presume is because to Western ears you can accidentally transpose almost any of the syllables in "Kana Mimaki" and come out with a name that still sounds plausible. Anyway, I was happy that she lived up to her billing. To provide the maximum amount of contrast, Alexi Gulenco also played the Dvorak F minor trio, and he showed almost no fellow-feeling with Salness and Elsing. The Maryland string faculty actually played much differently than they had for Mimaki, more boldly and forcefully, supporting his predictably tempestuous interpretation. But Gulenco broke into concerto-soloist mode too often, producing ugly slips of ensemble. He insisted on a plodding tempo that removed any hint of graciousness from the opening of the second movement. And he continued to mis-hit some notes pretty badly. He also had a couple serious lapses of chamber etiquette, nodding repeatedly at Elsing to begin the fourth movement when it was clear she was still checking her tuning and striding off and on stage before Elsing, who is supposed to come first because she is a woman. These lapses were, sadly, of a piece with the playing. The other good performance came from Grace Eun Hae Kim, who is indeed nice-looking, just like her publicity photo. She played the Brahms C minor trio with D&E, and the group took the light, shifty, tricky scherzo with considerable aplomb for people who had just been practicing together for a tiny little while. Kim also really roughed up the first movement, which is what we all secretly want with those driving sets of four chords that build to those shrieking rhetorical statements. "Get mad, Brahms!" we say. Or maybe that's just me. This was the only time I'd seen her play, but the quality would not be incompatible with her being a finalist, I think. Vadimas Chaimovicius enlisted Salness and Elsing to deliver an impeccably crafted and extremely boring account of Beethoven's "Archduke" trio, which, for a piece with all those great tunes, is surprisingly difficult to bring off if you are taking almost no apparent risks at all. That long scherzo, for example, demands a kind of wit where (I would imagine) you almost have to know the people you're playing with well enough to push each other a little bit, to give it just the slightest subliminal goosing. Anyway, it didn't come off here. Ti Xin (who according to the online poll on the front page can also be called "Cindy" for ease of Western pronunciation) had another neat dress, though not as cool as the spiderweb thing from Saturday. In the Mendelssohn C minor trio, she delivered another well-molded, thorough performance that nevertheless didn't quite lift off or break out of that well-molded sound; it was easy for D&E to keep up, one supposes, because it went so danged smoothly. With the Philip Glass concert tonight, we come to the part of the festival when I will begin attending things but writing up my thoughts for the Post, which pays me, rather than the Spam-O-Matic, which doesn't. But I will provide "marginalia" on the blog, in keeping with the Spam-O-Matic definition of marginalia as "anything that doesn't fit into the review." There won't be a blog entry tomorrow anyway, since I'll be out the whole evening. Tonight the finalists are announced. Here are my druthers: Spencer Myer Kana Mimaki Aleyson Scopel Then we could have a program of Ravel, Tchaikovsky, and Beethoven 4, which would be awesome. I'm much less sure about Scopel than I am about the other two, though. And the poll on the CSPAC Web site right now has Grace Eun Hae Kim and Sofya Gulyak 1-2, with Scopel and Gulenco tied for third, so who knows. Actually, I didn't get to see Sara Daneshpour, so she'll probably be the third one. We'll see! 7:45 pm tonite!
Monday, July 16: Saturday's Triptych of Felt-Hammer Action!!! The semifinalists who performed on Saturday, taken as a whole, presented two lessons: It's easier to tell good from great pianism when both are in the house, and most of the time you want to hear both sides of the stylistic coin. Unfortunately for her, Ti Xin served as the "good pianism" specimen in that first lesson. It is totally not that she is untalented — she does a bunch of things really, really well. For example, when she played the first two movements of Beethoven's "Emperor" concerto, she managed the various virtuosic figures that give the concerto its epic sweep so that they sounded almost like one unbroken melodic line, from start to finish. She phrased with a divine cleanness, and even her interpretive hesitations sounded balletic, like someone on tiptoes making you wait just a delicious moment before putting her foot down. In her Scarlatti sonata (K. 322, A major), she showed a gorgeous touch. Both Debussy's "Feux d'artifice" prelude and Wang Jiam Zhong's "Glowing Red Morningstar Lilies" depend for their effect on fast, note-heavy passages coming off with a luminous lightness, and Xin was able to supply this. But, as one of my seat-neighbors noted (and I really hadn't thought of this before she mentioned it), while Xin's tone was gorgeous throughout, it was a little too gorgeous and a lot too unvaried to make the most of, for example, Brahms' "Variations on a Theme of Paganini." The Robert Palmer "Toccata Ostinato," Xin's chosen piece from the required Americana, had absolutely no audible boogie-woogie influence; if she couldn't bring that off, she should have tried the Copland. Though the sheer melodic control in the Beethoven left me pretty rapt, there wasn't much new or interesting in the performance beyond that (admittedly intoxicating) refinement. And she was mis-hitting a lot of notes. On the semi-extraneous plus side, Ti Xin is way better-looking than her publicity photo might lead you to conclude. She was pretty stunning Saturday in a low-backed black dress with some kind of spiderweb pattern on the front and her raven tresses pulled back in a shiny ponytail. Neither of the two gentlemen who played Saturday looked that much better than their publicity photos, I can tell you that. Alexi Gulenco, for example, had traded in his cool leather jacket and clean-shaven jaw for a tempestuous-looking beard and an all-black ensemble. The combo said "I am not for the faint of heart," and he put everything on the table on Saturday. Three of the "Miroirs" even made me quit disliking Ravel's piano music for a bit, with a welcome hint of roughness slightly attenuating the numbing effect of Ravel's waterfalls of notes. Franz Lizst's "La lugubre gondola no. 2" got both some interesting tone colors and a heaping helping of Lizstian swagger. Neither of these could have prepared anyone for the Bach/Busoni Chaconne that was to come, though. I am fairly confident in saying that you, the reader, have never heard anything like it either. Wildly eccentric tempi, within variations and even within phrases! Phrasing that made almost no concession to the piece's origin as Baroque music! Just straight bangin' the piano to death at certain points! (And some bad, bad mis-hits, including one howler in the very first chord of the return of the minor mode!) It was as if the piece had been listed as the bach/BUSONI Chaconne in the program - all Romantic sighs and storms, none of the Baroque curlicues or moderation or anything. You wouldn't want Gulenco's to be your only recording of the piece, but hearing it expanded your conception of what the piece could be, which is part of what we come to the concert hall to experience. When Gulenco melded that temperament to a piece that rewards it wholeheartedly — Rachmaninov's Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini — the result was straight fire. Colette Valentine did fine work making a second piano impersonate the orchestra for all three concertos, but she had to work double-time to even stay with Gulenco, who set a ridiculously fast tempo from the opening bar and rarely relaxed it afterward. He made a big, bold, brash, exciting noise as he slammed his way through the rugged variations; he quicksilvered his way up and down the keyboard when asked to figurate; but in the great 18th variation, the stuff of public-domain romance everywhere, he slowed it down enough for the desperation and the joy in the climb of the melody to register equally. I'd pay $40 right now to see him perform the Rhapsody with a full orchestra, even if the rest of the program was TBA. (And that's coming from a music critic - I'm s'posed to get my stuff for free!) But I wouldn't put him in the finals over Aleyson Scopel. And that's not just because Scopel is better-looking! You could hear the difference between the two pianists in the second movement of the Copland sonata, which both chose as their required piece. Gulenco barnstomed his way through the opening moments, but seemed relatively lost when the music got quieter and trickier; Scopel kept more of a lid on things at the beginning and, when called upon to navigate the treacherous parts, made them fun and stylish, the highlight of the piece rather than a dead spot. Like Xin, he played a Scarlatti sonata, but his (K. 247, in C-sharp minor) not only had a fine tone but also sparkled with a gentle wit. He rumbled through Hector Villa-Lobos' "O Boizinho de Chumbo" without making it seem special, and his Beethoven sonata movement (from No. 7) was nice but also a bit indistinct. But his selection of Debussy preludes burst with color, and he transported the audience with the Brahms Fantasiestucke (Op. 119), marrying a spine-tinglingly lovely tone to unerring lyrical instincts. And as spectacular as Gulenco's Rhapsody was, Scopel's first two movements of Beethoven's fourth piano concerto excelled it — dazzling articulation, a glorious wellspring of melodic poetry, phrasing decisions that all fit with each other and felt unexpected and yet absolutely correct. The cadenza of the first movement soared; the Orpheus drama of the second, as the soloist tries to tame the orchestra, felt like something huge hinged on every note. Gulenco made you leap out of your seat at the end of the show, but Scopel gave you something to think about as the evening wore on. In the real world, you want to hear both; in the competition world, I'd happily take Scopel. Wow! 1100 words about three people! I guess that's what happens when I don't edit myself! Tuesday brings hopefully the entire chamber round (assuming I can get out of work). If I can sneak over to CSPAC late on Wednesday, maybe I can catch Sara Daneshpour's trio, meaning I would have seen every one of nine the semifinalists at least playing something. I will just have to see how cavalier my attitude towards skipping work turns out to be. There's a lot of festival and competition to come, and all I can say right now is: Let's go, baybee!
Saturday, July 14: Amateur Hour-and-a-Half, Full of Awesomeness On Thursday night the Gildenhorn Recital Hall hosted Garrick Ohlsson, Certified Famous Pianist, who played his program so well that the audience called him out for two encores and would have happily sat for more if he'd had any more prepped. While playing the first of these encores, Chopin's A-flat waltz (Op. 42), his fingers ran up the keyboard for a top note that just didn't come; something else got hit; his face fell. He broke it off, ran it up right, and continued on, drawing laughter from the audience. The rest sounded as fluent as the rest of the concert had. And when Ohlsson came back out for the second encore, he appealed to the crowd: "Don't you hate it when that happens?" Sitting at the keyboard again, he continued: "And in this company! It's worse than doing it at Carnegie Hall!" Then he broke us off a perfectly proportioned, gloriously graceful finale to the Mozart K. 330 sonata. On Friday night, the Gildenhorn hosted a bunch of amateurs, none of whom screwed up quite as badly as Garrick Ohlsson. This was the first-ever Open Piano Night, at which 15 people could sign up to play 5 minutes on a nine-foot Steinway grand. The Clarice Smith Center didn't really know what would happen; in the event, talented adult amateurs took the stage along with high-school (and a couple middle-school) kids, and the vibe was more lively and appreciative than it's been at a bunch of concerts I've attended that featured more conventionally distinguished pianists. Expertly emceed by laid-back jazzman Brian Linde, the concert featured both a bunch of pianists from Bowie and Upper Marlboro (I think there's something in the water) and a few performances that would have been worth paying a few bucks to hear. Quentin Harrell, a 12-year-old from Bowie, gave a performance of a Grieg nocturne that found the full measure of its poetry with a minimum of fuss; if you closed your eyes, you could imagine a 50-year-old playing those notes. The Latin tinge got its due with a slick, engaging performance by 14-year-old Andrew Gordon (from the City of Crofton) of Granados' Spanish Dance no. 7 and Owen Adams' ferociously percussive performance of the first movement of Ginastera's Sonata Op. 22 No. 1, a piece where ferocious percussiveness is exactly what you want. This young man, 17 and also from Bowie, has apparently won 21 competitions and completed over 200 compositions. (Linde gently encouraged him and the other composer-pianists to bring their original stuff next time.) Some other competition winners sat down to the bench as well; Samuel Barham, all of 16, dropped a mostly engaging rendition of Chopin's Fantasie-Impromptu. The brothers David and Daniel Hampton both played relatively simple pieces, Tchaikovsky's "In Church" and Pachelbel's "Fughetta," with impeccable poise; the Orthodox harmonies in the Tchaikovsky sounded especially warm and inviting in David's hands. Mia Giles, 12 years old and part of the Upper Marlboro contingent, gets the Most Innnovative Repertoire Mini-Award for playing Stevie Wonder's "Ribbon in the Sky" and doing it pretty well. We even had one guy who brought records — Tim Neumark, whose CD is available here. Sadly, even he did not play an original composition, instead essaying his own transcription of the music from those horrible diamonds commercials that imply that the best way to show love for your woman or yourself is to purchase an attractively shaped piece of translucent compressed carbon. The only way Open Piano Night could have been better is if the composers had played their own compositions! But, according to the Smith Center powers-that-be, there may well be a next time to try it again. Garrick Ohlsson's concert could have been better if he had played less Chopin. Or at least I thought so. I don't go to Chopin-heavy concerts too much anymore because I get really pissy when people don't do authentic Chopin-style rubato, where the left hand is generally at tempo and the right hand hesitates and accelerates above. (I get all my best musicialogical information from GeoCities — don't you?) This is actually a lot more like jazz than the current method of hesitating and accelerating with both hands, which for some reason just annoys me to no end. I wouldn't call Ohlsson an unsubtle or unpoetic pianist, but he seems to be better-suited to things that move straight ahead and that he can dispatch with his monstrous technique and clear-headed interpretation. When he played Chopin for the entire second half, it made me absolutely desperate for a little muddling and ambiguity. The first half, on the other hand, bowled me over. Ohlsson depoyed a real simple, real effective programming maneuver that's too obvious for most pianists to try: a Handel keyboard suite (F major, HWV 427) followed by the Brahms Variations on a theme by Handel. Ohlsson used a little discreet pedal in the Handel original, but mostly unspooled the suite with the clarity it would have had on the harpsichord; at times, it almost seemed to be playing itself, so unfussy was the performance, but the numerous small judgments required to make the music sound so unfussy were unerring and produced a breath-taking lyrical beauty in the slow parts of the suite. A really fine live performance of the Brahms Handel Variations almost always makes me feel as if I have taken some sort of powerful drug by the work's end - the unified B-flat tonality seems to focus my mind in some sort of groove, and then the fugue lifts off irresistibly with that four-note ascending figure, then the pause, then the same figure a lil' higher, then the denouement of the theme... You can see I'm having a flashback. Ohlsson has the full measure of this work, and he delivered an overwhelming performance, reveling in the detail of the counterpoint, the rugged rhythms, and the ultimate takeoff. The piece is a feast for piano lovers, and Ohlsson was the best possible chef. Today: Three semifinalists, including apparent superhunk Aleyson Scopel! Oh boy!
Thursday, July 12: And Then There Were Nine Here are the semifinalists. I am not particularly surprised that Juo didn't make it, because last night I saw two people who way outclassed him and who did make the finals. (There were 25 competitors and nine semifinal berths; I saw six total competitors, so it's statistically probable that only two would make the finals.) First was Spencer Myer, who did the Bach/Petri "Sheep May Safely Graze," the first movement of Beethoven's "Tempest" sonata, a couple Debussy preludes, and the third and fourth movements of the Samuel Barber sonata that won him second prize in the Most Innovative Repertoire contest below. This is diverse repertoire, but each piece partook of some common virtues of Myer's playing: He thinks through what he plays without fussing over it. He can handle virtuoso stuff without popping his virtuosity in your face. Wherever there's a temptation to go over the top, he resists, and his playing has more cumulative effect because of it. The pauses in the opening statement of the "Tempest" movement were daringly long, but he made it work with an impeccable sense of the underlying rhythm and the gorgeous playing of the notes he did sound. The Debussy preludes glistened and shimmered as they should, and the Barber felt gloriously American, rugged and lyrical and full o' momentum. He managed a series of huge chords at the climax in the finale of the Barber with impeccable control; he also effortlessly distilled the lyricism of the third movement. Listening to Sofya Gulyak was like sitting in a small room into which a firecracker has been thrown. She played Clementi, Shostakovich, Lizst and Ravel, four composers who have in common that they wrote pieces with a lot of notes in them that Gulyak played. This made her the probable notes-per-minute champion of the prelims, especially since she played them really really fast, dazzlingly so, and with articulation clear as a bell and tone that never wandered into clatteriness or grayness. The Shostakovich fugue was probably too fast, in fact - I can't imagine how mortal mind could follow the musical argument - but it was fun as hell to ride the tidal wave of music Gulyak produced. She swaggered through the first movement of her Clementi sonata with the kind of panache that almost feels like a fourth physical force, and if her "La campanella" didn't make your jaw drop, you must be jawless. I have to admit that I find "La valse" incredibly tiresome (I get it, the days of the waltz and all the gentility and prosperity it represents are over, please end this piece at least five minutes earlier), but Gulyak's rendition held my attention for sure. Alexander Orlov had a bad night, missing notes, slurring others inappropriately, playing his Chopin with no rubato whatsoever and pedalling sloppily (as one of my audience cohort pointed out). I wonder about Orlov and Wen-Yun Chan - they obviously have some talent, but they just fell down on stage. It's rough to think that you might come to the CP from overseas and get a stomachache or a cold or something and have to go out shellshocked from the jet lag and illness, and then have a bunch of audience people shaking their heads at you as you screw up and have to go home. I feel bad for them. But I'm equally glad they didn't advance. I'll miss Akiko Tominaga. What she did right, she did really right, but she took a while to get going and she didn't do everything well. I hope she wanders around the world playing the Dutilleux, and I hope that I get to hear her do it. Still alive: Besides Myer and Gulyak, the semifinalists include local girl, Billy Joel ensemble player and potential hottie Sara Daneshpour; gorgeous hunk o' man Aleyson Scopel; additional potential hottie Grace Eun Hae Kim; and Maryland student and additional potential hottie Alexi Gulenco. We have a nice roster of good-looking folks according to their publicity photos. I hope I get to see a bunch of them in action.
Tuesday, July 10: The First Three I Saw Akiko Tominaga: is a pianist who I was walking in front of as I made my way to my car after the preliminary rounds had ended. She was conversing with (apparently) her host for the competition, chatting about the day's events. She described the Henri Dutilleux sonata, of which she played the third movement during her preliminary rounds, as "a French piece," completely omitting the facts that (a) it kicks ass and (b) she kicked ass playing it. The third movement specifically begins with these "Great Gate of Kiev"-esque chords that then evolve ever so gradually into a quicksilver dervish ride and then to a slow, ecstatic part and then back to the ride and then back to the Great Gate. Tominaga started out a little cautious but the gearteeth soon caught, and she gave a wonderful performance, alive with pianistic color and an instinctive feel for Dutilleux's quirky sense of melody, rigorously structured yet seemingly spontaneous throughout. This was the single best performance I heard this evening. She also played part of Schumann's Davidsbundlertanze (which I think doesn't translate as David's Bundle of Dances), and showed herself to be a fine Schumannian, transitioning easily between Florestan and Euseubius and never letting either get too out of control. The middle piece she played, the fourth movement of Beethoven's second sonata, was kind of a hash; she used a lot more marcato in the middle section than seemed absolutely necessary, and she couldn't quite figure out how to do the flourish that opens the main theme and ended up doing it about five different ways. But still: Dutilleux! Wen-Yun Chan: Tominaga said that she thought Ms. Chan had done really well. I respectfully disagree. The first two movements of the Mozart sonata K. 281 were overpedaled and over-forte'd in an attempt to make this piece of juvenalia into some kind of Beethoven forerunner, which it decidedly ain't. Ravel's Alborada del grazioso certainly displayed her ample virtuoso credentials, but left me extremely bored in the process, and Chopin's Impromptu no. 3 was commanding in all the wrong ways, with middle voices going untended. Prokofiev's second sonata perked her up, though, as in its second movement she finally found something muscular enough to stand up to her technique, giving it the rough humor it needs. Jie Luo: Built like a linebacker, Luo has a lot more physical power than the two slight women who preceded him, and he used all of it in dredging volcanic explosions of sound from the piano. Mind you, he never clattered or made an ugly noise; it was just huge. This capability wasn't so obvious in the Bach Toccata in C minor, where he made the counterpoint fresh and clean and got his momentum going based on the theme chasing itself through the voices. But in the second and third movements of Beethoven's Waldstein sonata, his ringing tones helped him emphasize the violent contrasts so important to ol' Ludwig's compositional language. He still had an exceedingly tender way with the main melody of the finale, which made it all the better. The first movement of the Chopin B-flat minor sonata was probably a little too big, in fact, although very exciting nonetheless. For tonight, you've got to take Luo over Tominaga, although still, the Dutilleux. Tomorrow, we'll see what happens. I'll end up seeing a third of the prelims, which means that if averages hold out, two people I see should make it to the semis. They'll have to work to beat Luo and Tominaga.
Monday, July 9: Scouting Report This blog will provide occasional content regarding the Kapell International Piano Competition & Festival. (Notice the strategic use of the word "occasional." Like, just now can be an occasion.) Today we will do a quick rundown of the competitors as they fall along certain important axes. Way more detailed info about the competitors is available here, including a bunch of recordings of them here, which will probably be more enlightening than what I am about to type. Most Innovative Repertoire Competitors got bonus points here for including works by composers whose names I have never heard before and by composers for whom I sound an incessant drumbeat. First prize: Sandro Russo. Taneyev! Georges Cziffra, for the pure virtuoso showoffiness of it all! Even something by Marc-Andre Hamelin, whose works I don't like all that much but - he's alive! He also plays the conflated version of the Rachmaninov second sonata, which should be interesting to celebrated Rachmaninov pianist Santiago Rodriguez, the head of the jury. Second prize: Spencer Myer. Nikolai Mednter + the Barber sonata = place, even if the concertos are pretty standard. Third prize: Akiko Tominaga. She has the entire Henri Dutilleux sonata! That's about all she needs for this award, which is good, because the rest isn't making my pulse race with its strangeness. Note: For some reason, five people have prepared the Cesar Franck "Prelude, Chorale et Fugue." If they all have to play it during one batch of preliminaries, that could be a long thing. It's very impressive if you do it correctly, yet so easy to screw up. I hope at least one of them has experimented with giving the fugal subject a little rhythmic lift rather than slouching it into fin-de-siecle romantic morass. (Please?) Also, two people did the same piece by Toru Takemitsu, so they cancel each other out. Most Interesting Biography: Ryan MacEvoy McCullough's bio actually explains something about his musical background, rather than just running down a list of his teachers, the venues he's played at, etc. Runner-up: Sara Daneshpour apparently has played with Billy Joel for some reason. Bet she schooled him. Note: About half of the competitors appear (through my incredibly advanced scientific method of perusing the bios and looking for names like "Han-Chien Lee") to be of Asian ancestry. I am just noting this. I think next up is Eastern European/Russian, with four of the 25. Hottest, based on their publicity photos (Note: I know hotness has nothing to do with playing the piano. But it does have to do with the audience's enjoyment of watching people play the piano. So deal): Women: Young-Im Choi (what a smile!) Runners-up: Sara Daneshpour, Anastasya Terenkova, Grace Eun Hae Kim Men: Aleyson Scopel Runner-up: Jose Menor, Sandro Russo, Alexi Gulenco Local ties: Sara Daneshpour was born in D.C., baybee! Take me out to the go-go! And Alexi Gulenco has the good taste to be getting his degree under Larissa Dedova, i.e., at Maryland. So based on having her name mentioned more times than anyone else in this completely arbitrary assemblage of categories, Sara Daneshpour has to be the early favorite in this gladiatorial combat of ivory tinklers. Yet who will emerge from the scrum victorious, clutching a score and thrusting it into the air, with the strings of the piano still vibrating in awe of how they have been played, and in fear that they may never be played this way again? We cannot yet know. But preliminaries start tomorrow.
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