Three finalists take impressive last shots in Cliburn Competition
It was “Last call, gentlemen!” Friday night for three of the six finalists in the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, as that event neared its conclusion with the penultimate concerto night of its Final Round. The first all-male group of Cliburn finalists since 1993 was about to take its last shot after an intensive two-and-a-half weeks of performances.
While their three competitors waited their turn on Saturday afternoon, two American pianists and one from Hong Kong, China, made their bids for Cliburn medals with impressive performances of concertos by Beethoven, Rachmaninoff and Brahms. As always in this round, the pianists were partnered by the hard-working Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Marin Alsop.
Although the contestants are being judged on their entire output of performances during the event, the Final Round always has the feeling of a competition within the Competition, as Fort Worth citizens and visitors from around the globe pack into the Bass Performance Hall for three nights and an afternoon to hear the concertos, two from each finalist.
By Friday, even concertgoers who hadn’t been tracking the competition’s earlier stages had formed impressions of the finalists, based on concerto performances earlier in the week. What new sides of themselves would they reveal? What defects might they have cured since Tuesday?
American Evren Ozel, 26, for example, performing Beethoven’s Concerto No. 4 in G major, faced a double comparison: to Angel Stanislav Wang’s compelling performance of the same piece Tuesday night, and to his own businesslike rendering of Tchaikovsky’s Concerto No. 1, which captured little of that composer’s passionate personality.
The G major is considered the most poetic and inward-looking of Beethoven’s concertos, possibly of all concertos. The reticence that hampered Ozel’s Tchaikovsky found a happy home here, in the most introspective rendering of this concerto this reviewer has ever heard. Glowing legato chords and scales, color shifts like the sun going in and out of clouds, and a marked preference for soft and softer dynamic levels had listeners leaning forward, lest they miss a beautiful detail. Cliburn audiences so far have been very disciplined about not clapping between movements, but such was the spell Ozel cast with this first movement that when it ended the audience burst into spontaneous applause. Alsop on the podium couldn’t suppress a smile.
But Ozel’s tenderness and introspection almost sank the second movement, famously characterized as a dialogue between Orpheus and the Furies. Its sensitive phrases rarely rising above pianissimo, the piano Orpheus never really confronted the angry strings, but drifted to an even softer conclusion.
Alsop tiptoed in with the finale’s jaunty theme, as indicated by Beethoven, but then the pianist unexpectedly did likewise. After all this pianissimo, the orchestra’s forte entrance was as jolting as a thunderclap. There was plenty of fun and dancing to be had in this finale, of course, but this performance’s overall aesthetic spread a warmth over everything. Fast passagework glowed rather than sparkled, and the resemblance of the legato second theme to Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” never seemed more evident, or appropriate.
After so much delicacy and mellow atmosphere, Wang’s plunking out the opening theme of Rachmaninoff’s Concerto No. 3 in D minor sounded positively blatant. There was uncertainty about rhythm and tempo in both piano and orchestra, and the American 22-year-old looked a little stiff physically (nerves, perhaps?), which caused his tone to go hard and brittle, and monochromatic in both loud and soft passages.
The same problem inhibited the emotional surges of the second movement, starting with the piano’s sweeping first entrance, which sounded like pouring bolts in a bucket, and preventing a true leggiero in the fizzy waltz interlude.
A fast, brilliant finale has rescued many a problematic performance, but how about a finale from another planet? Inhibitions and tempo uncertainty suddenly forgotten, Wang took the last movement at a bracing pace and strictly in time, generating a thrilling momentum that drove all before it. He even took one of the traditional (but still controversial) cuts in this movement, presumably so as not to sap its forward energy. Finding the springy, flexible technique that had eluded him before, he danced a witty scherzando and rang out the climactic “big tune” in rich chords.
Wang’s powerful, right-in-time coda brought the audience instantly to its feet. Now one could only wonder what about this performance would linger in the judges’ minds: the brittle, single-color first two movements or the triumphant last one? Don’t bet on the former.
Aristo Sham, 29, of Hong Kong, China, went for maximum contrast in his choice of concertos: Mendelssohn’s bubbly G minor on Tuesday and Brahms’s muscle-flexing No. 2 in B-flat major on Friday. Cutting a dapper, aristocratic figure on stage, Sham defied expectations and summoned the weight and stamina to power through the four movements of a piece that had required a special exemption to the competition’s length limitations.
The pianist attentively shaped even the simplest answering phrases, his instrument smoothly merging with and separating from the orchestra. His versatile technique produced tone ranging from pearly to steely, and he exulted in galloping chordal passages without rushing.
Amid the volatility of the “extra” movement, Allegro appassionato, Sham produced the necessary craggy chords to start, but also graceful answers and a lacy leggiero in the middle. The Andante built gradually to broad, rhetorical flourishes, but pianist and conductor wove an exceptionally soft and dreamy mood to close it.
The finale crackled with humor straight out of this composer’s Hungarian Dances. Light on his feet, Sham swung from the dainty main theme to fortissimo bursts to frothy waves of arpeggios. In one memorable dance with a solo flute, his right hand so matched the other instrument in tone that it was hard to tell who was playing what. Alert to Brahms’s love of variation, he gave a fresh new character to every return of the rondo theme.
A large orchestra filled the stage for this most symphonic of concertos. Alsop clamped an extra-long hug on Sham at the end, and held hands with him for bows, seemingly acknowledging his collaborative role in producing this big performance.
Or maybe it was just that, over the last couple of weeks, Sham has charmed this town with everything from his articulate interviews to his jaunty attire, not to mention his performances in the competition’s early rounds. If he finishes out of the medals, there may be a Texas-size rebellion.
The Cliburn Competition concludes with three more concerto performances and an awards ceremony, 3 p.m. and 7 p.m. respectively. cliburn.org
