{"id":114831,"date":"2025-06-03T14:28:43","date_gmt":"2025-06-03T18:28:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/?p=114831"},"modified":"2025-06-03T14:28:43","modified_gmt":"2025-06-03T18:28:43","slug":"scoop-report-van-cliburn-international-piano-competition-repertoire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/2025\/06\/03\/scoop-report-van-cliburn-international-piano-competition-repertoire\/","title":{"rendered":"THE SCOOP | Report From The Van Cliburn International Piano Competition: Repertoire"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Finalists
Finalists from the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition (Photo courtesy of the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This is not your grandparents\u2019 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition.<\/p>\n

There was a day when the final round of the most famous musical scrimmage of the Americas, held in Fort Worth, Texas, was pretty close to a looped sequence of the Second and Third Piano Concertos of Rachmaninoff and Prokofiev, and the inevitable First Piano Concerto of Tchaikovsky.<\/p>\n

Now the net is cast wide. The six contenders unveiled Monday will play 10 different concertos in the Bass Performance Hall with Marin Alsop and the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra. Which is to say there are only two repetitions \u2014 of Beethoven\u2019s matchlessly poetic Piano Concerto No. 4, by 26-year-old Evren Ozel<\/strong> and his fellow American, 22-year-old Angel Stanislav Wang<\/strong>; and of Prokofiev\u2019s burly Second Concerto, by the 26-year-old Russian, Philipp Lynov<\/strong>, and Carter Johnson<\/strong><\/a>, 28, a native of Vancouver Island and the lone Canadian in the running.<\/p>\n

Not that the works heard in four sessions starting Tuesday and ending Saturday could be called unfamiliar. Lynov and Johnson will offer, respectively, Liszt\u2019s Piano Concerto No. 2 and Ravel\u2019s Piano Concerto for the Left Hand. As for those beloved barnburners, Tchaikovsky 1 and Rachmaninoff 3 \u2014 the concertos commandeered by Van Cliburn himself in his celebrated victory in Moscow\u2019s Tchaikovsky Competition in 1958 \u2014 they will be given by Ozel (Tchaikovsky) and Wang (Rachmaninoff).<\/p>\n

Aristo Sham<\/strong> of China is first up Tuesday night with Mendelssohn\u2019s Piano Concerto No. 1 in G Minor, a prolix work that is heard less often than it used to be. On Friday this 29-year-old offers another German score of the 19th century, Brahms\u2019s four-movement Piano Concerto No. 2. (It should probably be clarified at this point that each finalist plays two concertos, on different days, chosen from separate lists, a system designed to encourage variety.)<\/p>\n

Vitaly Starikov<\/strong>, at 30 the oldest competitor to make the finals, has selected the challenging pairing of Bart\u00f3k\u2019s tough-as-nails Second Piano Concerto and Schumann\u2019s probing but elusive essay in the form, which was memorably described to me in 2008 by a competition judge at the Concours de musique international de Montr\u00e9al as \u201ca death trap.\u201d Starikov lists Russia and Israel as the nations to which he is attached.<\/p>\n

\"Canadian
Canadian Carter Johnson at the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition (Photo courtesy of the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Competitors<\/h3>\n

Sticklers for quotas will note that there are no women among the six finalists. Chaeyoung Park<\/strong>, 27, one of two female semifinalists not to make the cut, was also the only South Korean semifinalist \u2014 a low tally given the worldwide dominance of this nation in competitions, not least the Cliburn, which awarded gold to Yekwon Sunwoo in 2017 and Yunchan Lim in 2022.<\/p>\n

Conspiracy theories are devilishly hard to sustain in Fort Worth. The judges sit in monastic seclusion and do not confer with their colleagues.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo discussion, no deliberation,\u201d said Jacques Marquis, Cliburn chief executive since 2013, and a Canadian, in a Facebook post. \u201cA yes\/no\/maybe process. Simple and efficient.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs I said many times, I do not want a blend, I want nine distinct opinions from nine concert pianists.\u201d<\/p>\n

Still, it is interesting to speculate on how the British-born jury chair Paul Lewis, a pianist noted for his Schubert, feels about the cascades of double octaves that inevitably accompany a Cliburn contestant to the finish line. One can imagine a certain amount of unspoken convergence with his fellow juror Till Fellner, an Austrian who is, like Lewis, a former student of Alfred Brendel.<\/p>\n

Despite the rigour of the Cliburn process, there has been some online unhappiness over the early elimination of Magdalene Ho<\/strong>, a Malaysian pianist of American birth and British upbringing. \u201cShe showed more character than all the rest put together,\u201d commented the British critic Norman Lebrecht on his widely read website Slipped Disc.<\/p>\n

An interesting subset of the Ho controversy was a demand by her fan base to install her in the quarterfinal spot bizarrely abandoned by Xiaofu Ju<\/strong>, a 25-year-old Chinese pianist who walked on stage, sat before the keyboard, stared at his hands, stood again, bowed and left the stage. The news dispatch from the Cliburn cited \u201cmedical reasons\u201d for his withdrawal.<\/p>\n