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Cleveland International Piano Competition: Round 2, Session 4

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by Daniel Hathaway

Cleveland, OH — July 31, 2011

Two Russian pianists simply ran away with Sunday evening’s session at the Cleveland Play House. Mr. Alexey Chernov (28) and Mr. Denis Evstuhin (30), third and fourth in the evening’s lineup, pulled off stunning back-to-back performances which inspired multiple “bravos” from the audience.

Mr. Chernov, who crafted a memorable Mozart Sonata on Thursday evening, wowed us with his interpretation of Schumann’s Symphonic Etudes tonight. The piece has a complicated history and can provide pianists with a real storytelling challenge, but Mr. Chernov made it seem like Schumann’s own Pictures at an Exhibition, so neatly did he frame each of its movements, infusing them with individual character and giving us a moment to admire each of them before moving on to the next. He miraculously achieved dark colors and clear textures at once, expertly layered voices, suspended time now and again, voiced chords dryly but still gave them weight and hue, treated multiple repetitions of chords with individual inflections and spun delicate poetry that Schumann would surely have admired. His sense of pacing was infallable, and when he elasticized the tempo, it was done for expressive purposes. He began with Ligeti’s Automne à Varsovie in a performance so intense he nearly fell off the piano bench at the end. [Read more…]

Cleveland International Piano Competition: Round 2, Session 3

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by Daniel Hathaway

Cleveland, OH — July 31, 2011

Second impressions lifted a few of this afternoon’s contestants higher — in our humble opinion.

Mr. Scipione Sangiovanni (23, Italy) began with a big Schumann piece, the Fantasie in C, op. 17, then tossed off a Chopin Etude (A-flat, op. 10, no. 10) for dessert. His thoughtful reading of the Schumann brought out the essential, brooding moodinesss of the score. He accomplished fine transitions and made good dynamic and color changes in the first movement. His grand approach to the second paid off; sometimes the musical line became attenuated, but he brought this section to a conclusion with flair. In the rhapsodic third movement, he applied poetic voicing to his graceful rendition of Schumann’s beautiful and solemn melodies. The audience wanted to applaud at the end of no. 2 (and did), but Mr. Sangiovanni’s body language shied them away from expressing their appreciation at the end. His brief Chopin add-on was nicely spirited: he swept across the keyboard with appropriate grandeur. [Read more…]

Cleveland International Piano Competition: Round 2, Session 2

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by Daniel Hathaway

Cleveland, OH — July 30, 2011

We went into this evening’s session eager to hear four pianists build on their achievements in the first round. We came away wondering what on earth had possessed them to attack their repertory so heavy-handedly.

Mr. Shinnosuke Inugai (29, Japan) led off with a promising and energetic A-Flat Prelude and Fugue (WTC I) with good cadential gestures in the prelude and clear counterpoint in the fugue. The two Chopin Scherzos (op. 39 and 54) that followed were curiously muscular rather than humorous and poetic. There were some nice touches (clear textures, poignant middle sections in the second and fine right hand passage work) but erratic tempos and aggressive drives toward climaxes obscured the architecture of the pieces. Atsuhiko Gondai’s Transient Bell (2009) was full of metallic effects and crystalline meanderings in the extreme treble as well as gratuitous piano tricks (too many full keyboard glissandi). Mr. Inugai played it enthusiastically, but the sonic effect was numbing. [Read more…]

Cleveland International Piano Competition: Round 2, Session 1

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by Daniel Hathaway

Cleveland, OH — July 30, 2011

Anna Fedorova draws No. 1

The Cleveland Competition gives every player the opportunity to perform again in the second round — a fine way to build on what you revealed about yourself in your first appearance on the Bolton Theater stage. This afternoon’s quartet of pianists produced no major surprises upon a second hearing, but there were more favorable impressions to be made in most cases.

Ms. Anna Fedorova (21, Ukraine) should be proud of her two performances in her unenviable position of being No. 1 in the draw. She began on Saturday afternoon with two Scarlatti Sonatas (in b, K. 87 and E, K. 20). The b minor piece has already received several airings; her sensitive version moved right along with subtle ebbs and flows of tempo (and perhaps too many rubatos to point up too many special moments). [Read more…]

Cleveland International Piano Competition: Round 1, Session 6

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by Daniel Hathaway

Cleveland, OH — July 29, 2011

By the end of Friday evening’s session, all twenty-six competitors had been heard for the first time. Here’s our impression of the final four.

Ms. Soo-Yeon Ham (25, Korea) competed in Cleveland in 2009, when she won the Chopin Prize. Tonight, she began with two Scarlatti Sonatas, both in A major, went on to Haydn’s C Major Sonata No. 60 and finished off with Shostakovich’s Prelude & Fugue in d, no. 24. The first Scarlatti was a slow aria, the second a bouncy, fun piece based on a theme that played with octaves. Both these and the Haydn Sonata seemed to suit her proclivity for light, elegant textures. The Haydn was full of persistent motives and surprising harmonic turns, all of which she pointed up nicely, though she allowed herself some liberties with rhythm. The Shostakovich seemed an odd choice for the first round. It’s a bleak piece that wears many shades of grey, but eventually ends triumphantly. Ms. Ham found appropriate metallic sonorities for the beginning of the prelude and dialed up her digital intensity as the fugue gained momentum. But she really seemed most at home in the first three pieces. [Read more…]

Cleveland International Piano Competition: Round 1, Session 5

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by Daniel Hathaway

Cleveland, OH — July 29, 2011

Steinway Piano model d

Friday afternoon brought new faces and some fresh repertory to the penultimate session of the first round.

Ms. Marina Baranova (30, Ukraine/Germany) began the session with the first Beethoven “Waldstein” Sonata to appear in the playlist thus far, closely followed (with hardly any pauses) by Ligeti and Chopin. She took a businesslike approach to the first movement of the Beethoven. There were some tangles in scalar passages and an infelicitous plunge into the recapitulation. She paid more attention to voicing in the slow, second movement, with fine results. She did an intereresting thing at the beginning of the finale — starting it very slowly and softly as though the main theme were emerging from a haze, then making a huge crescendo into the restatement of the tune. Throughout, dynamics seemed to hover at both extremes with not much middle ground, but her soft playing was lovely. In her Ligeti, Fanfares (Etudes: Book 1, No. 4), she stylishly played sassy chords against a nonstop running line that alternated between hands. In her Chopin, the “Winter Wind” Etude, she demonstrated some sensitive phrasing, especially in the transitions. [Read more…]

Cleveland International Piano Competition: Round 1, Session 4

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by Daniel Hathaway

Cleveland, OH — July 28, 2011

Thursday evening’s session introduced four more pianists to the audience at the Cleveland Play House and those listening in or watching the proceedings over the airwaves or through the Internet.

Mr. Pavel Gintov (27, Ukraine) took the risky decision to play a single, long work for his first round: Schumann’s Kreisleriana, op. 16. In many ways, he pulled it off and did so with flair. There were many admirable moments in his interpretation as Schumann’s music moved between stormily dramatic and dreamily lyrical moods, but his sense of pacing sometimes went awry as he moved from section to section (and recapitulated earlier material) and sometimes he didn’t leave the music quite enough space to breathe. There were episodes of sheer power that became left-hand heavy and a few moments when we wondered if Mr. Gintov might push the Hamburg Steinway into the red zone. [Read more…]

Cleveland International Piano Competition: Round 1, Session 3

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by Daniel Hathaway

Cleveland, OH — July 28, 2011

Thursday afternoon’s session gave us the first general impressions of five more pianists, and revealed some personality traits which will be interesting to revisit when the second round begins.

Mr. Scipione Sangiovanni (23, Italy) was by far the most idiomatic player we’ve heard so far. He began with a stylized performance of Handel’s Suite in d featuring extravagantly decorated repeats, extremely staccato bass lines and rather capricious dynamics changes that sometimes seemed at odds with the structure of the piece. The famous Chaconne was less a continuous set of divisions than a chain of isolated variations (the last ended so abruptly that the audience missed its cue to applaud). But he brought beautiful colors, clear articulations and fine finger dexterity to the task, even if the overall interpretation was a bit off the beaten path. His second piece, Croatian composer Ivo Josipovic’s Jubulus (2010), sounded like a mashup of borrowed musical references and styles with stock piano effects (black note glissandi, chord clusters and sheer noise) interleaved with toccatalike gestures, a triumphant chordal paean and even a passage that suggested balalaikas. Mr. Sangiovanni went at the piece with power, enthusiasm and great seriousness of purpose. He topped off his set with Haydn’s Sonata in E-flat, Hob. XVI:52, a performance distinguished by dark colors, fluent runs and a good sense of the whole range of dynamic possibilities. Some of his playing here was mannered, with oddly calculated phrasing and unmetrical pauses. [Read more…]

Cleveland International Piano Competition Round 1:,Session 2

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By Daniel Hathaway

Cleveland, OH — July 27, 2011

Four more pianists gave us first examples of their playing this evening — two of whom actually updated our impressions from when we first heard them in 2009.

Mr. Shinnosuke Inugai (29, Japan) immediately seized our attention with a dramatic and highly profiled performance of Beethoven’s “Appassionata” Sonata, op. 57. Violent contrasts, explosive gestures and unrelenting — well, passion — marked the first movement and inspired applause from an audience that knew they shouldn’t clap then but wanted to anyway. In the second movement, Mr. Inugai relieved the tension with playful dotted rhythms that sounded almost frivolous after what had gone before. His fleet fingerwork and skillful layering of material brought the finale to a resounding conclusion. Perhaps his reading of Chopin’s Etude in A-flat, op. 10, no. 10 was more articulate than dreamy and poetic, but the Beethoven was still in our ears and the second piece seemed almost unnecessary. [Read more…]

Cleveland International Piano Competition: Round 1, Session 1

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by Daniel Hathaway

Cleveland, OH — July 27, 2011

As Round One of the 2011 Cleveland International Piano Competition got underway at the Cleveland Play House’s Bolton Theater this afternoon, it was time to get to know an almost entirely new group of musicians.

Twenty-six pianists will have 25-30 minutes each over the next three days to seize our attention and tell us — through their choice of repertory and its execution — who they are as musicians.

Ms. Anna Fedorova (21, Ukraine) drew the first of this afternoon’s four slots, and began with a big, bravura performance of Beethoven’s early Sonata in A, op. 2, no. 2. She impressed us with her strength and the extreme range of dynamic contrasts she drew from the piano, though apparent nervousness made for some uneven runs and dropped notes. She followed Beethoven with the famous Chopin Etude in a, op. 25, no. 11, “Winter Wind”, a piece that begins with a few bars of introspection and suddenly turns into a maelstrom. Ms. Fedorova’s performance ebbed and flowed like an ocean.
[Read more…]

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