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Review: Cleveland International Piano Competition — Semi-Final Round, Day Two (August 7)

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by Daniel Hathaway

C13 Treutler-AnnikaOn Wednesday, with the moment of decision only hours away, the last four pianists in the semi-final round stepped up to the Hamburg Steinway in Gartner Auditorium to vie for a slot in the final round with The Cleveland Orchestra on Friday and Saturday night.

Annika Treutler (23, Germany) assembled a program of Haydn, Hindemith, Scriabin, Chopin and Liszt for the afternoon’s opening set. Her elegant phrasing, graceful but forceful technique and fine sense of musical line and architecture touched everything she played. Only subtle shadings of color and dynamics differentiated each of Haydn’s f-minor variations from the other. Hindemith’s Suite “1922”, a piece parodying popular dances of the era — which the composer later advised his publisher not to bother to reprint — was far more eventful as Treutler navigated her way through its Marsch, its gloomy, atonal Shimmy, its thick-textured but later sparkling Nachtstück, its waltzy and rhetorical Boston and its uptime Rag, which sported a huge ending. Scriabin’s op. 13 Preludes were by turns rumbling, wistful, ornate and powerful. Treutler played Liszt’s reworkings of Schumann’s songs, Widmung and Frühlingsnacht with grace and agility, and Liszt’s own Hungarian Rhapsody No. 8 with characteristic spirit. The audience enthusiastically applauded after each item in the set. [Read more…]

Review: Cleveland International Piano Competition — Round Two, Session Two (August 3)

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by Daniel Hathaway

CIPC-ButterflySaturday afternoon’s session (the longest of the round with six players) opened with a meditative reading of J.S. Bach’s Prelude in b-flat (WTC I) by Nino Kotrikadze, followed by a deliberate and well-articulated fugue. The rest of her program was devoted to a vivid excursion through the many vicissitudes of Schumann’s Kreisleriana. Both dramatic and poetic moments were given an attractive haze of pedal (the composer would have approved), and Kotrikadze made major events of its climaxes. Her tendency to play big added color and passion to Schumann’s already eventful narrative, though a few outbursts of sound seemed out of scale. She played some furious passagework late in the piece with impressive technique.

Qi Xu is only 18 and small in stature but he plays with mature authority and command. He has an excellent feel for musical architecture and brought clarity of touch and a sure sense of rhythm to his performance, but while his technique is up to the task, his tone at this point in his career seemed a bit underpowered for Brahms’s third sonata, the single work on his second round playlist. Lines sounded thin at the treble end of the keyboard, though his left hand was strong at the bass end. All his performance needed to be completely satisfying was more weight of sound. [Read more…]

Review: Cleveland International Piano Competition — Round One, Session Three (August 1)

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by Daniel Hathaway

CIPC-Butterfly

Annika Treutler (23, Germany) opened the third session of the first round on Thursday afternoon with a well-conceived performance of J.S. Bach’s f minor prelude and fugue (WTC I), marking arrivals at important harmonic moments, pointing up each entrance of the fugue subject and giving the fugue an expressive profile through subtle crescendos and decrescendos. The balance between hands in Chopin’s F Major Etude (op. 10/8) was admirable, her right hand filigree strong-fingered and lucid. Treutler ended her set with Beethoven’s op. 109 sonata, creating a light, airy texture at the outset and shining little lights on details. Aside from a few boomy moments, her playing was well-balanced and quasi-playful in the right spots.

Ukrainian pianist Oleksandr Polivkov, 25, is a big guy but can play with a soft touch, as he demonstrated from the outset in his elegant voicing of J.S. Bach’s c# minor prelude and fugue and later in graceful passagework in Haydn’s A-flat sonata (Hob. XVI:46). [Read more…]

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