Not long after Harvey Lavan Cliburn, Jr. returned home from Moscow in 1958, after a win in the inaugural Tchaikovsky Competition viewed as integral to a thaw in Cold War politics, plans were under way for a new competition in tribute to the young American. At first a reluctant honoree, “Van” soon embraced the mission of the competition to find and promote young artists. As Shields-Collins Bray, Artistic Consultant of the Cliburn Foundation, told me, Mr Cliburn “wanted to reward young pianists simply for carrying the torch”, for sharing the beauty of music with others.
The Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, a quadrennial event held in Mr Cliburn’s longtime home of Fort Worth, Texas, was first staged in 1962 and has earned a reputation as one of the world’s premier music contests. The fourteenth edition concluded this weekend, and this year’s competition was the first not to have the presence of Mr Cliburn, who died in February. (The awards ceremony Sunday evening began with a video tribute to Mr Cliburn, and emcee Fred Child, host of American Public Media’s “Performance Today”, offered remarks of his own before getting to the presentation of prizes.)
Preliminary recitals began on 24 May, and each of the 30 competitors performed twice before the field was narrowed to twelve. The dozen semifinalists then played hour-long recitals as well as piano quintets with the Brentano String Quartet. Six finalists each performed two concerti – one from the Classical period and the other freely chosen by the contestant – accompanied by Maestro Leonard Slatkin and the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra; I attended all of the finals and much of the earlier rounds. There were three concerti played twice (Mozart’s Concerto no. 20 in D minor, Rachmaninov’s Concerto no. 3 in D minor, and Prokofiev’s Concerto no. 2 in G minor), but the performance order was such that no individual work or even any composer was heard twice in one evening.
The Gold Medal went to Vadym Kholodenko (26 years old, from Ukraine); the Silver Medal was awarded to Beatrice Rana (20, Italy); and Sean Chen (24, USA) won the third-place Crystal Award. The remaining finalists were Fei-Fei Dong (22, China); Nikita Mndoyants (24, Russia); and Tomoki Sakata (19, Japan). Ms Rana won the Audience Award, and Mr Kholodenko collected both the Steven De Groote Memorial Award for the Best Performance of Chamber Music and the Beverley Taylor Smith Award for the Best Performance of a New Work (Birichino by Christopher Theofanidis). Jury Discretionary Awards were given to Alessandro Deljavan (26, Italy) and Claire Huangci (23, USA), both of whom advanced as far as the semifinals, as well as to 24-year-old American Steven Lin, who performed only in the preliminary round.
International audiences will be getting to know Mr Kholodenko, as his prize includes roughly 25 engagements outside of the United States. He appears poised for a big career; he was a clear front-runner in the finals, and his performance of Prokofiev’s Concerto no. 3 in C major was the best I’ve ever heard of this popular work. Only the gold medalist, however, is guaranteed concerts abroad: all six finalists will receive commission-free management from the Cliburn for three years, concert opportunities across the United States, and cash prizes, and in addition the three medalists will have recordings produced by harmonia mundi USA. The list of domestic performances offered to the winners runs to some 50 orchestral and 100 recital, chamber, or festival engagements.
One of the many auxiliary events held in conjunction with the competition was a jury symposium, held Saturday morning of the finals weekend. Ten of the thirteen judges appeared before an audience of about 350 to discuss a couple of slated topics before opening the floor to questions from the audience. At the heart of the discussion was the globalization of Western classical music and its implications regarding the quality of artistry being cultivated among young performers. It’s not uncommon to hear musicians or music lovers lament a perceived slipping in artistic standards or the dissolution of “national” schools (Russian, French, etc.) of piano-playing. Jurors such as Arie Vardi were more optimistic; Mr Vardi remarked that a slight homogenization of style is not necessarily bad, in that it places a premium on subtle differences in the musical personalities of performers.