Preliminary Recital 4
Photos by Brandon Wade and Ralph Lauer
—Wayne Lee Gay
May 22, 2025: A quiet opening rose quickly to full-blown passion as Germany’s Jonas Aumiller, 20, opened Wednesday morning's session with a radiant rendition of Scriabin's Fantasy in B minor. Aumiller navigated the quick mood changes, rhythmic complexities, and symphonic sonorities that create a world of elegant romanticism in this work. While Bach's Toccata in G minor requires a more restrained approach, Aumiller here also achieved the perfect combination of touch and style to enliven this masterpiece of counterpoint, exploiting the possibilities of the modern piano without betraying baroque sensibilities. Like the Scriabin, Chopin's Barcarolle in F-sharp also opens quietly, and in Aumiller's hands achieved a thrilling level. A much less well-known work, Schumann's Presto passionato (a discarded movement originally written as part of the composer's Piano Sonata No. 2) made an effective addition to Aumiller's program, with roiling arpeggios fueling the passion. To close, Aumiller continued to apply his soundly romantic approach with a mood-driven reading of Montero's "Rachtime."
The frist female competitor in this year's Cliburn competition, Malaysian Magdalene Ho, 21, announced herself with a sharp-edged, assertive take on Bach's Tocccata in D (the second BachToccata of the day). She showed a wide range within this work, particularly impressive in the quiet third section, with skillfully subtle pedaling. Ho then launched into the gradually unfolding grandeur of Franck's Prelude, Chorale, and Fugue, but ultimately failed to attain the sort of momentum the work demands. Montero's "Rachtime" was lively enough, leading to Saint-Saëns' Etude en forme de valse as a glitzy, glittering encore-like finale
Ukrainian Roman Fediurko, 20, also turned to Bach—opening his program with the Prelude and Fugue in G-sharp minor from Book 2 of The Well-Tempered Clavier. Fediurko presented the Prelude as a swirling, virtuoso showpiece, followed by a flowingly serene take on the Fugue; he then presented Montero's "Rachtime" with stormy passion, making it seem almost a different piece from the twelve performances of this same work we have heard so far in the first two days of the competition. It hinted at the blazing fury of the two works of Rachmaninoff that followed: the Elégie from Opus 3, with its mournful passion, served as an introduction to the monumental Sonata No. 2, here performed in the 1931 revision. Fediurko proved himself a formidable interpreter of Rachmaninoff, equal to the monumental technical demands as well as the emotional swings contained in this work.
