Van Cliburn Semifinals: Lynov, Park, Alexewicz, Cai
Photos by Ralph Lauer and Brandon Wade
—Wayne Lee Gay
June 1 (afternoon): Russian Philipp Lynov, 26, stayed in the twentieth century (albeit the first half) for his semifinal recital Sunday afternoon. The five movements of Ravel's Miroirs offered ample opportunity to display technique and interpretive skills; Lymov navigated the sea of notes with ease. His voicing and balance were always superb, even when Ravel surrounds the melody with floods of notes.
Here, Lymov always opted for glittering brilliance rather than more nuanced interpretation, but his ability to draw gorgeous sonorities was thrilling in "Une barque sur l'ocean" ("A Ship on the Ocean") and "La Valée des cloches" ("Valley of the Bells").
Lymov was impressively on target with Prokofiev's Piano Sonata No. 8 of 1944. Though by no means programatic, the work encompasses a huge array of emotions, unmistakably colored by the turmoil of its moment of birth. The ironically dreamy opening bars give way immediately to the violent dissonance that dominates the first movement, wherein Lynov displayed amazing power and velocity. After a largely calm middle movement, in which Lynov unlocked magical piano sonorities, he dived into the relentless energy of the closing movement, proving stamina as well.
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Korean Chaeyoung Park, 27, opted to open her recital with the meditative serenity of twentieth-century virtuoso Myra Hess's transcription of J.S. Bach's "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring." She then moved in a completely opposite direction with Scriabin's Ninth Sonata, "Black Mass," with its raucous energy.
Adding the nineteenth century to music from the eighteenth and twentieth, Park closed with Beethoven's "Hammerklavier" Sonata. She proved a master of Beethoven's style and his ample technical demands, contrasting the sense of lively dialogue in the second movement and the almost religious solemnity of the third. She showed off fleet finger power in the incredibly complex closing fugue, with a rapidly rising and falling dynamic level at the close.
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June 1 (evening): Polish pianist Piotr Alexewicz, 25, opened Sunday evening's semifinal round performances with a program devoted entirely to familiar repertoire—a risky strategy at a major competition, in which the individual jury members are likely to have strong opinions about well-known works. Schumann's Fantasie in C, one of that composer's grandest works for solo piano, demands that the performer find the right combination of 1) Schumann as the sometimes erratic master of small poetic form, and 2) Schumann as the sculptor of large sonatas and sonata-like works. Alexewicz played into Schumann's impetuosities here, with sometimes arresting rubato and wide volume contrasts. However, in doing so, he sacrificed the work's underlying grandeur. Only in the third and final movement was he successful in shaping a convincing viewpoint.
The Second Sonata of Alexewicz's countryman Chopin emerged somewhat more impressively in the first, second, and fourth movements, partly thanks to Chopin's total command of structure here. But the famous "Funeral March" third movement was disappointingly static, particularly in Alexewicz's timid interpretation of the lyrical middle section.
Gershwin's quintessentially American Three Preludes provided a nice epilogue for Alexewicz, passionate and jazzy at the same time.
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Yangrui Cai, 24, of China, presented, by coincidence, the second program of the day made up entirely of twentieth-century music, in both cases dominated by works of Prokofiev and. Ravel. There have been several performances of Sonatas by Prokofiev at the Cliburn this year; Cai instead presented a suite of ten short movements arranged by Prokofiev from the evening-length ballet score for Romeo and Juliet. Prokofiev drew on the many dramatic and poetic episodes in the ballet score, and transformed them into entrancing miniature showpieces for piano. Cai's performance here was constantly engaging and often thrilling.
He followed up with British composer Thomas Adès's "Darknesse Visible," a uniquely modern rethinking of a Renaissance lute song, which floats as a distant melody surrounded by disjunct, dissonant motifs.
Cai moved without pause into the complexioties of Ravel's Gaspard de la nuit, in a performance flawless in technical execution as well as emotion. In this triptych, the pianist must navigate thousands of notes, often breathtakingly beautiful, while portraying the wiles of a seductive water nymph, the calm horror of a corpse hanging on a gibbet, and the terrors of a gleeful goblin.
