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So I've been listening to some of the web broadcasts of the VC competition as of late. There is really some top notch playing going on! I really liked Okleksy Kaltakov's Brahms Pagannini Variations.
Yet, I question some of the choices they made inthe selection process...maybe some of the contestants were really nervous (considering that it is the biggest piano competition out there), but it does seem that there is more hacking this time around than there was last. The one that stickes out in my mind was someone playing the Liszt Spanish Rhapsody and really hammering it.

I looked ath the competitor's programs, and almost ten out of thirty are playing Rachmaninnof 3rd, with Prokofiev 3rd as the close second. Looks like it's becoming standard practice to offer R3 nowadays.

Anyone in the Texas area going/have gone? Alex?

Brendan

I wish I could go but I'm traveling like crazy. I'm here in san francisco this week. Anyway, I read the reviews of the individual recitals today in the dallas paper and there was not one good review. Basically, everyone could play the notes and that was about it.

Anyway, here is a good link also

dallasnews.com/EXTRA and click on van cliburn

While it's sort of fashionable to bash the major competitions, I do believe that the Van Cliburn Foundation tries very hard to anoint a worthy player. Watching the PBS television specials about the Cliburn over the years leaves me with the impression that they are not very representative of what really goes on--it would be interesting to hear the entire late round recitals.

I get the impression that the jury has its mind made up before the concerto round, upon which the general public tends to focus greatly. In many academic circles, concerto playing is considered easier than playing demanding solo recitals (maybe that's the reason for all the Rach 3's)!

[ May 29, 2001: Message edited by: MacDuff ]

I managed to get thru the performances by Ms. Jong-Gyung Park (Korea), Ms. Edna Stern (Belgium), Mr. Dror Biran (Israel) and Mr. Anton Mordasov (Russia) today. Of the 4, I enjoyed Dror Biran's work the best. I was planning on listening to all of the performances in order, but maybe I'll jump around instead.

Any other recommendations on superior performances I should listen too?

Thanks and regards,
Dan

Roger Wright gave an amazing performance of Rzewski's (pronounced SHEV-skee) Wisborough Cotton Mill Blues, a work that imitates the sound of a cotton gin. Really an intriguing piece.

Jong Hwa Park plays a fine Messiaen, but his Liszt sonata leaves a little bit to be desired for my tastes - he just soudns too careful.

I do have to admit that I was really disappointed by Andrew Russo. I like his repertoire selections (Copland, Dutilleux, Schubert) and thought that he would be the dark horse of the competition, but even in those selections he sounds timid. With music like that, you really have to go all out or it just isn't convincing. Just my .02

Brendan

I just read an interesting article focused on Cliburn and Gould. I'd like to share with this board. Let me put it here since I'm not sure wherelse. Hope some of you would enjoy as much as I did:
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Two Fallen Stars


Terry Teachout


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IN 1961, the Canadian pianist Glenn Gould canceled a scheduled appearance with Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra, claiming that he had developed a phobic reaction--in his words, "something approaching terror"--to the mere thought of playing in Philadelphia. He was replaced by a young virtuoso from Texas named Van Cliburn, who had himself become famous three years earlier after winning the Tchaikowsky Competition in Mos cow. As Ormandy later wrote to Gould:

Perhaps it will give you a chuckle when I tell you that every time I talked to Van, for some psychological reason, I called him Glenn. The third time it happened, he said he didn't mind at all because he loved Glenn and he considered it an honor and a pleasure to be called by that name.

The idea that anyone, especially anyone in the music business, might have confused these two pianists is indeed comical. Cliburn, a natural performer whom audiences found irresistibly charismatic, favored the work of such romantic composers as Tchaikowsky and Rachmaninoff, which he played in a warm and expansive style. By contrast, Gould, a Bach specialist who hated performing in public--his cancellation of the concert in Philadelphia was no isolated event--was noted for his crisp incisive touch and brisk tempos.

But a closer look does reveal a number of common threads in the lives of the two best-known piano virtuosos of the postwar era. Both men had been child prodigies; both briefly tried their hand at conducting; both showed early promise as composers but failed to develop their talents. Most importantly, both suffered from deep-seated emotional problems that made it difficult for them to function in the public eye. Gould abandoned the concert stage in 1964, at the height of his fame, thereafter playing only in the re cording studio until his death eighteen years later; Cliburn quit playing altogether in 1978, and though he returned to the stage in 1989, he no longer makes records or appears regularly in concert.


Born in 1934, Van Cliburn began playing piano at the age of three. Until he moved from Texas to New York in 1951 to study at the Juilliard School, his only teacher was his mother, Rildia Bee Cliburn, who had studied piano with Arthur Friedheim, a pupil of Franz Liszt. As a boy, then, Cliburn absorbed both the pianistic style and the musical tastes of the late 19th century, and his mature playing would reflect these early influences.

While at Juilliard, Cliburn studied with Rosina Lhévinne. This celebrated teacher was the widow of Josef Lhévinne, a Russian virtuoso whose few recordings are coveted by connoisseurs of Romantic piano playing. Under her tutelage, Cli burn perfected his distinctive style, in which the extravagant rhetoric of Russian Romanticism was subtly blended with American simplicity. Though he had a big technique, he favored relaxed tempos that allowed him to "sing" the melodies of the 19th-century works that made up the bulk of his repertoire. His tone was rich and resonant, and he played with a rubato that was flexible yet disciplined.

In 1954, Cliburn received the prestigious Leventritt award, given by a panel of judges that included the pianists Rudolf Serkin and Eugene Istomin, the conductors Leon ard Bernstein and George Szell, and the violinist Alexander Schneider. "He is remarkable," said the usually acerbic Szell in a note passed to one of his colleagues during Cliburn's performance. "No philosopher, in spite of the soulful facial expressions, but he makes beautiful sounds. Extraordinary skill and projection." It was an apt summing-up of the attributes that would make Van Cliburn a star.


Winning the Leventritt launched Cliburn on his career as a major soloist, and he was already a fixture on the American concert circuit when he won the Tchaikowsky Competition in 1958. But it was the latter award that introduced him to the public at large, and set the tone for his subsequent career. Held at the height of the cold war, the Tchaikowsky Competition had given American musicians their first opportunity to perform in the Soviet Union. Cliburn's sweepingly Romantic playing stunned his Soviet listeners, who for all their musical sophistication knew little of the United States. Though Soviet officials tried to fix the outcome in favor of a Russian contestant, the pianist Sviatoslav Richter insisted that Cliburn receive the first prize, and the then-premier Nikita Khrus hchev personally gave his approval.

What followed was unprecedented in the history of classical music: the twenty-three-year-old Cliburn became an international celebrity overnight. The New York Times had been publishing a series of front-page stories about the competition in progress; the climax was a four-column-wide article announcing Cliburn's victory. The following week, the pianist was featured on the cover of Time, and later he appeared on the popular TV programs Person to Person, The Tonight Show, and What's My Line? RCA signed him to an exclusive contract, rushing into print a re cording of the Tchaikowsky First Concerto made within days of the pianist's triumphant return to the United States. It sold a million cop ies within two years, the first classical album ever to do so.*

Cliburn would become the most successful classical musician of his generation, in large part because
of the attention lavished on him by the mass media, which consistently portrayed him as an "all-American virtuoso" (the title of Time's cover story), a middlebrow hero whose unaffected modesty and gregarious demeanor made palatable the fact that he played piano instead of baseball. His physical appearance--he was 6-foot-4 and had a baby face and a shock of curly blond hair--enhanced the memorable impression he made on stage.

All this mass-media coverage had the effect of putting off many music critics, especially in New York. Cliburn's reviews, which had initially been enthusiastic, soon turned sour: by the mid-60's, it was commonplace to read that he was a
shallow and superficial performer. This was deeply unfair. In fact, he ranked among the foremost pianists of the postwar era, and even in the late 70's, when his playing had grown erratic, he remained capable of giving compelling performances. Nor were his gifts confined to pianism. He was also a talented amateur composer, and after his return from the Soviet Union he studied conducting with Bruno Walter, subsequently making well-received guest appearances with the Philadelphia Orchestra and the New York Philharmonic.


But the critics, though wrongheaded, were on to something, for Cliburn had come too far, too fast. His repertoire, though more wide-ranging than generally acknowledged, consisted mainly of the music he had learned as a student, and the list of concertos and solo works he played regularly grew smaller by the year. "In music, no matter how familiar, there are no twice-told tales," he liked to say, but his ability to shed new light on such oft-played pieces as the Beethoven "Appass ionata" Sonata or the Rachmaninoff Third Concerto was not unlimited, and his crowded schedule left little room for reflection or renewal. After 1964, significantly, he never again conducted in public, and so far as is known, he no longer composes.

Cliburn's personal problems also cast a shadow over his triumphs. Much was made by the press of the fact that he was a devout churchgoer who lived with his mother until her death in 1994. But nothing was said of his homosexuality, which, though long known among musicians, did not become public information until just two years ago, when he was sued for palimony by a former lover. His inability to reconcile his squeaky-clean image with the realities of his offstage life undoubtedly contributed to his increasing artistic uncertainty.

By the early 70's, Cliburn's live performances had become inconsistent, and major orchestras were reluctant to hire him as a soloist. Exhausted by two decades of touring, he stopped accepting new engagements in 1974, playing his last concert four years later; not until 1989 would he begin performing again, and then only on a limited basis. A 1994 American tour proved that while the sixty-year-old pianist was still capable of playing excitingly, his musical horizons had shrunk still further; Cliburn's repertoire for the seventeen-city tour consisted of the Tchaikowsky First and Rachmaninoff Third Concertos, plus a short group of solo pieces he had been playing since the mid-50's. Even his staunchest admirers were forced at last to admit that something had gone terribly wrong with the man whom the formidable music critic B. H. Haggin had once described as "one of the outstandingly, supremely great pianist-musicians of today, and not only of today."


Glenn Gould, Cliburn's senior by two years, also began playing piano at the age of three, and by 1945 he was performing regularly throughout Canada. Shunning the high-profile competition circuit, he made his American debut in 1955 in Washington, D.C., playing the Bach G-Major Partita, Beethoven's E-Major Sonata, Op. 109, and works by the 17th-century composers Orlando Gibbons and Jan Sweelinck and the 20th-century modernists Alban Berg and Anton Webern. It was by any standard a highly unorthodox program, but Paul Hume, who reviewed the concert for the Washington Post, found it spellbinding:

Glenn Gould is a pianist with rare gifts for the world. It must not delay hearing [him] and according him the honor and audience he deserves. We know of no other pianist like him of any age.

Nine days later, the twenty-two-year-old pianist repeated the program at New York's Town Hall for a tiny audience consisting mainly of other musicians who had heard about his Washington recital. David Oppenheim, a Columbia Re cords executive, attended the concert and immediately signed him to an exclusive contract; in June, he re corded Bach's "Goldberg" Variations, and the performance, which was released the following year, became a best-seller.**

The sheer originality of Gould's youthful playing, preserved on his 1955 version of the "Goldbergs" and the many other performances he recorded for Columbia while still in his twenties, continues to this day to astonish listeners. Unlike most pianists, he used a bare minimum of pedal, relying instead on his precise fingerwork to produce a clean, non-legato sound reminiscent of a harpsichord. Though his tempos tended to be on the quick side, he was capable of playing slow movements with a sustained, trance-like intensity; the 25th variation of the "Goldbergs" is a particularly striking example of this quality of inwardness. Whether fast or slow, he played with an exhilarating forward thrust that was as irresistible in its way as Van Cliburn's expansive warmth.

But Gould, unlike his younger colleague, was idiosyncratic to the point of eccentricity, both on and off stage. He sang aloud to himself as he played, swayed in time to the music, "conducted" himself whenever he had a free hand, and used a specially-built folding chair that allowed him to sit much lower relative to the keyboard than other pianists. A lifelong hypochondriac, he wore gloves and heavy outer garments the year 'round, made regular use of sedatives and tranquilizers, and constantly consulted various doctors about a diverse assortment of symptoms, some real and others imagined.

These same mannerisms, however, were what was largely responsible for bringing Gould to the attention of the broader public, for Columbia's publicists used them to entice journalists into writing feature stories about him. Such stories led audiences to expect strange behavior from the pianist when he appeared in concert, and his neurotic temperament became as central to his media image as Cliburn's "all-American" persona was to his.

Paradoxically, Gould's bizarre mannerisms worked to conceal the agonizing discomfort that he experienced whenever he played in public. As I have already noted, he canceled concerts often, and nine years after his American debut he withdrew altogether from public performance, convinced that he could make a living solely by making records and playing on radio and TV. His decision provided still more grist for the media mill, and by the early 70's the pianist had acquired a cult-like following of admirers, especially in his native Canada, where he was virtually the only resident classical musician to have a major career.

An intellectual manqué who (in the words again of B. H. Haggin) preferred "talking nonsense on anything anywhere to playing the piano marvelously in the concert hall," Gould published numerous articles in which he constructed an elaborate skein of philosophical rationalizations for what essentially amoun-ted to a paralyzing case of stage fright. He insisted that performing before audiences forced him to distort the music in order to "try to project it to that man up there in the top balcony." Actually, though, recordings made at his concerts suggest the opposite. "In a way," the pianist András Schiff has said, "they are infinitely more beautiful than his studio recordings, wonderful."***


The self-imposed isolation of Gould's later years heightened the stylistic eccentricities already evident in his recordings, the most common being the weirdly arbitrary extremes of tempo in which he regularly indulged. Some of these eccentricities can be explained by the narrowness of his musical tastes. As he himself said, he disliked most piano music composed in the late 18th and early 19th centuries:

I don't think any of the early Romantic composers knew how to write for the piano. Oh, they knew how to use the pedal, and how to make dramatic effects, splashing notes in every direction, but there's very little real composing going on. The music of that era is full of empty theatrical gestures, full of exhibitionism, and it has a worldly, hedonistic quality that simply turns me off.

But once Gould had finished recording Bach's keyboard music for Columbia, he was faced with the problem of finding new works to commit to disk. Since his post- retirement income derived principally from album sales, he was under considerable pressure to perform a repertoire more accessible than the modern music that he loved. This seems to have been the main reason why he devoted so much time and energy to the piano sonatas of Mozart and Beethoven, most of which he played with brutal insensitivity.

Perhaps inevitably, Gould began to lose interest in the piano and its literature as he grew older. As a young man, he had briefly sought to express himself through composing, producing an uneven but interesting string quartet. In middle age, he considered taking up conducting, making a fascinating recording of Wagner's Siegfried Idyll in which he led a group of players drawn from the Toronto Symphony.+ But the second career he envisioned never came to pass: in 1982 he died of a stroke, three weeks after recording the Siegfried Idyll and nine days after his fiftieth birthday.


Historically speaking, perhaps the chief significance of Van Cli burn and Glenn Gould was that they were the first postwar classical instrumentalists to achieve international celebrity via the mass media. Already successful in their mid-twenties, they soon became full-fledged superstars whose names were known not only to musicians and music lovers but also to the general public. It is, of course, impossible to know whether they might have had more normal careers had they become famous later in their lives. But there can be little doubt that their existing psychological problems were exacerbated by the pressure of early acclaim driven by the imperatives of mass-media publicity.

Today, four decades after Cli burn appeared on the cover of Time, those imperatives have become more compelling than ever. The classical-recording industry, undermined by years of shrinking market share, is in the process of reinventing itself along media-driven lines. Young artists are being signed not for the excellence of their musicianship but for having personalities regarded as "marketable" to young listeners. Whether or not this will yield the profits necessary to turn around an ailing industry--I personally doubt it--the broken careers of Cliburn and Gould powerfully suggest the price to be paid by such practices in terms of artistic health and seriousness.

In the meantime, however, the legacy of these two virtuosos also reminds us of the great potential that inhered in North American piano playing in the early postwar decades. It is true that Cliburn's near-complete lack of curiosity about the piano literature proved to be the weak link in his artistry, and his influence on the next generation of American concert pianists, many of whom drew from his career the understandable conclusion that the road to riches lay in playing Rachmaninoff and Tchaikowsky on the competition circuit, has been quite negative. Gould, by contrast, did far less to shape the tastes of younger artists, though the fact that so many pianists now program Bach as a matter of course, in spite of the increasingly powerful influence of the period-instrument movement, is due almost entirely to his example.

With all their flaws, however, and despite their tragic inability to cope with the insatiable demands of the publicity machine that made them famous, Cliburn and Gould remain indisputably major artists who in the long run will be remembered for one reason only: because they played so individually and so compellingly. And since both men made commercial recordings of virtually the whole of their working repertoires, it will remain possible for listeners of the future to hear at their best--and at their worst--these two outstanding figures of a gifted generation.


TERRY TEACHOUT, COMMENTARY's music critic, writes the "Front Row Center" column for Civilization, the magazine of the Library of Congress.

* Cliburn's 1958 recording of the Tchai kowsky Piano Concerto has remained continuously in print ever since its initial release (RCA 07863-55912-2). Among the best of his other recordings are a live performance of the Rachmaninoff Third Concerto from a Carnegie Hall concert given immediately after his return from the Soviet Union (RCA 6209-2-RC); the Rachmaninoff Second Son ata, recorded live in 1960 at a Moscow concert (RCA 7941-2-RG); My Favorite Chopin, a 1961 solo recital including the F-Minor Fantasie, Op. 49 (RCA 09026-68813-2); Bee thoven's Fourth and Fifth Concertos, recorded in 1961 and 1963 with Fritz Reiner and the Chicago Symphony (RCA 7943-2-RG); Chopin's Second and Third Sonatas, recorded in 1967 (RCA 09026-60417-2); a group of solo pieces by Brahms recorded in 1970 and 1971, including the Op. 79 Rhapsodies (RCA 09026-60419-2); and a mixed recital consisting of the Barber Sonata, Op. 26, the Mozart C-Major Sonata, K. 330, and six pieces by Debussy (RCA 60415-2-RG).


** Gould's 1955 recording of the "Goldberg" Variations, like Cliburn's 1958 recording of the Tchaikowsky First Concerto, has never been out of print (Sony SMK 52594). A selection of his early recordings, including performances of Beethoven's first two piano concertos and last three piano sonatas, Mozart's C-Major Sonata, K. 330, and Haydn's E-Flat Major Sonata, Hob. XVI:49, can be heard on The Glenn Gould Legacy, Vol. 2 (Sony M3K 39036, three CD's). Of comparable interest are the six Bach Partitas (Sony SM2K 52597, two CD's); a collection of solo pieces by Byrd, Gibbons, and Swee-linck (Sony SMK 52589); the Mozart C-Minor Piano Concerto, K. 491, with Walter Susskind and the CBC Symphony (Sony SMK 52626); and a collection of solo pieces by Brahms (Sony SM2K 52651).


***The Glenn Gould Legacy, Vol. 2, contains a live performance of the Beethoven Second Concerto from Gould's 1957 tour of Russia; this performance, coupled with the Bach D-Minor Concerto taped at the same concert, is also available on Sony SMK 52686.

+ Gould's String Quartet, Op. 1, is available in a recording by the Symphonia Quartet (Sony SMK 52679); his 1982 recording of Wagner's Siegfried Idyll can be heard on Sony SMK 52650.

Thank you Andrew, for the great read. Very interesting!

What is the URL for listening to the VC Competition?

I agree, that was very interesting. And I'd like the URL too!

Thx, wgh

If anyone is interested in listening, go to:
www.cliburn.org

Then, click under "competitions" and then "Eleventh International Van Cliburn Compeition." After this, there should be a link at the top of the page that says "Live Competition Audio."

Brendan

Thanks, Brendan, for the link. I see where the semifinalists have been selected, and nobody from the US made the cut.

Just viewing the time schedule they've laid out for the semifinalists to perform makes me nervous. I can't imagine that kind of pressure!

Today I switched to listening to the semi-finalists. I got thru Oleksiy Koltakov (Ukraine), Xiaohan Wang (China), and Alessandra Maria Ammara (Italy) . Ms Ammara’s playing is marvelous! (At least it is to my untrained ear!) I’m really looking forward to her semifinal recital, since she is going to play Chopin’s 24 Preludes, and 2 of those pieces are part of my miniscule repertoire.

I also noticed that Xiaohan Wang performed music that he had composed. That seems pretty cheeky to me, but since I’ve never even remotely been interested in a competition before I don’t know if it's cheeky or not. Do many pianists in competitions play music they wrote? How can the judges tell if they're doing a good job or not?

This is pretty neat stuff!

Dan

Here is one of the best URL that exist. It also includes all the archived program. In other words, this URL gives you every key ever pressed since day one of the competition. Have fun!
http://www.webcasting.com/vc/

Brendan

This is the first time I've followed the Competition. Who's the favorite? (Or is there one!?)

[ May 31, 2001: Message edited by: wghornsby ]

I'm not sure. There seems to be a buzz about Oleksy Koltakov and Masaru Okada. I think that either have a decent chance of making it to the finals, both having won major competitions already.

Two choices which I thought were wrong wrong wrong - Sergeu Koudriakov and Maurizio Baglini. They were both playing with their fists!

This is relatively a modern trend. Of all the major competitions Cliburn is one of the few that allow for something like this. The judges can tell whether the competitors do a good job or not because their own compositions are not the only pieces they present. The judgement primarily resides on the 'core' programs in the competition. Thank God that most competitors still play the 'established' repertoire! IMHO, that's where real music is.

Back in 1958, Van Cliburn WON the first Tchaikovsky Competition. The competition repertoire was very strict and demanding. The only 'new' thing was Khachaturian's Toccata that was commissioned particularly for the competition, if I remember correctly. The purpose is to test the competitors' ability to learn new music and polish it up for performance level within, say, a week or so. Morton Gould did his 'Ghost Waltz' for one of the Cliburn Prof. Competition. I can see the value and purpose of this practice. Anyway, at the winner's recital Cliburn ventured to ease in a short encore of improvised 'The Moscow Nights'. That's almost like playing the Russian National Anthem to an already bowled over Russian audience. The whole thing was recorded. After this Cliburn had not only won the competition, he had also won the whole USSR (Russia)! Imagine that at the height of the Cold War! Van did the BEST ice-break job this world has ever known!

I disagree!

(Neat thread!)


To avoid accidentally misleading anyone: This is an ancient thread, from the depths of the earth's interior....

Me too ... although I didn't read the thread!

Good thing, Mark, that you are there to avoid accidentally misleading anyone.

Not sure why this was bumped, but it's cool seeing Dror Biran mentioned. He is my teacher now.

To avoid confusion, I'm locking this. Please don't bump ancient threads, thanks.