Cliburn Competition: Preliminary Recital 5, June 3, 2022
—Wayne Lee Gay
Albert Cano Smit, who identifies as Spanish and Dutch, threw the dice on his preliminary program with the ultimate esoteric repertoire choice: seven movements from J.S. Bach’s unfinished Art of the Fugue, a set of exercises in counterpoint. Here, Bach arranged notes sublimely, in a sort of pure music for the mind, demonstrating various contrapuntal techniques.
Cano Smit selected a set of movements from the work, arranged into a compelling cycle, meanwhile choosing a variety of tempos and moods, from quasi-sacred to lighthearted and dance-like, closing this impressively intellectual (and well-performed) selection with a noble cadence.
He moved on to the Spanish impressionism of Albeniz, with the calm Evocación of the Spanish landscape and the gentle liveliness of El Puerto, before closing with the Hough Fanfare Toccata. He notably chose not to program an extended technical showpiece.
Japanese pianist Yuki Yoshimi likewise took a high-risk approach to repertoire, putting all his eggs (to indulge another cliché) in the basket of Liszt’s mammoth Sonata in B minor. He chose to place the required performance of Hough’s Fanfare Toccata before the Liszt, and performed the Hough work with a brilliant singing tone that set his version somewhat ahead of the other generally excellent performances of the piece. This proved to bode well, for Yoshimi followed up with a hypnotically compelling rendition of the venerable Sonata: from his lingering molto rubato delivery of the opening phrase to the whispered final low B, Yoshimi demonstrated powerful technique and intellectual imagination, with crystalline scales, a gorgeous range of tones, and particularly fine pedal technique.
After opening with the Hough Fanfare Toccata, Russian pianist Vitaly Starikov presented the first Debussy performance of the competition in the form of that composer’s three-movement Estampes. The first movement, “Pagodas,” is marked “almost without nuance,” a box Starikov checked; “Evening in Granada” and “Gardens in the Rain” passed equally with solid, competent performances. Starikov displayed a strong set of technical skills in Liszt’s transcription of the Overture to Wagner’s Tannhäuser, but often seemed directionless, with unbalanced lines within the textures.
Xiaolu Zang of China proved to be the right pianist performing the wrong piece: Schumann’s “Humoreske” surely ranks as one of that composer’s weakest creations: disjointed, with some interesting moments that never quite rise to Schumann’s best level. Zang may have selected the work to display his wide range of technique and a fine singing tone; unfortunately, the Humoresque always seems just about to end and feels to the listener like it never will. Zang was much more successful in the brilliant syncopations of Scriabin’s Fourth Sonata and Hough’s Fanfare Toccata.
