Cliburn Competition: Preliminary Recital III, June 2, 2022
—Wayne Lee Gay
The first two performers of Thursday evening’s session provided a study in contrasts: two 23-year-old pianists, one from China, the other from Russia—and both currently resident in the U.S.
Tianxu An opened with the darkly dissonant Chaconne of the 90-year-old Russian composer Sofia Gubaidulina. Here An established himself as a deeply serious artist in possession of steel-fingered technique and major muscle power, and with the ability to draw an audience into a work that offers little in terms of lyricism and glitter, but much in thoughtful profundity.
He followed up with Mendelssohn’s Variations serieuses, a nineteenth-century work that corresponds across the centuries to the Gubaidulina piece: both works are essentially variations, and both aim for a profound effect. An performs just this side of rigidity, with an almost military precision, while still nurturing the early romantic lyricism of the Mendelssohn, and effectively locating the ebb and flow to build momentum in the work. Likewise, he was able to apply his powerful technique to the optimism of Hough’s Fanfare Toccata. An closed with Liszt’s Mephisto Waltz No. 1, a predictably effective crowd pleaser, and further proof of An’s ability to produce simultaneous speed and pianistic muscularity.
In contrast, Arseniy Gusev applied his sure technique to a notably fluid approach. He opened by reaching back to the pre-Bach keyboard repertoire ignored by most pianists, with “Lady Salisbury’s Pavane” by the late Renaissance English master Orlando Gibbons. He segued from there to the early German baroque with a spritely Aria in D minor by Johann Jakob Froberger. Gusev kept the flow moving forward into the romantic era with the second performance of the day of Franck’s Prelude, Chorale and Fugue, gently and inexorably pushing toward the final burst of sunlight in the shift from B minor to B major. After Hough’s Fanfare Toccata, Gusev closed with the brilliant flightiness of Scriabin’s “White Mass” Sonata No. 7, an apt bookend to a performance of that composer’s “Black Mass” Sonata at the start of the day.
Masaya Kamei of Japan closed the session with a very strong bid for advancement in the competition, opening with the day’s most aggressive performance of Hough’s Fanfare Toccata. He moved from there to a fleet-fingered rendition of Chopin’s Etude in A minor, a study in chromatic scale-work, and followed with a solid delivery of Berg’s Sonata, a pivotal work in the birth of twentieth-century modernism from 1910.
Liszt was the most popular composer of the day, represented by four major works in various sessions; Kamei joined the crowd with an impressive performance of that composer’s Reminiscences de Norma, a monumental fantasy featuring melodies from Bellini’s opera, decorated with Liszt’s favorite piano figurations. Breaking from the standard competition favorites from Liszt’s canon, Kamei kept the audience in his grip with a compelling journey through this catalog of virtuoso gestures, delivered with grand drama in one of the day’s most memorable performances.
