Cliburn Competition: Quarterfinal Recital 4, June 6, 2022
—Wayne Lee Gay
Three great solo piano cycles, by Ravel, Chopin, and Schumann, enlivened Monday morning's session at the Van Cliburn Concert Hall. But first, 28-year-old Japanese-French pianist Marcel Tadokoro opened his program with "La visonnaire" ("The Visionary") of François Couperin, a favorite composer of Louis XIV. Tadokoro, who has made a project of performing music of the French baroque in this competition, balanced the delicacy inherent in this work (originally for harpsichord) with the assertiveness required on the modern piano in a concert hall.
Early twentieth-century Polish composer Karol Szymanowski's Variations in B-flat minor provided rarely performed but appealing music, as well as a chance for Tadokoro to display a wide range of touches and technical skills.
Tadokoro then turned to the first of the morning's iconic cycles, with Ravel's Gaspard de la nuit, the three sections of which describe, respectively, a seductive female sea creature who lures men to their death, a corpse hanging on a gallows, and an evil goblin. From these images, Ravel created some of the most beautiful and difficult piano music in the repertoire. Tadokoro responded by successfully producing the roiling waves of the first, the somber rhythm of the second, and the notorious technical gymnastics of the third (sometimes regarded as the most difficult work in the solo piano repertoire).
Italian Federico Gad Crema, 23, devoted his entire program to the complete Preludes, Opus 28, of Chopin. Is there anything new to show audiences about this masterpiece? Probably not. Crema gave a solid performance that generally needed a stronger melody line. This weakness resulted in some balance issues—for instance, in No. 3 in G, in which the left hand arpeggios swallowed the right hand melody.
Korean Honggi Kim, 20, presented the strongest performance of the morning with Schumann's monumental cycle Carnaval. Years before Freud, Schumann created this psychologically revealing dream of a festival including musical friends (such as Chopin), fictional characters, at least two of Schumann's female romantic interests, and separate personified aspects of his own personality—all of it eventually joining together in a grand march to banish artistic Philistinism. Kim moved convincingly from character to character, from whispers to serenity to exuberance, with a fearless range of colors and touches.
The music of Liszt (with whom Schumann shared a sometimes uneasy friendship) closed Kim's program in the form of that composer's Hungarian Rhapsody No. 9, "The Carnival at Pest." Kim neatly tossed off Liszt's complex pianistic flourishes on Italian and Hungarian folk tunes.
