Cliburn Competition: Quarterfinal Recital 6, June 6, 2022
—Wayne Lee Gay
Beethoven's Sonata No. 28, the first of his late period Sonatas, demands total command of mood changes. In the opening program of Monday evening's quarterfinal session, Korean pianist Changyong Shin, 28, succeeded in moving smoothly through the serene first movement into the rollicking second movement (albeit with some miscalculated heavy pedal at one point); thence to a captivatingly quiet third movement (marked con affeto) before once again producing high energy and high spirits in the final Allegro.
Shin further demonstrated his broad stylistic range in Rachmaninoff's Sonata No. 2, in the revised version of 1931; once again, badly planned pedaling marred an otherwise well-motivated, dramatic performance.
Russian Ilya Shmukler, 27, opened with an item from the Russian national repertoire, Nikolai Medtner's single-movement Sonata reminiscenza, composed as part of a collection titled Forgotten Melodies published immediately after the Revolution. As the title indicates, the mood is largely serene and nostalgic, with a scattering of agitato passages. The work as a whole showed a different side of Shmukler after a preliminary performance focused on showy virtuosity.
Debussy's Images, Book I, displayed yet another aspect of Shmukler's pianism, through the hypnotically calm "Reflections in the Water," the tranquil resonance of Hommage a Rameau, and the entirely abstract study in velocity of "Mouvements." Shmukler returned to the Russian repertoire and closed his bid for advancement with the glitter and passion of Scriabin's Chopinesque Fantasy, Opus 28.
The strongest performance of the evening came from Korean Yunchan Lim, at 18 the youngest competitor, who touched on three contrasting points of the repertoire with outstanding results in all three. The Ricercar à 3 from Bach's Musical Offering represents a totally esoteric approach to music, with three voices moving in complex, always equal counterpoint. Lim took a long pause onstage to retreat mentally from this entirely intellectual exercise before turning to the passionate late romanticism of Scriabin's Second Piano Sonata, moving easily from lyricism to thunderous passages. And then he shifted almost without pause to the virtuoso tour de force of his program, Beethoven's Eroica Variations. Humor and passion abound here, calling for a degree of artistic assertion, which Lim achieved with technical expertise and impressive emotional maturity.
