Cliburn Competition: Semifinal Concert 9 (Recital), June 12, 2022

—Wayne Lee Gay

Opening his semifinal recital Sunday night, Korean Jinhyung Park, 25, effectively communicated Prokofiev's grand architectural scheme in that composer's Sixth Sonata. In his pilgrimage through the four movements, Park created a wide palette of piano textures: dark, sometimes brutal timbres in the first (appropriate in a work composed under the twin shadows of Stalinism and Hitlerism); assertively jolly (possibly ironically so) in the second; and with interwoven lyricism in the third. The fourth epitomized the wide-ranging world of ideas within the work.

This listener had some reservations about Park's approach to high romanticism based on his sometimes ill-conceived strategy in an earlier performance of Mendelssohn. These concerns were ameliorated as Park introduced an elegant singing tone to open Schumann's "Des Abends" ("Evening"), the first movement of that composer's Fantasiestücke, Opus 12. The entire set of eight descriptively titled works is built around the conflicts of Schumann's two internal alter egos, the classicist Eusebius and the instinctive romanticist Florestan. Both get their own separate movements, and both come together on occasion. Park winningly navigated a variety of moods and touches in a cycle in which the challenges are more emotional than physical.

Russian Anna Geniushene, at 31 the oldest competitor (and the only woman to reach the semifinal round), produced an impressively balanced program of three style periods with works of Beethoven, Liszt, and Prokofiev. Beethoven's Bagatelles, Opus 33, are not a work one might expect at a competition, but they proved a superb showcase for Geinshene: her Beethoven is distinctly Russian, personal, and intense in the manner of great interpreters of Beethoven of the past.

Liszt has been the favorite composer in this competition; Geniushene presented a rarely heard item from that composer's prolific output of operatic paraphrases and transcriptions. The paraphrase of melodies from Verdi's Aïda offered a brilliant high point as well as a stunningly quiet close.

Prokofiev's three "War Sonatas" from the dark early 1940s (Nos. 6, 7, and 8 in the Prokofiev canon) have also been a mainstay of this competition. Geniushene closed the semifinal round with a glorious reading of the Eighth, opening with a hypnotic light touch in a first movement that journeys forward to an agonized cadence. She then produced gentle lyricism in the second movement, providing a fine frame for the furious Finale. The "War Sonatas" belong to the world, but, even in these troubled times, Russian Geniushene delivered a performance of rare devotion and insight.