The Cliburn: Judging the Judges' Verdict

On June 7, the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition crowned Aristo Sham of Hong Kong as gold medalist in Fort Worth. The silver and bronze medals went to Vitaly Starikov of Israel/Russia and Evren Ozel of the U.S. respectively.

The stakes are high at one of the world’s highest-visibility classical music competitions: Pianists between 18 and 30 compete for cash prizes to $100,000, plus three years of concert management and bookings for top winners. This year’s competition attracted 340 applicants, from which 28 emerged to participate live in Texas.

A final six emerged in the second of the two-week playoffs, having performed solo recitals in each of the previous rounds and a Mozart piano concerto in the semifinal round. Each of the six then played two non-Mozart concertos with the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra, led by Marin Alsop.

Scott Cantrell, former staff classical music critic for The Dallas Morning News, has covered all or some part of eight of the quadrennial competitions since 1997. “The Cliburn,” he writes, “is as much a test of endurance… as of musicianship…. It’s unlikely that any pianist on the concert circuit would play three completely different solo recital programs and three different piano concertos within the span of two and a half weeks.”

In his opinion Sham was "the most consistently authoritative…. [And] thoroughly deserved the first-prize gold medal.” His rendition of the Mendelssohn G minor Concerto was “a marvel of deft characterization and sophisticated interaction,” while his Brahms Second Concerto possessed “a nobility rarely heard from any pianist.”

In the semifinal round, silver medalist Starikov played the Chopin Op. 25 Etudes “poetically” and “managed the tensions of Prokofiev’s Seventh Sonata with impressive strategy.” But his final round performances of the Schumann concerto and Bartók’s Second Concerto left Cantrell wondering at the jury’s decision to include him as a finalist. “Neither of Starikov’s concerto performances convinced me,” he concluded.

Cantrell confessed to “mixed feelings” about bronze medalist Ozel. “A well-equipped and communicative pianist,” Ozel’s “deftly inflected Beethoven Fourth Concerto was one of the final round’s highlights.” But Cantrell wanted “more energy, more momentum” from the soloist in the first movement of the Tchaikovsky First Concerto and thought that “Ozel was sometimes too prominent when the orchestra had more important material.”

Of the other finalists, Cantrell judged that Philipp Lynov’s performance of the Prokofiev Second Concerto “sounded more desperate than exciting.” Craig Johnson’s rendition of the same concerto was “technically secure, [but] sounded as if it needed to be lived with a little longer.” Angel Stanislav Wang, at 22 the youngest of the finalists, possessed “real potential,” but his Rachmaninoff Third possessed “too much banging.”

In the end, Cantrell writes, “The jury’s choice of the six finalists made sense on the basis of what I’d heard in the semifinal recitals.”

Dallas Morning News