Cliburn 2022 competition finals: Day 4 is a wrap, with the last three concertos

FORT WORTH — The final round of the 2022 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition ran through June 18 at Bass Performance Hall, culminating in an awards ceremony the final evening.

Reviews of the performances are below, in day-by-day recaps.

Each of six finalists played two contrasting piano concertos, selected from lists, with the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra. Marin Alsop, who served as the competition’s jury chair, conducted. Three concertos were scheduled each evening Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday, with a 20-minute break after the second. The last three concertos were performed Saturday afternoon.

The FWSO had the daunting challenge of rehearsing and playing nine different concertos within the week. That was on top of a series of Mozart concertos, with conductor Nicholas McGegan, in the previous week’s semifinal round.

Final Round, Day 4

Saturday, June 18

For the last afternoon of concertos, I decided to sample the experience watchers and listeners around the world have been having online, via YouTube. The video was well done, the audio less so. Piano sound was natural, but violins sounded mixed in from a remote clothes closet, and principal flute and oboe were artificially highlighted in similarly dry perspective. Unlike previous final sessions, Alsop seemed to let the orchestra fully play out.

Before and between performances, the livestream included engaging discussions hosted by the Cliburn’s Buddy Bray, as well as pre-produced interviews with the competitors and others. You could even see backstage scenes as pianists and Alsop paced before going out to perform — and finalist Anna Geniushene repeatedly crossing herself before heading to the piano.

Dmytro Choni, a 28-year-old from tragically embattled Ukraine, served up spirited, shapely outer movements in Beethoven’s Concerto No. 3. The slow movement was gracious and tender. At his best, which is most of the time, Choni exudes freshness and honesty.

Uladzislau Khandohi, a 20-year-old from neighboring Belarus, delivered a classy, gracious Chopin Concerto No. 1, with the pearly tones admirable in his semifinal recital. The slow movement took a while to build up adequate momentum, but otherwise the music proceeded in natural paces.

Anna Geniushene, at 31 the oldest of the competitors this time, certainly evinced thorough training in her native Russia, with continuing work in London. A serious and substantial musician, she delivered a technically assured, boldly projected, sensibly inflected Tchaikovsky First Concerto. But was there anything really distinctive about it? Is it actually possible to say much original about this piece without distorting it?

In the first movement, she favored the “not too much” and “very majestically” qualifications to the Allegro marking, which left the coda a bit under-energized. But she set a brisk pace in the finale, with some hard-toned fortissimos. The frustrating audio production all but obliterated the important cello melody in the slow movement.

Final Round, Day 3

Friday, June 17

After two concerto evenings when Alsop kept shushing the FWSO to the point that its playing had no energy, she let the orchestra play out Friday night. But athletic conducting didn’t always yield precise coordination with the pianists.

Clayton Stephenson, the sole American in the finals and a charismatic figure onstage, is clearly an audience favorite. But his Rachmaninoff Third Concerto needed more work and contemplation — even some more accuracy.

A rather lifeless opening announced phrases with no particular shape or direction. Whether soft or loud, the effect was a bit like a high-res color photo reproduced on a dot printer. (Remember those?) Stephenson is an accomplished pianist with great potential, but he’s still young, with room to grow. I’d like to hear him in another four years ― at the next Cliburn.

Ilya Shmukler was clearly out to make an impression in the Grieg Piano Concerto, and he did. Every dynamic contrast, every expressive gesture, was set in either italics or boldface — if not flashing neon. Subtlety is not his forte. Shmukler worked very hard, working up quite a sweat. But surely this of all concertos wants a certain lightness of touch that eluded him.

Yunchan Lim‘s stunning Liszt Transcendental Etudes and deft Mozart and Beethoven concertos earlier in the competition prompted high expectations for the evening’s second Rachmaninoff Third. And it started with great promise: a properly mobile opening tempo, phrases lovingly tapered, the music always going somewhere. Even when the pace got quite generously stretched for expressive effect, one always sensed the underlying urgency.

But once the fortissimos started to come, Lim resorted to a hard touch that produced too many harsh, metallic crashes from the American Steinway. Did he not realize how ugly those sounds were — in Rachmaninoff, of all composers? And the fastest tempo I’ve ever heard in the finale lent not excitement but breathlessness. Just because you can play it that fast — and he’s got formidable technique — doesn’t mean you should.

Much about Lim’s playing suggests a depth hard to imagine in a mere 18-year-old, but this “Rach 3″ betrayed some immaturity.

Final Round, Day 2

Wednesday, June 15

Current geopolitics have shadowed this year’s Cliburn, and Wednesday’s concert inadvertently lined up pianists from three countries tragically in the news lately: Ukraine (Dmytro Choni), Russia (Anna Geniushene) and Belarus (Uladzislau Khandohi). But contestants from the three countries reportedly know each other from the international competition circuit and have been seen sitting together and conversing — in Russian — about musical issues.

Cliburn president and CEO Jacques Marquis told Dallas Morning News reporter Tim Diovanni that these three pianists were scheduled on the same evening purely as part of spacing out the six finalists and the demands of their two concertos.

Uladzislau Khandohi evinced some real magic in his semifinal round recital, prompting high expectations for his Rachmaninoff Second Concerto. But a lifeless opening — has he never heard the bold surge of Rachmaninoff’s own 1929 recording? — presaged self indulgence to come.

He could dispatch the flashy stuff with confidence and produce big sounds without ever banging. But the middle movement was so slow that it seemed on life support, its pulse further sapped by overdone “expression” here and there. It was more of the same in reflective passages in the outer movements. Rachmaninoff’s music is romantic enough; it wants sensitivity from its performers, but not sentimentality.

A recurrent issue in the first six concerto performances this time has been a lack of overview, of understanding — and projecting — how parts of pieces connect into coherent wholes. Khandohi’s Rachmaninoff was a case in point.

Once again, conductor Marin Alsop kept shushing the orchestra, again and again, when Rachmaninoff’s glorious orchestral writing needed to come to the fore. Sometimes it made no sense at all.

Is she judging by the webcasts? Well, audio engineers can create whatever balances they want with multiple microphones and a mixing board.

Was she trying to give the pianists an extra sonic spotlight? Sorry, but they need to experience real world orchestral balances here.

I’ve heard that someone sat out in the audience in some rehearsals to give feedback on balances. Well, it wasn’t good advice. Again, I’ll note that sound absorbent velvet curtains exposed on side walls inside Bass Hall dry out the orchestra’s sound. In nearly 23 years of attending concerts there, I don’t remember ever before seeing them for an orchestra concert.

Anna Geniushene’s Beethoven Concerto No. 1 was a refreshing change. She supplied a beautiful, glowing tone and tapered phrases quite nicely. Gentle cascades were things of wonder. She didn’t shy away from Beethoven’s mischievous accents here and there, but the first movement cadenza got a little too rowdy and the finale would have been better a notch slower.

The music was always going somewhere, though, and you got the feeling that Geniushene was genuinely enjoying herself more than trying to impress. Alsop helped by letting the orchestra — smaller, of course, than in the Rachmaninoff — play out with less inhibition.

Dmytro Choni supplied some of the most sophisticated playing in the semifinal recitals, and his Mozart concerto (No. 20) had a naturalness that eluded most others in the round. Hopes for a compelling Prokofiev Third Concerto, though, were only intermittently realized.

He’s got the fingers to deliver the virtuoso stuff, but it tended to be spun out as if by machine, with too little sense of shape or significance. (In fast music, keeping downbeats at least somewhere back in the mind helps give it shape — and control.)

Some reflective episodes were lovingly caressed. But a slow variation in the second movement was so slow and directionless that the music’s thread was broken, as it was in the finale’s passage with birdlike chirps from both piano and winds.

Here, too, at least, Alsop let the orchestra play out more than she had in the Rachmaninoff.

Final Round, Day 1

Tuesday, June 14

What the Cliburn rewards above all is sheer endurance. And after playing three solo recitals and a Mozart concerto over the last week and a half, it was understandable that the three pianists Tuesday weren’t at their best.

But neither was conductor Marin Alsop, who, despite extensive experience in concert halls, consistently misjudged balances on Tuesday. She kept shushing the orchestra when it needed to play out. It was sometimes hard to concentrate on the pianists because I was struggling to hear important orchestral parts. Even allowing for minimal rehearsal time for so many different concertos, there were also more slips in coordination that you might expect.

Again, too, I wondered at the decision to have all those sound-absorbent curtains drawn over Bass Hall’s side walls. Never until this year’s Cliburn have I seen that at an orchestra concert, and it noticeably dries out the orchestra sound.

But the large and enthusiastic audience rewarded every performance with a loud ovation.

Yunchan Lim. The youngest of this year’s competitors gave a stunning, and amazingly mature, performance of the complete Liszt Transcendental Etudes in the semifinal round. But his Mozart concerto (No. 22), while tasteful, was a bit too low-energy.

On Tuesday, his alert entrance in the Beethoven Third Concerto prompted good expectations. He phrased nicely, but both here and in the slow movement I somehow missed a sense of overview. It didn’t help that the first movement cadenza was played with a fury more Lisztian than Beethovenian, and the slow movement was slow to a fault.

Alsop kept winds and brasses too muted in balances, sometimes shushing even violins when they had leading lines.

Ilya Shmukler has the sturdy fingers you expect from his Russian pianistic tradition, and the powerful projection, but his fingers weren’t always reliable in some of the biggest passages of the Rachmaninoff Third Concerto.

I don’t understand why so many modern pianists start this concerto at such a relaxed pace, when Rachmaninoff’s own 1939-40 recording shows he wanted real urgency here. Shmukler’s laid-back opening made the ensuing “piu mosso” tempo upgrade more jarring than it needs to be. He tore through the larger of the two first-movement cadenzas Rachmaninoff supplied for the concerto, so fast that it couldn’t actually make an effect, until he slowed way down.

Alsop started the slow movement just slowly enough that it lacked direction. At the climaxes, Shmukler’s over-prominent left hand muddied up the tunes. And he rushed a bit in the finale. Sometimes backing off the tempo makes the effect far more exciting. As with Lim’s Beethoven, this Rachmaninoff seemed a collection of events that never quite came together in a compelling narrative.

Again, in so much glorious orchestral writing, the FWSO was kept too far in the background.

Clayton Stephenson, the sole American in the finals, is a charismatic presence onstage, and it was good to have the Gershwin Concerto programmed for the first time anyone could remember at the Cliburn. Alsop at least let the orchestra play out in a few places, but too many others were still overly tamped down. It was weird to see the slap of the percussion “whip” sticks, but not hear it.

Stephenson made a dreamy entrance in the concerto, with a lot of rhythmic freedom. Whether that’s appropriate for a composer rooted in jazz is a discussion for another day. His was certainly a personable account of the concerto, playful when it should be. Yet again the music seemed to want a more coherent overall conception, but a more sympathetic orchestral collaboration would have helped. The finale would have been even more exciting if a notch slower.

Here’s the schedule for the final day:

Saturday, June 18, 3 p.m.

Dmytro Choni, Ukraine, 28. Beethoven: Concerto No. 3

Uladzislau Khandohi, Belarus, 20. Chopin: Concerto No. 1

Anna Geniushene, Russia, 31. Tchaikovsky: Concerto No. 1

Saturday, June 18, 7 p.m.

Awards ceremony

Details

All performances are being livestreamed free at cliburn.org, cliburn.medici.tv and youtube.com/thecliburn. 4K HDR video and surround-sound audio are available via subscription at hyfi.live/vancliburn.

For performance tickets and information on livestreams, call 817-738-6536 or go to cliburn.org. Performances are at Bass Performance Hall, Fourth and Commerce in Fort Worth.