Zhang Haochen (final recital)

This is the second time I noticed the kid wiping off the piano keys with a cloth before he'd even started playing, and before anyone else had played before him. Why does he do that?

He started with Brahms' Variations on a Theme by Handel, and played it with a great deal of rhythm and alertness. I'm struck by the total lack 0f resemblance between this assured, strong-willed solo recitalist and the anonymous pianist he's turned into in a chamber or orchestral setting. Well, he gave a strong sense of each variation growing out of the original theme, and the different numbers seemed to progress logically one after the other, which is important when you're playing variations. Other than that, he also took pains to differentiate each number from the ones around it, and the final variation showed off his considerable skills as a contrapuntalist.

Unfortunately, Zhang's other recital item was Gaspard de la Nuit, and he prettified the piece, which is not only totally wrong, but was also a tactical error, since he can't match Bozhanov, Son, or Wu when it comes to beauty of tone. He had no sense of the piece's eroticism and violence. In "Ondine," he evoked the waters well enough but completely missed the alluring mermaid dragging sailors to their deaths. "Scarbo" was lacking the goblin's malevolent mischief. Without forward momentum, the work was reduced to an empty showpiece. All he had left was to show that he could handle the gigantic technical hurdles in the piece, and we already knew that he could. This was not a good selection for him.

Son Yeol-eum (chamber music)

The two Korean women both play the same quintet on the same evening, but the Takacs players find a much more agreeable collaborator in Son. She delivers an impassioned, fiery reading. I mentioned earlier that I liked Brahms played with force and emotion, but this is a much more refined performance than Kim's. Whether you prefer Son's version of the Brahms or Deljavan's depends on your inclinations. The Italian's is the tasteful one that'll appeal to purists, but Son's is the muscular one that gives a more visceral experience. It's good enough, in fact, to make me alter my list of finalists. That's coming up.

Also, I note that Son didn't use a page turner for her performance, but instead turned the pages of her own printed score. Not quite as impressive as Tsujii performing the quintet from memory, but I found it worth mentioning all the same.

Kim Kyu-yeon (chamber music)

She came out in the same simple black dress that she wore for the recital, and she played the Brahms quintet. She consistently swamped the Takacs players (noticeably sharper than they were in the afternoon session, by the way) with her full-bodied sound. You can see why she'd be an imposing concerto player, and it is nice to hear Brahms given the occasional volcanic treatment instead of the usual pretty, civilized performance. However, she used that sound too much, and though she had some spots where she made an effective chamber musician (especially in the second half of the second movement), this performance wasn't nearly as good as Deljavan's on Friday.

Alessandro Deljavan (chamber music)

The chamber music performances just seem to be getting better and better. Deljavan is, I'm told, an experienced chamber musician, and it certainly shows in his performance of the Brahms quintet. I would have thought his tone and temperament were better suited to the Schumann or the Dvorak, but he's excellent in the Brahms. His dynamics (volume, to readers who are less familiar with classical music) are always spot on, and the piece has a constant forward momentum that it didn't when Ran Dank was playing. In a spot like the opening of the second movement, where the piano has to lead the string players, Deljavan is smooth and confident. It seems like he's been practicing with the Takacs for years, not hours.

I've mentioned the difficulties of pianists adjusting to a chamber setting, but it's difficult for audiences and judges to evaluate the pianists, too, because these works are supposed to be collaborative efforts with every musician playing an equal part, delivering accompaniment or melody as needed. Yet in the context of this competition, we're supposed to focus on one player, no matter what their role is at any given time. I'm still working out how to keep both the overall quintet's performance and the pianist's individual performance in sight. I just hope the chamber performances tomorrow and Sunday are as good as the ones we've had lately.

Andrea Lam (semifinal recital)

I met her briefly this afternoon in the press room. She knew about our name being the same. Apparently she has an uncle who uses the name Lin. She seemed pretty nice.

She started with the same Haydn sonata that Vacatello played earlier and gave a performance every bit as good. For the first time, I felt like I got the musical jokes that Haydn typically embedded in his compositions. (I mean his piano stuff; I get the jokes in his symphonies.)

Then she played Brahms' Klavierstucke Op. 118. (The title simply means "piano pieces.") I must confess I have a soft spot for these compositions that Brahms wrote late in his life. Lam brought out all the warmth in these pieces, taking No. 2 (a personal favorite of mine) a little slower than I'd like, but playing No. 3 with truculence and bite. I forgot about the competition when she played these. The beauty of her playing made time seem to stop.

Then she played Stravinsky's Four Etudes Op. 7, effective showpieces from off the beaten path that started out like a cousin to Rachmaninov but ended as music that was recognizably by the same guy who wrote Petrouchka. Then she played White Lies for Lomax, and not unforeseeably did better with the American idiom than Bozhanov did. It still sounds like Gershwin more than it does like Muddy Waters, but it was fun to listen to all the same.

She ended with Ginastera's Suite de Danzas Criollas ("Suite of Creole Dances") and played them with tremendous rhythmic verve and beauty. Just a tremendous performance overall, and proof that her first-round performance was no fluke.

Ran Dank (chamber music)

The overwhelming impression I took away from his performance of Brahms' Piano Quintet can be boiled down to two words: Too loud. That's definitely what he was in the portions of the piece in which the piano was the main player, and his contributions were anonymous in the parts where the piano was a collaborator. At no point did he sound like a natural Brahms interpreter.

However, this might not be his fault. The Cliburn only makes four pieces available in the chamber music round, and Dank had to pick one. The Brahms may well have been the one that was the least bad fit for him. This plays into what I think the fundamental problem is with the chamber music portion of the competition. I'll have more on that in a later post.

As with the 2001 and 2005 competitions, the Takacs String Quartet played alongside the piano. with new violist Geraldine Walther. (Steve Cumming erroneously said she was the second violinist.) They were capable in their roles, but they couldn't rescue Ran Dank, nor was it their job to do that. They've done more than enough in the past to deserve the benefit of the doubt. Let's see how well they do with a pianist who's more suited to the work at hand.

Chetan Tierra

A native of Santa Cruz, Calif., Chetan Tierra started his program with Liszt's Ballade in B minor, and he was pointed and strong in the flashy and demonstrative parts of the piece, while bland and dutiful in the quieter, more introspective parts. This pattern repeated itself through the other selections in his recital. He followed it with Liszt's transcription of Schumann's "Widmung," which in its original form as a song is a radiant piece of work but as a piano work is rather buried in too much frippery. (Which is Liszt's fault more than the pianist's.)

You'd think that Tierra's strengths and weaknesses would make him a bad fit with Brahms, but he played the Variations on a Theme by Paganini, one of the German composer's more extroverted works, and he brought a welcome touch of vinegar to his playing that he didn't have in the Liszt pieces. He finished with Alberto Ginastera's Piano Sonata, the piece best suited to him. He did excellently with the Latin rhythms in the opening movement, and he finished strong. Let's see if it's enough to get him into the semis.

Interesting note: Tierra's a keyboardist in an alt-rock band.