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.

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.