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.

Wu Di

Like So-yeon Lee before her, Di Wu places her given name ahead of her surname, and she turned out to be the best colorist we've heard so far. (Even better than Spencer Myer, a frightening thought.) The first of many Chinese pianists here, she came out in a nifty purple and pink dress. She started with yet another Haydn performance that left me unmoved, although the other critics in the press room were raving about it. She won me over with her version of Ravel's Miroirs, evoking the waters in "Une barque sur l'ocean" with astonishing facility and capturing the Spanish flavor of "Alborada del gracioso". What is it with these Asian pianists and their affinity for Spanish music, by the way?

Her final piece, Liszt's transcription of the waltz from Gounod's Faust, struck me as a bit too calculated in its attempt to end her program with a traditional showpiece; the waltz rhythm in the opening and closing sections was galumphing. Still, she did take those big octaves very well, and the middle section of the piece gave her a great chance to do some exquisite filigree work in the upper register of the instrument. You can make a career out of being a cool, objective colorist if you're really, really good at it, and Di Wu is really, really good at it. She reminds me of the late Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli, only we can assume that she won't be as flaky as he was. Very encouraging.

Eduard Kunz

I've said it before: The last slot on the first day of the competition is the worst time for a Cliburn contestant to go. It's Friday, most people in the audience have been at work all day, and they've expended the last of their mental energy on the evening's first two players. Indeed, the hall emptied out significantly after Spencer Myer's performance. The ones who stayed to hear Eduard Kunz, however, seemed glad that they did, and so was I.

The Russian started off with five Scarlatti sonatas, and while he was playing them, I realized something about Scarlatti. The composer, wildly popular in his own lifetime, was obscure for centuries until Vladimir Horowitz started playing his sonatas. Scarlatti's music never soars and indeed seldom raises its voice, probably because of the limitations of keyboard instruments in his day. Yet he finds ways to express many different moods, from pathos to hilarity, and he does it in a Latin-inflected style all his own. (Scarlatti was Italian, but he was music teacher and composer to the royal families of Portugal and Spain.) A well-chosen selection of Scarlatti sonatas is a great way for a pianist to show what he can do. Glenn Gould once dismissed Scarlatti's sonatas as "popcorn." He was wrong. They make an excellent appetizer.

Anyway, Kunz did pretty well with his Scarlatti choices. Then he played one of Haydn's sonatas. I must confess I've never found a way in when it comes to Haydn's keyboard music, and this performance didn't present me with one. What really impressed me and the rest of the audience was the pianist's last two choices. He played Busoni's transcription of Bach's Chaconne in D minor, in which the 19th-century German-Italian pianist/composer turned a Baroque piece into a monumental Romantic Era work. (If you've never heard Ferruccio Busoni, seek out his music. It's a bit hard to find, but it often sounds like it was written last Wednesday. Not bad for a composer who died in 1924.) Kunz' rendition was massive but never impersonal, and loud without resorting to banging on the keys. Indeed, Kunz did exert himself so forcefully that he pushed himself back from the piano several inches, coming perilously close to falling off the bench. Yet he still managed to produce huge waves of sound. His final piece was Siloti's transcription of Bach's B minor Prelude, which turned Bach into something sounding like Rachmaninov.

This was when Kunz' programming choices became clear to me. He started with Baroque music and then chose the last two pieces not just to prove that he could sound good in other idioms, but also to show how Bach's genius bled into the fabric of 19th-century Romanticism, emphasizing the continuity between centuries. It was inspired, bold, creative, and ambitious. Most of all, it worked.

So, out of six pianists on the first day, I've identified three who I'd like to see in the semis: Beus, Myer, and Kunz. (Weird how they all have four letters in their last name.) If the competition continues at this rate, the first round will be a smashing success.