EUROPEAN UNION AT THE PIANO
Hungarian, Italians win CMIM
Europe, Europe, Europe. Rather like old times.
Zoltán Fejérvári, 30, a Hungarian schooled largely in the Franz Liszt Academy of his native Budapest, has won first prize in the 15th Concours musical international de Montréal. He was followed by two Italians in a final round that included another European, two South Koreans and no contestants from the Americas.
Fejérvári leaves town with the $30,000 first prize offered by the city of Montreal and the $50,000 Joseph Rouleau Career Development Grant funded by the Azrieli Foundation. His victory was based on a bracing account of the Third Piano Concerto of his compatriot Béla Bartók, a relatively rare bird on the competition circuit.
Winner of the second prize is Giuseppe Guarrera, a 25-yearold trained partly in Berlin. His takeaway for a robust and forward-moving performance of Tchaikovsky’s much more familiar Piano Concerto No. 1 is $15,000, courtesy of Québecor.
Third prize goes to Stefano Andreatta, also 25, who ably contrasted the intimate and extrovert elements of Liszt’s Piano Concerto No. 2. While not exactly a rarity, this 22-minute fantasy is seldom heard in competitions. Andreatta earns $10,000 from Stingray Classica.
The finals took place Tuesday and Wednesday in the Maison symphonique with the demonstrably excellent OSM under Claus Peter Flor, who encouraged positive rather than deferential accompaniments. Pinpoint interplay with the woodwinds certainly did not hurt Fejérvári in the first two movements of the Bartók.
Unranked finalists (there is no fourth, fifth or sixth prize) did not disgrace themselves. Jinhyung Park, 21, produced a refined if sometimes languorous performance of Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2. If there were an award for delicate slow movements, he would surely be considered. His fellow South Korean Yejin Noh, 30, played brilliantly and with much rhythmic inflection in Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1. Unfortunately, her performance included an emphatic wrong note in the first cadenza and a memory lapse later in the opening movement. She was the only female to reach the Maison symphonique round.
The other unranked finalist was Albert Cano Smit, 20, who was playing under the flags of both Spain and the Netherlands despite his Swiss birth. He elicited many beauties from Brahms’s Piano Concerto No. 1, but stumbled early and often in this majestic score. Whatever his standing, the youngest contestant in the finals established himself as an artist to watch with a thoughtful semifinal recital last Saturday.
Keep in mind that the final round with orchestra was in essence a new competition. The nine judges (who are not allowed to confer with each other) ranked the concerto performances 1 to 6. The best possible score was 9, the worst 54.
All very sanitary, although it is conceivable that judges might consciously or unconsciously bear prior achievement in mind when ranking the concerto outings. Scores are not made public. (Where is WikiLeaks when you need it?)
Many players, including some who did not advance, worked wonders in the earlier rounds. Alexey Sychev, 28, of Russia surely delighted many in the semifinals with his fun-loving treatment of Ravel’s La Valse. Alas, certain subpar interludes in his Liszt Sonata in B Minor put him out of the running.
Noh’s interpretation of Stravinsky’s Three Movements from Petrushka was dazzling, and both Cano Smit and Fejérvári did well by playing Schumann’s unjustly neglected Humoreske. Fejérvári might have earned extra brownie points for programming unconventional solo works by Bartók and Janáček.
Fejérvári, Guarrera and Andreatta may not be the only prizewinners. Special awards, including honours for the best semifinal recital and the best performance of the compulsory Canadian work, were scheduled to be conferred Friday evening during the CMIM’s gala concert.
Teo Gheorghiu, the lone Canadian semifinalist, was the inevitable winner of the award for best Canadian, offered by the Bourbeau Foundation. Former Quebec finance minister André Bourbeau is the non-voting chairman of the CMIM jury.
CMIM artistic and general director Christiane LeBlanc probably spoke for many impressed onlookers (online as well as in person) in praising the calibre of this year’s scrimmage.
“Clearly the highest level of playing we have had in CMIM piano editions,” she said Thursday morning. “We heard some very rich musical personalities and true artists, which the jury detected and honoured.”
Visit concoursmontreal.ca for access to archived performances. The finals will be available for three months on demand at Medici.tv.
Yannick Nézet-Séguin and the Orchestre Métropolitain offer the perfect Mother’s Day outing: an afternoon at the Maison symphonique featuring Bruckner’s seldom-heard Symphony No. 1. YNS has chosen the revised Vienna version of 1891, in which the composer thickened the texture with brass doublings that remain a source of debate among Brucknerians.
What if your mother prefers the Linz version of 1866, with or without the revisions of 1877?
Well, send her an extra bunch of flowers, on me. Anyway, the concert comes with Nino Rota’s Harp Concerto (Valérie Milot is the soloist) and a new work, Perspectives, by Montreal-based Stacey Brown.
It also lands approximately in the middle of one of the Montreal maestro’s nuttier stretches of stick-waving. As you might have heard, Nézet-Séguin is in charge of Wagner’s The Flying Dutchman at the Metropolitan Opera, and was scheduled to be in New York to conduct the concluding performance on Friday — between sold-out Bruckner performances in Verdun (Thursday) and Ahuntsic (Saturday).
All this follows seven performances in seven days, including four concerts with the Philadelphia Orchestra in both Philadelphia and New York (Bernstein’s Symphony No. 1 “Jeremiah” and Schumann’s Second were the main items), two Dutchman performances and an appearance last Sunday in the Met’s 50thanniversary gala. His only “off ” day since May 3 was Wednesday, which one must assume was dedicated to rehearsal of the Bruckner.
Two “off ” days next week, Monday and Tuesday, are unlikely to be truly free, for time must be made to rehearse the OM’s contribution to the Bonne Fête Montréal concert Wednesday at the Bell Centre and, notably, Mahler’s Third, which receives four consecutive performances in Philadelphia starting Thursday. Far from a piece of cake, this symphony is the longest in the standard repertoire.
No performance is booked for May 22 through 25, but again, the lacunas are illusory, for our jet-setter must get himself to Shanghai by May 26 to start an Asian tour with the Philadelphia Orchestra in entirely new repertoire (selections from Beethoven’s The Creatures of Prometheus, Stravinsky’s Petrushka and Brahms’s Fourth), which one presumes will be rehearsed. This tour (which involves Beethoven’s Fifth and Ninth Symphonies among other items) includes an improbable stop in Ulan Bator as well as two concerts apiece in Beijing and Seoul.
Amid all this activity, YNS agreed to be named “ambassador” to the International Orchestra Conference of the Fédération internationale des musiciens (FIM) — an association of musicians’ unions headquartered in Paris — now taking place in Montreal. The schedule diplomatically includes the CMIM gala (with the OSM providing accompaniment) and Sunday’s aforementioned OM Bruckner bash.
Have a look at the brief FIM trailer at ioc.fim-musicians.org. It appears to be a mélange of the OM and OSM with their respective music directors. It would take more forensic work than I have time for to determine which (if either) orchestra supplied the soundtrack, which is drawn from Bruckner’s Sixth.
First down, Opéra de Montréal. The company is presenting a giant-screen simulcast of Puccini’s La Bohème at Molson Stadium on Saturday, May 27 at 7:30 p.m. Admission is free, but you must reserve your generaladmission tickets. This is the last performance of the run, which opens at Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier of Place des Arts on Saturday, May 20. Visit operademontreal.com for information.