The Van Cliburn International Piano Competition may have attracted more than its fair share of opprobrium but the tenth event held last year will surely be seen as a triumphant riposte, a time when at least three pianists trailed clouds of glory. The lion’s share on Harmonia Mundi’s excellently presented discs goes to Jon Nakamatsu, the American first prize-winner who instead of treading a familiar primrose path to success studied quietly with one teacher for 21 years, graduated from Stanford rather than the Juilliard and taught German locally before stepping into the limelight. Such food for thought is reflected in his exceptional catholicity of repertoire and in performances sufficiently personal and absorbing to transcend mere competition expertise.
A suitable burst of applause launches him on his intricate journey through Stravinsky’s early, ultra-romantic Etudes and whether in the leaping polyrhythmic figuration of No. 2, the crepuscular dreams of No. 3 or the mischievous moto perpetuo chase of No. 4 (a piece Moiseiwitsch made so peculiarly his own) his performances are gloriously deft and stylistically assured. Brahms’s early, quasi-orchestral opulence in his C major Sonata is a far cry from such scintillation. But for Nakamatsu variety is the spice of musical life and his reading quickly rises from its initial lethargy, expanding with true rhetorical grandeur and, in Brahms’s most lyrically assuaging pages (try the Andante’s con espressione close at 7'24''), his playing takes on a truly magical, communing ease and finesse. The Andante spianato, too, from Chopin’s Op. 22 could hardly be more beguilingly intimate, and time and again in the following Polonaise he tells us that what is so often offered as tinsel is surely pure gold, something far removed from a more traditional and extrovert convention. William Bolcom’s Nine Bagatelles, commissioned for the Competition, are witty sophistications calling for exceptionally rapid reflexes, both musical and technical, and once again Nakamatsu’s brilliantly engaged performance paints a portrait of a remarkably wide-ranging and stylish artist.
Then there is Aviram Reichert from Israel, winner of the bronze medal and a victor in several competitions elsewhere (Seoul, Tokyo and Epinal). You may find his performance of Schubert’s A minor Sonata, D784 overly judicious for such an iconoclastic work (a tendency to smooth out accents or to differentiate insufficiently between dynamic extremes, between piano and fortissimo), yet his musicianship shines through in every bar, and in the finale’s phantom triplet chase he is more than equal to every demand. Hauntingly elegiac in Chopin’s C minor Nocturne he also rises to great heights of declamation in the central octave uproar, before expanding into full-blooded expressive force in the concluding doppio movimento.
Finally, Yakov Kasman, a Russian pianist surely destined to set the world’s musical centres alight with his passion and charisma. For him, a true Russian, the emotional maelstrom of Rachmaninov’s First Sonata is an opportunity to show the composer as a master of romantic polyphony as he voices and textures Rachmaninov’s storms and calms with a pianism that epitomizes the finest Russian artistry. He can withdraw into the Lento’s shadow-land (or its final starry apogee) or hurl himself at the finale’s savagely churning momentum with equal resource. Yet he is no less a master of Schumann’s schizophrenic romanticism, his Merlin touch creating an inimitable play of light and shade in the B minor Allegro. You may quibble over his oddly faint-hearted, throwaway conclusion (fortissimo and double sforzando?) but elsewhere his rubato is as teasing and capricious as a butterfly’s flight, with an unforgettable relish of Schumann’s sudden modernity (the un poco piu lento just before the sunset close). I have rarely heard a more free-spirited pianist in any competition, one more willing to stake his all on the inspiration of the moment.
Applause is realistically rather than irritatingly maintained and the recordings, taken live from the competition, are admirable considering the tricky circumstances. And so we can look forward to more, to much more, from three exceptionally gifted artists, those who in Van Cliburn’s wise words now have, quite simply, an opportunity.'