Chu-Fang Huang
Chinese pianist crowned 2005 top-prize winner
Sunday, August 07, 2005
Donald Rosenberg
Plain Dealer Music Critic
Chu-Fang Huang, a 23-year-old Chinese pianist who studied at the Juilliard School and the Curtis Institute of Music, was named first-prize winner of the 2005 Cleveland International Piano Competition after the final round of concertos with the Cleveland Orchestra on Saturday at Severance Hall.
Huang won a cash award of $50,000, the largest such prize for a solo piano competition in the world. In addition, she will give a New York recital at Lincoln Center's Alice Tully Hall in November, make a compact disc recording on the Naxos label and appear in more than 40 concert engagements under management of the competition for the coming two years. Second prize of $25,000 went to Sergey Kuznetsov (Russia). The third prize of $15,000 was won by Stanislav Khristenko (Russia) and the fourth of $10,000 by Spencer Myer (United States). Ian Hobson, chairman of the jury, also announced the winners of special prizes. Myer won both the Cairns Family American Prize ($1,500) and the Contemporary Prize ($1,500). Grace Fong (United States), a graduate of the Cleveland Institute of Music, received the Baroque Prize ($2,000). Huang won the Chopin Prize ($2,000) and the Beethoven Prize ($2,000), and Hong Xu (China) won the Mozart Prize ($1,500).
The four semi-finalists who didn't advance to the finals - Fong, Xu, Andrius Zlabys (Lithuania), Xiang Zou (China) - each will receive $2,000, while the remaining contestants who didn't advance past the first two rounds each will receive $1,000. The four top prize winners will perform selections from their competition repertoire during the awards ceremony at 2 p.m. today at Severance Hall. For tickets, call 216-231-1111.
Finalists span piano's small world
Friday, August 05, 2005
Wilma Salisbury
Plain Dealer Music Critic
The four finalists in the Cleveland International Piano Competition come from diverse cultures. Their musical training took them along different paths. Their personalities - at the keyboard and offstage - are strongly individual. Yet, all share the thrill of playing a concerto with the Cleveland Orchestra during the competition's final round tonight and Saturday at Severance Hall, and each praises the high musical standards and professional management of the 12-day event.
The finalists - Sergei Kuznetsov, 27, of Russia; Spencer Myer, 26, of the United States; Chu- Fang Huang, 23, of China; and Stanislav Khristenko, 21, of Ukraine - talked about their backgrounds and experiences Thursday at Severance Hall. Later in the day, they were scheduled to meet with Jahja Ling, who will conduct the concerto performances.
"This is a well-known competition. The winners are treated well," said Huang, who was a semifinalist two years ago in Cleveland and a finalist at the 2005 Van Cliburn Competition in Fort Worth, Texas. Huang began studying piano at age 7 in Shenyang, China. At the time, only children who were serious about the piano took lessons there, because the instrument was too expensive for their parents to purchase.
"Most people took violin," she said. "But now, 1 million people are studying piano in Shenyang because it's affordable." Huang came to the United States with her father at age 15. She enrolled in an arts high school near Los Angeles, then earned an undergraduate degree at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. She now lives there and commutes to New York, where she is completing a master's degree at the Juilliard School. So many Chinese pianists do well in international competitions, "because we're focus- minded and we're good," she said, joking that, "If we don't practice, our parents beat us up."
Finalists give moving performances
Young pianists throw their whole bodies into the competition
Friday, August 05, 2005
James F. Sweeney
Plain Dealer Reporter
From where the audience sits, playing in the Cleveland Inter- national Piano Competition is an elegant thing, all flourishes and evening wear matched with a gleaming black Stein- way. On stage, however, it reveals itself to be a gasping, sweaty, exhausting thing. The young pianists in Tuesday's and Wednesday's semi-finals at the Cleveland Play House's Bolton Theatre played with more than their fingers on the keys and their feet on the pedals. They threw their arms, shoulders, legs, backs and butts into it.
They played with their eyes open in alarm and squeezed shut in sorrow, heads thrown back in rapture and lowered to a foot above the keys, with grimaces and pouts, sensuous swayings and electric convulsions.
When Hong Xu finished his hour of playing Tuesday afternoon, he had to push himself up from the piano bench with his left hand. Sweat soaked his long- sleeved white shirt and he swayed on his feet. Tears came to his eyes as he faced the judges and audience and he placed his right hand over his heart before leaving the stage.
Chu-Fang Huang looked as if she was going to cry when she began playing the first of four Debussy preludes Wednesday evening. With her eyes closed and head moving in sad little shakes, she mouthed notes silently (ba da ba da ba da ba da). Later, in a more exuberant section, she threw her head back and bared her teeth.
The piano wrings it out of the players. It is their partner, their tool, their medium and, sometimes, their adversary. The Steinway grands they played are massive, 9 feet long and weigh half a ton. The piano yawns open before the pianist, the keys gleaming like teeth in the lights, the propped-up lid like a black jaw waiting to close.
Unlike violins and oboes, the piano does not usually travel with the pianist. Rather, it waits for them in the concert hall. It is on stage before the pianist arrives and after the pianist leaves. Though it's on wheels, its sheer size and presence makes it look like something permanent that has seen hundreds of musicians come and go and has outlasted them all.
Viewed from the wings where the pianists wait to go on, the piano glows under the lights like a black heart. Some pianists look as if they were wrestling the piano; others look as if they were seducing it. The musicians said that when they are playing well, skin, bone and tendon join with spruce, brass and steel to become one instrument. "You shouldn't feel any distinction. It's all melted together," Xiang Zou said.
Huang said the piano, all 1,000 pounds of it, feels like an extension of her delicate fingers. The pianist is seated, but the width of the keyboard and the music's tremendous variations in sound and volume demand the effort of an athlete.
Much of the pianist's bouncing and hunching is rooted in technique. When playing fortissimo, a pianist, particularly a smaller one, needs the back and leg muscles to get a big sound without making it harsh. Likewise, loose wrists and a languid motion allow fingers to stroke the keys, producing a softer, delicate sound.
Pianists also are aware of how they appear to judges and the audience. Audiences like a little flash, judges less so.
"Sometimes it's theatrics for the public, sometimes it's theatrics for ourselves," said Sergey Kuznetsov, who said swaying on the bench helps him feel freer and more limber. He and Huang are two of the four finalists who will play today and Saturday with the Cleveland Orchestra at Severance Hall.
Mostly it's the music, channeled through the piano and interpreted by the pianist, that animates them. Grimaces in the plaintive passages, squeezed- shut eyes and rapturous mouths during crescendos are the results of the music and, in turn, help the pianists bring their own interpretations of it to life.
Young pianists tend to move and emote more than older musicians. The Cleveland competitors, all in their 20s, said they are largely unaware of making faces, mouthing notes or gulping sharp intakes of breath that sometimes can be heard over the music. They strive to keep more of a stone face, but said that will take decades more of practicing and performing.
Until then, they will move as the music makes them.
