magnificent understanding and presentation of the musical structure / wonderful rhythmic precision and intuition for timing / crystal clear transparency in voice leading /unpretentious, though ardent playing
I would not understand the world if this incredible talent did NOT graduate into the class of the very best pianists of all time.
Listening to Lim’s performances is a festival for the many aficionados of the music of Couperin, Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Liszt, Chopin, Scriabin and Rachmaninov who write for this blog and stop in as readers and, of course, for lovers of heavenly piano playing. I welcome the fact that Russian (and Belarusian) artists are NOT excluded from participation in the Van Cliburn Competition 2022.
Consider the history of the Cliburn Competition. In 1958 Van Cliburn was the winner of the First International Tchaikovsky Competition, Moscow. At the height of the Cold War this was a sensation and there were those who saw it as a factor in easing tensions between the West and the Soviet Union. Since 1962 the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition has been held every four years in Fort Worth, Texas in his honour. A friend of mine (Benedikt Koehlen) was a participant in the Second Van Cliburn Competition in 1966. He got the 6th prize. The 1966 Gold Medal winner was Radu Lupu, who passed away in April this year. The 5th prize was dedicated to Rudolf Buchbinder at that time. I find it strange that the Cliburn Competition has dismissed extremely few Award Winners of world fame. Lupu & Buchbinder are almost the only ones.
„Daß das, was die Menschen vereint, wesenhafter ist als die von den engherzig machtgierigen, ein Blutbad nicht scheuenden Politikern aufgebauten Trennungsmauern, hatte der junge Amerikaner aus Texas schon in Moskau bei der Wiedergabe von Tschaikowskis b-moll-Konzert, der russischsten aller russischen Musik, bewiesen. […] In Riga stand man von 2 Uhr nachts an Schlange, um eine Konzertkarte zu erobern. ‚Dieser Künstler enthebt uns des Elends, bringt uns Licht und Freiheit‘, meldete ein Brief aus meiner Heimatstadt.“
(aus Zenta Mauriņa, Ein Botschafter guten Willens – Van Cliburn)
On 19 April 2022, World Federation of International Music Competitions decided with an overwhelming majority of member votes to exclude the International Tchaikovsky Competition from its membership with immediate effect due to „Russia´s brutal war and humanitarian atrocities in Ukraine“.
Until now a sentence like the following (to reduce contradictions in world history) was not to be found for me in the WWW:
On 19 April 2003, World Federation of International Music Competitions decided with an overwhelming majority of member votes, to exclude the International Cliburn Competition from its membership with immediate effect due to „US America’s brutal war in Iraq launched without an explicit mandate from the UN Security Council“.
One should not repay similar with similar.
DLF
Der Van Cliburn Klavierwettbewerb – Ein Ultramarathon des Virtuosen
In der Süddeutschen Zeitung wurde bis dato nicht vom International Van Cliburn Piano Competition 2022 berichtet. Naja, die Süddeutsche ist schließlich nur ein oberbayrisches Regionalblatt (meinte einst Obama).
GOLD MEDAL
Yunchan Lim – South Korea
SILVER MEDAL
Anna Geniushene – Russia
BRONZE MEDAL
Dmytro Choni – Ukraine
Where the 6 finalists came from:
2 Russia / 1 Ukraine / 1 Belarus / 1 USA / 1 South Korea