What’s in a name? Everything when it comes to Brooklyn Rider. Who and what the group is can be traced back to a moment some 12 years ago when the members came up with the name of their newly formed string quartet. They had settled in Brooklyn because, as violist Nicholas Cords describes it, “Brooklyn is this great artistic community. It’s a dance world, a literary world, filled with different types of music.
In his debut in a Fort Worth recital as the newest Van Cliburn International Piano Competition gold medalist, Yekwon Sunwoo presented a program to boldly state that he was not all technical flash and excessive bombast, as was observed in the competition. Most of the recital, Tuesday at Bass Performance Hall, featured pieces by Mozart and Schubert that would not be out of place on an undergrad recital. Only the last piece, Ravel’s La Valse, is a showpiece and he even took a welcome laissez-faire approach to that.
With ritual solemnity, the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, the world’s biggest in terms of visibility and prizes, unfolds every four years in Fort Worth, Texas, where its famous namesake lived. Gold medalists go home with a cash award of $50,000, three years of concert management and bookings, a commercial recording and concert attire by Neiman Marcus. A handful of gold, silver and bronze medalists have based successful careers on their contest victories. Many have faded from view. Even so, the hope of turning up another Van Cliburn springs eternal.
Yekwon Sunwoo won the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition on Saturday, besting 29 rivals over two weeks of playing to become the prestigious contest’s first champion from South Korea. The Cliburn, held every four years in Fort Worth, was founded in 1962 by Van Cliburn, the American pianist who stunned the world by winning the Tchaikovsky competition in Moscow in 1958, at the height of the Cold War.
A day after my valued colleague and friend Harry Rolnick posted his review of the concert given by the New York Philharmonic conducted by Alan Gilbert with the participation of pianist Emanuel Ax, I was able to attend the second performance of that program and at the same time I was also able to conduct an interview with this esteemed soloist who, during these subscription concerts, gave the world premiere of the Piano Concerto by Austrian composer HK Gruber.
Emanuel Ax is notoriously nice — one of the kindest, funniest, genuinely caring people in the business. And, although he is 40 years into a career as one of the world’s greatest pianists, both as a soloist and a chamber musician, and although, at 65, he’s still inarguably at the top of his game, he maintains a completely genuine sense of modesty, humility, and respect for the hard work, and the great fun, of making music.
Describing a pianist’s performance as unhinged might seem like an unlikely compliment. But the adjective could be applied in the most flattering terms to Emanuel Ax’s engrossing interpretation of Beethoven’s “Pathétique”Sonata on Wednesday evening at Carnegie Hall. The sonata was included on an all-Beethoven lineup, with two popular sonatas bookending three lesser-known pieces. Mr. Ax brought demonic power to the “Pathétique,” which opened the program.
"I still can't believe what is happening to me this evening. It's like a dream come true," Gorini told DW in an interview. The soloist had exhibited a dreamlike confidence in his rendition of Ludwig van Beethoven's "Emperor Concerto." From the first notes, it was clear to this reporter: he's the one.
The addition, which gave the telecom Competition Prize winner Filippo Gorini in the Beethoven-night was breathtaking. The octaves and chords, which he hammered into the keyboard in the first movement of Bartók's Piano Sonata in 1926 with high speed and absolutely accurate, showed a virtuoso who his is sure.
Beethoven’s massive and confounding Diabelli Variations isn’t the obvious choice for a debut disc, but the young Italian pianist Filippo Gorini seems intently drawn to the strange drama of this martial little tune and its mysterious decorations. When heard him playing it, he invited Gorini to study with him, and you can hear why. Gorini has a fearless attack in heftier variations and an inquisitive, ultra-focused touch as the themes start to splinter and turn inward.
