Last update - 00:00 14/03/2008
Rubinstein competition / Exalted strokes outweigh the flaws
By Haggai Hitron, Haaretz Correspondent
It happened at seven thirty in the evening: 28-year-old Agnieszka Ufniarz from Gdansk came out on the stage. Ufniarz studied in Paris, continued her education in Madrid with Dimitri Bashkirov. She even took part in our very own "Tel Hai" workshop so that most likely Emanuel Krasovsky as well as Jonathan Zak and Nikolai Petrov (both of which are judges in the Rubinstein competition) are familiar with her style. Ufniarz managed to make Russian composer Sofia Gubaidulina's "chaconne" interesting, after the same chaconne was run over by the clumsy approach of another pianist three days ago.
After that, Mozart's sonata K 284 was masterfully played. This piece also suffered under the care of a previous pianist three days ago, and on Thursday, its power to mesmerize was restored. In the competition's program, the chairman of the jury wrote a short article "about taste" and he quoted in it the philosopher David Hume on different orientations in aesthetic appreciation: "One person is very anxious about flaws, deviations from the norm, and the other will forgive twenty flaws in exchange for one exalted stroke of the pen." In regard to Ufniarz's playing, and that of another pianist who I will mention shortly, yours truly agrees with the latter. Even if I was told by the judges, after the competition ended, that these musicians' playing was plagued with flaws and deviations from the text, it would not diminish my appreciation for them both: enthusiasm, enthrallment. Not because of single pen strokes but because of the plethora of colors and beauty and riveting stories and the sounds they showered us with.
The other pianist I referred to is Vladimir Milosevic. The Serb musician, 27, studied in Belgrade, Vienna and Italy, and currently teaches at the Academy in Belgrade. Under his fingers, the Bach's Partita No. 2 in C minor was jarring, inspiring and glowing, and immediately after it was over, I was ready to crown him the winner, even before he continued to enchant with Chopin and Liszt.
The blind pianist Carlos Ibay (U.S.-born Filipino) also played Thursday. I heard him only on the "Appassionata," and the strong emotions of the victory over an awful disability, celebrated in the sounds of Beethoven, prevent me from making a cold judgment. Ibay won't win the competition, but one can only hope that he advances to the next level so that many others have the opportunity to listen to him.