Last update - 00:00 25/03/2008
Rubinstein Piano Competition: semi-finals / The Mozart hurdle
By Haggai Hitron, Haaretz Correspondent
The last stage of the 12th annual Arthur Rubinstein piano masters competition began Monday: six pianists playing concerti with the Philharmonic Orchestra. In the early stages of the competition, when I dared to remark to the chairman of the competition's jury Arie Vardi that this final stage is not as exciting as the recital stage in the museum, he explained that the concerti portion of the competition reflects the fact that playing with an orchestra is the largest part of stage pianists careers these days. The public demands: more performances with orchestras, less recitals.
Three pianists in Monday's meet played concerti by Mozart, which proved to be a hurdle. The performances were mediocre and didn't shine in any way.
First to tackle the final stretch was 20-year-old Katya Buniatishvili, with Mozart's concerto no. 24 in C minor. In an interview earlier this week she said "everything depends on Mozart now. If I succeed in the concerto, I will advance forward." Contrary to the young Georgian's estimation, one must hope that the judges' considerations in selecting the finalists will not be limited to the pianists' performances with the orchestra, but will rather include their performance throughout the competition. Buniatishvili was unable to maintain a dialogue with the orchestra, her sound was too delicate and the music had trouble flowing. Only in the last cadence of the first movement did a handbreadth of the artist's talent shine through.
Irina Zahharenkova followed. She faced the challenge of Mozart's concerto no. 23 in A minor. She too was far less impressive this time around, especially during the famously slow movement that dragged on in with a saccharine style that nullified its beauty. Regardless, some details about this artist: Irina Zahharenkova is the oldest of all the competitors this year, 32, and among her other achievements, she won the first prize in the Bach competition in Leipzig. She was born in Kaliningrad, her parents are Russian, and she lived in Estonia most of her life. In her youth she studied chemistry at university for a year, and also dabbled in Estonian philology and Finnish philology. Today she is also the northernmost of the competitors as she lives in the Finnish town of Kuopio, some 400 kilometers north of Helsinki. She moved to this distant city on the heels of her husband, who got a job as an upright bass player for an orchestra there.
Third up on Monday was David Fung, from Australia (he too grazed in non-musical fields once when he studied medicine for one year while making his first appearances as a pianist.) On Monday, Fung played Mozart's concerto no. 25 in C major, and his performance was perfectly ordinary, though significantly better than his two rivals in terms of coordination with the orchestra.
Developments alongside the competition: Arie Vardi on Monday managed to tape another episode of his series "intermezzo" at the educational television studios, in which he interviewed the competitor that, to everyone's shock, did not make it to the semi finals, the Ukrainian Alexander Grynyuk. Another guest was the blind competitor Carlos Ibay. In additional episodes, to be taped later this week, Vardi will talk to competition judges Yoheved Kaplinsky, Robert Levin and Menahem Pressler. These intriguing episodes will air soon.
We will also take the time to remind our readers that surfers can visit the Arthur Rubinstein International Music Society Website at www.arims.org.il and see and hear the dozens of recitals of the earlier stages in full, and with good sound quality. A troublesome technical problem however is that one can only listen to a recital in full in the order it was performed, and one can't skip directly to the piece or movement desired.