The award winners for the sixth International Piano Competition for Outstanding Amateurs are…

Richard Rodzinski First Prize: CHRISTOPHER SHIH, Physician (Ellicott City, MD)

$2,000 cash; Cliburn custom spurs, courtesy of LUSKEY’S/ Ryons Western Stores; Pair of Tickets and Official Guest Status to the Fourteenth Van Cliburn International Piano Competition (2013)

Second Prize: CLARK GRIFFITH, Database Programmer (ret.) (Fort Worth, TX)

$1,500 cash

Third Prize: BARRY COUTINHO, Family Physician (Pittsburgh, PA)

$1,000 cash

Jury Discretionary Awards: LESLIE MYRICK, Hospital Administrator (ret.) (Toronto, Ontario) and DAVID HIBBARD, Railroad Manager (ret.) (Fort Worth, Texas)

$250 cash

Press Jury Award: JANE GIBSON KING, Homemaker (Provo, UT)

Western hat, donated by Peters Bros. Hats

Audience Award: CHRISTOPHER SHIH

Box set collection of 10 Cliburn documentary films

Best Performance of a Work from the Baroque Era: CLARK GRIFFITH

$250 cash

Best Performance of a Work from the Classical Era: JUN FUJIMOTO, Piano Marketing Specialist (Scarborough, Ontario)

$250 cash

Best Performance of a Work from the Romantic Era: CHRISTOPHER SHIH

$250 cash

Best Performance of a Post-Romantic Work: BARRY COUTINHO

$250 cash

Most Creative Programming Award: CLARK GRIFFITH

$250 cash

Fort Worth Piano Teachers Forum Award: CLARK GRIFFITH

Guide to the Pianist’s Repertoire by Maurice Hinson.

Maybe that mythological mixture would be more at home in Xena: Warrior Princess than in a discussion of the final round of the 2011 IPCOA, but somehow the degree of virtuosity and the quality of music-making on display this afternoon invite superhuman comparisons.

There was Dominic Piers Smith’s battle with the many-headed Romantic hydra, which brought a number of people in the audience to their feet. Then there was what Ken Iisaka himself described as a journey from the “sublime to the ridiculous” across three wildly different pieces. Christopher Shih scaled symphonic heights in a masterful performance of Brahms’s Handel Variations and Fugue. Jane Gibson King navigated Bach’s B-flat major Partita, waters always fraught with peril. Barry Coutinho strolled through the garden of earthly delights in Ravel’s Gaspard de la nuit, and Clark Griffith opened the sacred tome of Bach’s contrapuntal wisdom. Well…something like all that. Herculean to be sure.

And now to the awarding of the golden apple.

If Smith’s foot was arguably pedal-happy (racecar joke, anyone?), his Liszt and Tchaikovsky-Grainger had moments of great technical accomplishment. If Iisaka’s sense of fun occasionally overshadowed accuracy and line, at least fun and creativity were in abundance. No mean feat in the finals of a piano competition! About Shih’s Brahms, what can one say? I feel privileged to have heard it. If the idiom with which King is most obviously at home is nineteenth and twentieth century, it doesn’t mean there weren’t fine moments in the Bach—the gruff bass gestures in the Corrente, for example. Coutinho’s Ravel had me thanking the judges for bringing him into the final round. Somehow I imagine he hears overtones the rest of us don’t: his Gaspard was an exploration of the timbral possibilities of this Steinway, and beautiful for it. Then, Griffith’s admirable stylistic range, his profound musical sensibility was amply on display in a trio of Bach, Schubert, and Chopin.

So…who wins?

Like most of us, I have two ways of answering this: one based on what I enjoyed most, and one based on what I imagine the judges will do. Happily, Christopher Shih tops both lists, in my opinion, and the audience clearly agreed. The Handel Variations and Fugue in his hands was, as I’d hoped, driven by an operatic sense of drama. The arrival of the Fugue was a true arrival, and the lyrical variations were infused with a vocalist’s sense of line and breath. This was great Brahms. Now things become more challenging. For second and third I imagine Barry Coutinho and Clark Griffith are the obvious choices, but who goes where? Which prevails: Coutinho’s dazzle and shimmer or Clark’s deportment and erudition? I might put Clark second, because I so enjoyed his Goldberg Variations in the semifinals and because I’m delighted that he arranged a major piece (to great effect) in the final round. But somehow I think the judges will give second to Coutinho for his finely honed sense of color and effortless facility in Ravel of all three rounds.

Of course, I could be completely wrong. We’ll very soon see!

KS

I finally had some time to sit down in the auditorium and listen to a few of the competition performances over the past couple days. Like a lot of these competitors, playing the piano is something that I always loved and pursued. I don’t even remember a time when I did not know how to play the piano. And like the competitors, life took a different route for me. I rarely touch the piano nowadays. I get caught up in work, family, hanging out with friends, and other pursuits. I miss the piano, but I can’t seem to find the time or discipline to get myself back on the bench and immersed in a piece of music.

In the past few days, I’ve been inspired by these people who create time for making music in their lives everyday. I’ve heard so many stories told through the music, felt the joy of live performance, and become breathless with the beauty of a phrase. I’m looking forward to all the places in my imagination and my heart that this afternoon’s music will take me.

And then after the last note has been played, and the last competitor has gone home, I think I might sit back down at the piano myself, inspired by this week’s crop of competitors, their stories, and their performances, and see where the music will take me.

Sandra Doan, Director of Artistic Planning

Already the six finalists have been announced and the final round of this year’s IPCOA is just hours away. Four of the finalists I expected: Clark Griffith, whose nearly pedal-less selections from Bach’s Goldberg Variations had me on the edge of my seat; Ken Iisaka, who made it to the finals in the 2007 IPCOA and whose rendering of Scriabin and Medtner was a riot of color; Jane Gibson King, whose insightful and mature treatment of Debussy’s Suite bergamesque won me over; and Christopher Shih, whose semifinal program took pieces from opera and was also built and played with an almost operatic sense of drama. The other two finalists—Barry Coutinho and Dominic Piers Smith—clearly played at a very high level in previous rounds, and, in the semifinal round at least, the audience loved what they did. Both concluded their semifinal round with Liszt, which may explain why I wasn’t bowled over to quite the same extent.

I would like to have heard Daniel Bertram, perhaps, whose all-Petrushka semifinal round I found completely compelling, or it would have been nice to hear Darlene Cusick play Brahms because of the wisdom with which she played her semifinal Schumann. Memorable, too, was J. Michael Brounoff’s hushed Ravel, but on the whole I agreed with the judges’ choices and look forward to what these six fine players will do.

So, what will they do?

For Coutinho, it’s back to Ravel for the third time with the evocative sonic landscapes of Gaspard de la Nuit, paired with Schubert’s F minor Impromptu (op. 142, no. 4). This final program seems to be an expansion of his semifinal round: from the poise of Bach to Schubert, and again, from Ravel to Ravel, which I imagine will demonstrate effectively these two sides of Coutinho’s pianistic personality.

Clark Griffith, too, will return to a composer for the third time: J. S. Bach. We’ll hear the “Ricercar” from the late Musical Offering (BWV 1079) and Griffith’s own arrangement of the fugue movement from Bach’s Sonata No. 3 in C major for solo violin (BWV 1005). A selection from Schubert and the Chopin Barcarolle, op. 60, will round out the program. I’m already convinced by Griffith’s Bach, so the question for me will be about the fuller idioms of Schubert and Chopin: will he play them with the attention to line so evident in his Goldberg Variations?

After the final lengthy variations movement from Beethoven’s Piano Sonata in E major, op. 109, Ken Iisaka will turn to an etude by Alkan (op. 39, no. 12) and another set of variations, this one by Ukrainian composer Nikolai Kapustin. I don’t know the last piece at all and am looking forward to being introduced to it by such a sensitive and thoughtful pianist. Incidentally, Iisaka’s chronological programming of the three pieces appeals to the musicologist in me.

Then there’s Jane Gibson King, whose pairing of Bach’s Partita No. 1 in B-flat major (BWV 825) and two Liszt transcriptions (of Schubert’s “Der Müller und der Bach” and Schumann’s “Widmung,” which we’ve heard several times in this IPCOA) echoes the pairing of Scarlatti and Chopin in her preliminary round. Despite reservations about the Liszt (see previous blog entry, and also competitor Vincent J. Schmithorst’s welcome, if biting retort!!), I eagerly await the Bach. King’s conception of the whole of Debussy’s Suite bergamesque was so convincing to me that I’m curious to hear what she’ll do with shaping the Partita No. 1.

Christopher Shih continues his series of composer arrangements, transcriptions, and the like with Brahms’s Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Handel, op. 24. (Competitor Darlene Cusick had also promised this piece in her final round, and despite my interest in hearing her play it, perhaps it’s best that it didn’t feature twice in the finals.) Shih has shown himself to have a fine appreciation for dramatic shapes, and I’ll be listening for this kind of ebb and flow in the magisterial Brahms.

Dominic Piers Smith will play two pieces we’ve already heard in this IPCOA: Chopin’s Ballade No. 4 in F minor, op. 52, and the Schumann-Liszt Widmung. Then it’s back to Liszt again for the Transcendental Etude No. 12 (“Chasse-Neige”), and finally Percy Grainger’s (!!) transcription of Tchaikovsky’s “Waltz of the Flowers” from The Nutcracker. Of all the transcriptions on offer in the final round—besides the competitors’ own, which I love to hear for a great many reasons—I’m most excited about this one. Grainger the pianist is often forgotten, I think, and who better to remind us of him than Smith, who also spent formative years in London?

I hope that whets your appetite—it’s going to be great day of piano-playing in Fort Worth!

KS

The six finalists of the sixth International Piano Competition for Outstanding Amateurs are:

Barry Coutinho, Family Physician (Pittsburgh, PA)

Clark Griffith, Database Programmer (ret.) (Fort Worth, TX)

Ken Iisaka, Internet Start-Up Entrepreneur & Consultant (Mill Valley, CA)

Jane Gibson King, Homemaker (Provo, UT)

Christopher Shih, Physician (Ellicott City, Maryland)

Dominic Piers Smith, Team Leader in Aerodynamics, Mercedes GP Petronas Formula One Team (Middle Barton, Oxfordshire, UK)