Scenes from Bass Performing Hall, Fort Worth, Texas

The angels of Bass Hall. 

Bass Performance Hall is where the entire Van Cliburn International Piano Competition takes place. It is the pride of the city, located within Sundance Square where there seems to be lots of development taking place. It has close to perfect acoustics and where piano dreams are made. Fronting the hall are two gigantic stone angels, whose trumpets, I've been told, are part of the hall's ventilation system. 

The first thing one sees on entering Bass Hall is a notice barring firearms. Don't forget that Texas is cowboy country. Just don't ask me what the 51% means.  

I finally made it! 
After years of wishful thinking, it was a dream to come
to Fort Worth to catch The Cliburn. Piano paradise indeed. 

The ceiling of the foyer in Bass Hall. The national flags of  participants in the competition are flown here.

The Cliburn giftshop, full of overpriced kitsch. Look out for the retrospective competition CDs, which are a bargain.

Just could not resist wearing my cowboy hat to a Texas competition.

The celestial ceiling of Bass Hall, and the upper balconies.

A Fort Worth standing ovation. (Standometer: **1/2)
Chinese pedagogue Dan Zhaoyi appears unmoved.

Bass clef at the Bass Hall toilet, which has good acoustics too.
You can hear the farts very clearly many cubicles away. 

Bass Hall at dusk.

Photos from Fort Worth, Texas / One Day before The Cliburn

You gotta be someone very, very important to have a street named after you.

Here I am, in Fort Worth, Texas, one day before the opening of the 14th Van Cliburn International Piano Competition. As I am only attending the Preliminary Rounds, there isn't much I can do outside of Bass Performance Hall except today, which essentially is my only day for sightseeing. Fort Worth is a city yet has the feel of friendly, cosy little town. The competition dominates pretty much every these few days, there are flyers, posters all over town, and almost everyone here knows about the competition.

The two limestone angels that front Bass Performance Hall, home of the Cliburn.

A room with a view: Sundance Square in the town centre of Fort Worth.
Bass Hall is just visible at top left.

The old Tarrant County Courthouse, as viewed from Houston Street.

View of Fort Worth city from the hills near the Amon Carter Museum

The tribute to Van Cliburn in the West Portal of Bass Hall.

It is almost impossible to escape the presence of the competition in Fort Worth, with posters (left)  to be found in many part of the city, as well as a portrait of Van Cliburn in one of the galleries.

Artistic banners of The Cliburn are found on most downtown streets.

Finalists of the 14th Van Cliburn International Piano Competition named

The names of the 30 finalists selected for the 14th Van Cliburn International Piano Competition (2013) have been announced. This is ironically the first competition in which the great American pianist Van Cliburn (above), after whom the competition is named, will not be in attendance. Van Cliburn passed away on 27 February 2013, after succumbing to liver and bone cancer.

They are as follows (in alphabetical order):

Luca Burrato (Italy)

Sean Chen (USA)

Alexei Chernov (Russia)

Sara Daneshpour (USA)

Alessandro Deljavan (Italy)

Fei Fei Dong (China)

Francois Dumont (France)

Yury Favorin (Russia)

Lindsay Garritson (USA)

Jayson Gillham (Australia)

Giuseppe Greco (Italy)

Ruoyu Huang (China)

Claire Huangci (USA)

Vadym Kholodenko (Ukraine)

Nikolay Khozyainov (Russia)

Marcin Koziak (Poland)

Kuan-Ting Lin (Taiwan)

Steven Lin (USA)

Alex McDonald (USA)

Gustavo Miranda-Bernales (Chile)

Nikita Mndoyants (Russia)

Oleksiy Poliykov (Ukraine)

Beatrice Rana (Italy)

Tomoki Sakata (Japan)

Scipione Sangiovanni (Italy)

Hyung-Min Suh (Korea)

Alessandro Taverna (Italy)

Jie Yuan (China)

YouYou Zhang (USA)

Eric Zuber (USA)

The competition takes place from 24 May to 9 June 2013 at the Bass Performance Hall in Forth Worth, Texas. 

Some observations looking ahead to the 14th Van Cliburn International Piano Competition 2013

The Van Cliburn International Piano Competition is probably the most prestigious and most watched piano concours on the planet. All its rounds are keenly awaited, and watched by thousands on site as well as on the Internet. It is also the most talked about and most keenly debated. The names of the 30 competitors of this year's competition and their repertoire have been released, and here are some of my observations on this year's competition to come.

Increased Prize Money

The major difference in this year’s competition is the prize money. This year’s 1^st prize winner stands to win USD 50,000, up from USD 20,000 at the last competition. This increase matches the top prize offered in the rival Cleveland International Piano Competition (also held this year), but has some way to go in topping the 100,000 Canadian dollars at the Hohens Competition in Calgary, Canada. The possibility of a shared First prize (like in the 2009 competition with Nobuyuki Tsujii and Zhang Haochen) is unlikely to happen this time.

  

Two bites of the cherry

The other change will give the competitors some relief. The final round recital has been removed. Instead, there will be two recitals at the Preliminary stage, giving pianists two opportunities to prove themselves before the first elimination takes place. This is a much fairer system, as pianists who start slower are given a second chance to parade their wares.

Where do the pianists come from?

There is a very strong field of 8 American pianists, so is this the year for an American pianist to win the top prize? For the record, the last American pianist to have won the coveted Gold Medal was Jon Nakamatsu in 1997, and there have been no American finalists since then. Interestingly, five of the eight Americans are of Asian ethnicity.

Italian pianists have generally done well in this competition, and there are six Italians vying for the honours, more than any other nation except the USA. Surprisingly, there are only three competitors from China, and one each from Taiwan, Japan and South Korea. This may have been due to the venue change from Shanghai to Hong Kong for the preliminary auditions. In 2009, there were 18 pianists heard in Shanghai, while this year’s audition in Hong Kong only attracted 6 pianists. So the possibility of having three Asian pianists among the medallists looks less likely this time around.

The Slavic states (Russia, Ukraine and Poland) account for 7 pianists, many of whom have won top prizes in international competitions. Nikolay Khozyainov and Alexei Chernov already appear like potential winners. True to form, there are absolutely no British among the finalists. Only one pianist has previously taken part in the finals of this competition, and that is Alessandro Deljavan (Italy) who was a semi-finalist in 2009. Nikita Mndoyants (Russia) is the son of Alexander Mndoyants, who was awarded a joint 5^th prize in the 1977 competition.

The Juilliard connection

Conspiracy theorists will point out that out of the 17 non-Italian and non-Slavic pianists, no less than 11 have studied or are studying in the Juilliard School of Music. Of these 11, seven are or were students of Veda Kaplinsky (top left), one of the judges who presided upon the preliminary auditions. The list of jurors for the finals in May-June also reveals her name among the 13 people who will who decide who wins this competition. In the 2005 competition, she had excused herself from the jury, and despite that received death threats. Her student Joyce Yang won the Silver medal at that competition. One wonders whether she going to excuse herself from the competition this year.

Repertoire

Looking at the repertoire offered in this competition, there are several standouts from the typical virtuoso-fodder fare. Alex McDonald (USA) is offering the entire Bach Goldberg Variations in his first recital. Vadym Kholodenko (Ukraine) will play only big works in his programmes, Rachmaninov’s First Sonata and Beethoven’s Hammerklavier Sonata in the first two recitals, and all 12 of Liszt’s Transcendental Studies in the semi-final. Yury Favorin (Russia) has the most atypical repertoire of all, playing four of Liszt’s Harmonies Poetiques et Religieuses in his second recital, and rarities of Liszt and Messiaen, and transcriptions of Mussorgsky and Johann Strauss in the semi-finals. The competition set-piece is Birichino by Christopher Theofanidis (left).