Inevitably there’s a winner

I don’t particularly like competitions, especially in the arts, but I enjoyed the finals of the Australian International Chopin Piano Competition well enough. Not for the fact that there was a winner, but because I got to hear the same pair of tunes played three times in such different ways by the three pianists who reached the finals. At least this time we guessed the winner (I have a poor record at Wangaratta), but that’s at least partly a function of our preferences as much as the performances.

Each finalist performed the same two Chopin pieces for the final: the lullaby Berceuse Op.57 and the Concerto no.1 in E minor with chamber accompaniment. The chamber group was made up of some members of the Goldner Sting Quartet and a few ring-ins: Dimity Hall and Mark Ingwersen (violins), Irina Morozova (viola), Julian Smiles (cello) and Justin Bullock (bass). The Berceuse was a delightful piece with some unexpected dissonance and an echoed melody line towards the end that seemed devilishly difficult to pull off effectively (and to read). It certainly sounded different from each performer. The concerto was also very different on each performance so the repetition was no strain on attendees. The third movement is well known and, by the third time through, I was feeling the other movements were old friends. It’s a live version of the experience of re-listening to CDs, but this had the added diversion of different performers.

Peter de Jager played second so had the advantage of well warmed-up string accompaniment, but I noticed many other differences. I found his melodies were wonderfully clear and well identified against accompaniment in the other hand. I noticed this first when the melody moved from right to left hand, and the left took easy prominence. Peter is a composer, so I wondered if this might help him to clearly comprehend the parts and perhaps to channel the instruments that would otherwise play the parts in a full orchestra. I also noticed his firm tone and a parallel firm direction he gave to the strings and the ensemble playing. That had me thinking further. The preceding pianist, Gracjan Szymczak, was Polish and delicate and softly spoken; the following pianist, Oliver She, was Australian and firmer and louder, somewhat like Peter. Also, I’d noticed the frequent delicacy of Janusz Olejniczak, the seasoned Polish pianist who’d opened the Competition with a recital the previous Sunday. Could these be national characteristics, in performance style or training or interpretation? (Comments invited below). But I preferred the firmer playing that drew a very different tonality from the Steinway and provided needed volume for the piano to match the strings. Suffice to say, I enjoyed all three performers but felt more comfortable with Peter’s interpretations.

The strings were also a pleasure. There was a clear improvement from the first to second performance of the concerto (as in job interviews, never take the first spot). Cellist Julian Smiles was a delight to watch with vivid involvement on his face, open eyes to respond to the leading violin, and lovely, firmly fingered passages. First violinist Dimity Hall was strong and involved in her melodic, front-line role. I enjoyed the bouncy melodies and some longish pizzicato passages towards the end of the third movement and the interplay of the string parts as the second violin followed the first, or moved in unison with the viola or the viola played with cello and the bass offered a simple, deep paraphrase of the cello lines. Again I’m showing my ignorance, but I thought I understood the structure of orchestral composition better from seeing the interplay of strings in this quintet. Presumably the orchestral version has sections playing the quintet lines, with some highlights from the piano score taken or matched by instruments other than strings. Local bassist Justin Bullock didn’t have the most demanding part, but he did the job well and the role added immensely to the effectiveness of the strings in balancing the piano’s huge range.

Pianists Peter de Jager, Gracjan Szymczak and Oliver She performed for the finals of the Australian International Chopin Piano Competition. Dimity Hall and Mark Ingwersen (violins), Irina Morozova (viola), Julian Smiles (cello) and Justin Bullock (bass) accompanied in the Concerto. The judging panel was chaired by Larry Sitsky and comprised Emanual Krasovsky, Alan Hicks, Stephen McIntyre, Pamela Page, Piotr Paleczny, Arnan Wiesel and Charles Bodman Rae. And everyone was congratulating Arnan Wiesel for the good work in organising the competition.

Fate

Maybe it’s fate or just coincidence, but we’d watched an episode of Kenneth Clarke’s BBC documentary, Civilisation, just the night before with the title “The worship of nature”. Then on Sunday we heard Janusz Olejniczak playing Chopin. The connection is Romanticism, of course. Olejniczak did a truly excellent job in presenting Chopin in a way that made this romantic sensibility meaningful to me. I’d heard Chopin and even played some waltzes in schoolboy piano lessons, but this was a new awakening. Somewhat like Rousseau himself, whose first profound experience of being one with nature was described by Kenneth Clarke as a formative moment for Romanticism. Kenneth Clarke also described the Romantic movement as quasi-religious*, replacing a European religious belief that was battered by science and the Enlightenment with an awareness and oneness with our natural surroundings, a new respect for the mundane (meaning earthly rather than uninteresting) and a reigniting of passion and emotions in place of classical intellect and self-control. Olejniczak’s Chopin was all these things. He played so delicately at times, raising individual fingers to form notes and massaging keys while notes played and suspending time with breathless delays. The waltzes and mazurkas and ballades were delightful and the nocturnes and scherzos were exploratory, but the Polonaises were impassioned. They had the marching, the loss, the grief that was open-hearted and fully vented. Powerful, full-handed music with block chords hammering up and down the keyboard as the awe of the Romantics joined with the angst of the nationalist.

Olejniczak performed at little notice. Apparently the original performer’s wife was taken ill, and Olejniczak, who was here to judge the Chopin competition, agreed to perform for the opening concert. He even played the same repertoire, but then they seemed pretty well-known pieces. It was dignified but emotionally rich concert that was received warmly by the Polish community and Chopin followers. There was a little mushiness in big chords. We moved back after the interval and although the music was clearer and more balanced at a distance, I missed the immediacy and involvement of the third row. But what miserable concerns! This is emotional music of wonderful inventiveness and at times awe-inspiring passion that was played with lucidity and authentic Polish authority. It was a memorable outing.

Janusz Olejniczak performed Chopin solo piano pieces at the Llewellyn Hall as the opening concert for the first Australian International Chopin Piano Competition.

* Summary of The Worship of Nature (Kenneth Clarke, Civilisation, ep.11): “Belief in the divinity of nature, Clark argues, usurped Christianity’s position as the chief creative force in Western civilisation and ushered in the Romantic movement. Here Clark visits Tintern Abbey, the Alps, and there discusses the landscapes of Turner and Constable.”