Notes from The Cliburn

Shih wins, Fort Worth's Griffith gets 2nd

Christopher Shih, a physician from Ellicott City, Md., was named the winner of the Sixth Cliburn International Competition for Outstanding Amateurs on Sunday night at TCU’s Ed Landreth Auditorium.

Fort Worth’s Clark Griffith, a retired database programmer, placed second. Griffith also took home the prizes for Best Performance of a Work from the Baroque Era, Most Creative Programming, and he won the Fort Worth Piano Teachers Forum Award.

Third prize went to Barry Coutinho, a family physician from Pittsburgh.

The complete list of awards is:

Richard Rodzinski First Prize: Christopher Shih, physician (Ellicott City, MD)
Award: $2,000 cash; Cliburn custom spurs from Luskey’s/ Ryons Western Stores; Pair of tickets and official guest status to the Fourteenth Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in 2013

Second prize: Clark Griffith, retired database programmer (Fort Worth)
Award: $1,500 cash

Third prize: Barry Coutinho, family physician (Pittsburgh, Penn.)
Award: $1,000 cash

Jury Discretionary Awards: Leslie Myrick, retired hospital administrator (Toronto, Ontario) and David Hibbard, retired railroad manager (Fort Worth)
Award: $250 cash

Press Jury Award: Jane Gibson King, homemaker (Provo, UT)
Award: Western hat from Peters Bros. Hats

Audience Award: Christopher Shih
Award: Box set collection of 10 Cliburn documentary films

Best Performance of a Work from the Baroque Era: Clark Griffith
Award: $250 cash

Best Performance of a Work from the Classical Era: Jun Fujimoto, piano marketing specialist (Scarborough, Ontario)
Award: $250 cash

Best Performance of a Work from the Romantic Era: Christopher Shih
Award: $250 cash

Best Performance of a Post-Romantic Work: Barry Coutinho
Award: $250 cash

Most Creative Programming Award: Clark Griffith
Award: $250 cash

Fort Worth Piano Teachers Forum Award: Clark Griffith
Award: “Guide to the Pianist’s Repertoire” by Maurice Hinson.

20 minutes to award time

Ed Landreth is a ghost town, save for a few people waiting around in the lobby. Among the awards to be given tonight are Best Performance from the Baroque Era, from the Classical Era, from the Romantic Era, of  Post-Romantic work; Most Creative Programming; Press Jury; FW Piano Teachers Forum; Audience Award and Jury Discretionary Awards for two competitors who don't advance to the semifinals. Lots of decisions to be made. The jury is to consider the entire performance, not just the finals round today.

One person who will NOT be casting a vote, she'll tell you, is Louise Canafax. The "backstage mom" for more than 20 years at both the Cliburn and the Cliburn Amateur, it's her job to meet all the backstage needs of the competitors, from providing aspirin for headaches, to soothing upset competitors as they come offstage. She's the perfect person for the job...a sweeter "mother" you will never meet! The audience yesterday asked her to appear onstage and gave her a rousing, well-deserved ovation.

--S.A.

Final notes have been played

All six finalists have wrapped up their playing, and as the jury has a very, very tough decision! The audience is voting on its choice at the moment (after giving each and every finalist a warm reception.) In the lobby, as each pianist has appeared after a performance, throngs of people have gathered around, treating him or her like a celebrity.

The announcements will be made at 6:30, and we'll be there to tweet. Meanwhile, we're going to chat with some of the players and crowd as everyone plays the waiting game.

--S.A.

Finalists named!

The six finalists include Clark Griffith of Fort Worth, who played last Saturday night in the semifinals and changed his program to include one of his own compositions -- a final variation on Bach's "Goldberg Variations." The complete list of finalists is:

Clark Griffith, Fort Worth
Barry Coutinho, Pittsburgh, Penn.
Christopher Shih, Ellicott City, Md.
Dominic Piers Smith, Middle Barton, Oxfordshire, UK
Jane Gibson King, Provo, Utah
Ken Iisaka, Mill Valley, Calif.

--S.A.

Saturday night - Live at the Cliburn

In about three hours, we'll know who the six finalists are.....there's A LOT of buzz around Ed Landreth Auditorium tonight. The last five semifinalists play, beginning at 7:30: Thomas A. Maurice, Joseph Mercuri, Christopher Sarzynski, Iona Luke and Fort Worth's Clark Griffith.

We'll be tweeting from inside the hall, so follow along at FWST_YourLife. We'll tweet the names of the finalists out as they're called, too. As always, watch the playing live at www.dfw.com/cliburn.

--S.A.

Cliburn Amateur factoids & figure-oids

In case you haven't had the pleasure of following the highly informative program book at the Cliburn Amateur, you're missing some cool competition statistics, listed on page 24. Among the interesting factoids (I call them that because these numbers are slightly off since three of the original 73 competitors dropped out before these figures were compiled)...

Who's competing: 73 competitors (remember, actually 70), out of 140 applicants. Of those who made the cut, 42 are men and 31 are women, all aged between 35 and 79 years old. (Take that, "American Idol!") Forty-four percent were born outside the U.S., and 23 states plus D.C. are represented. Twenty-eight are returning Cliburn Amateur competitors.

What they're playing: 87 composers are represented in the repertoire, with the most popular being Chopin (90 works); Bach (58 works); Liszt (47 works); Beethoven (37 works) and Rachmaninoff (28 works). Five intrepid competitors programmed their own transcriptions or compositions.

-- S.A.

 

It's a small (Cliburn) world

While chatting today with Fort Worth's Clark Griffith about his position as the last semifinalist to play Saturday night, he mentioned that he'd been hanging out with fellow competitor Mark Fuller a bit in the last few days. (Fuller opened tonight's semifinal session.) Clark and Mark, it turns out, both grew up in Phoenix and sang in the same Phoenix boys' choir at the same time....which they hadn't remembered until now, Griffith said. In the 2007 Cliburn Amateur, Clark finished third and Mark finished second. Who will be singing the sweeter song this year? We'll find out Sunday night.

-- S.A.

Semifinalists are....

Daniel Bertram, Avon, Ct
J. Michael Brounoff, Dallas
Mark Cannon, Larchmont, NY
Barry Coutinho, Pittsburgh, Penn
Darlene Cusick, Portland, Ore.
Andrea De Tomas, London, UK
Pablo Eizayaga, Riverside, Ct
Jun Fujimoto, Scarborough, Ontario, canada
Mark Fuller, Phoenix
Clark Griffith, Fort Worth
Martha Chestnut Hartman, Celebration, Fla.
Ken Iisaka, Mill Valley, Calif
Jane Gibson King, Provo, Utah
Iona Luke, New South Wales, Australia
Thomas A. Maurice, Baltimore, Md
Joseph Mercuri ,Sartell, Minn.
Valentina Rodov, Seattle, Wash
Christopher Sarzynski, Atlanta
Vincent J. Schmithorst, Batavia, Ohio
Christopher Shih, Ellicott City, Md.
Dominic Piers Smith, Middle Barton, Oxfordshire, UK
Madalyn Bingham Taylor, Ogden, Utah
Angela Lee Tien, Winchester, Mass.
Eberhard Zagrosek, Berlin, Germany
Jorge Zamora, Huixquiluan, Mexico

Preliminaries are wrapping up

The final few pianists are competing, and in a few minutes, the prelims will be over. Then the jury will deliberate, cutting the field to 25, and the contestants will get to meet Van Cliburn. About 10:30, the announcement will be made from the stage.

Tonight saw more outstanding performances, including some exquisite Chopin etudes, beautiful Debussy and rapturous Ravel (ok, couldn't help myself).

The jury deliberating after the prelims, by the way, is not the full jury. The Cliburn gold medalists have not yet arrived to play judge.

--S.A.

Semifinalists to be announced tonight

The big cut comes tonight. The first 70 pianists (two of the original 72 had to drop out) will be narrowed to a field of 25 semifinalists. The announcement is expected to come sometime between 10-10:30 p.m., we're told -- if all is going according to plan. Check this space around that time to see the names of those who'll move forward.

Between playing sessions tonight, the Cliburn's hosting a hamburger dinner on the TCU campus; tonight competitors will get to hang with Van Cliburn himself before the big announcement's made. We're about to head over and check out the scene.

--S.A.

About that shiny new piano

Two things were heard from the audience over and over on Day 1 of the competition: "Gosh, it's cold in here," and "Wow, that piano sounds great!" The two are related.

The performance piano is a brand-new ("just out of the box, less than two months old," I'm told) Hamburg Steinway grand. TCU owns it. Competitors are reporting that they're loving the feel, and audience members are loving the brightness and color it's producing.

As for why Landreth Auditorium is so chilly, announcer Steve Cumming said...it's hot and humid outside, so they have to keep it cool inside for the piano to sound its best.

There are, by the way, 32 pianos involved in the competition, one official said: 20 Steinway-donated ones and 12 TCU-owned ones. When the competitors aren't onstage, they're probably backstage practicing somewhere; they get only 7 minutes to try out the competition piano.

-- S.A.

Cliburn president: "It's a joy"

New Cliburn President David Chambless Worters was all smiles on a break between players in tonight's preliminary round. Today was his debut, of sorts, too - his first Cliburn competition since joining the foundation several months ago.

"It's a joy to see it all come together," he told me in the foyer. He acknowledged the efforts of a staff of about a dozen but a volunteer force of hundreds. He was especially excited that the competitors were getting the attention of a worldwide audience, thanks to the Cliburn's live stream set-up.

So, does he think Van Cliburn himself might pop in for a day or two of competition-watching? He wasn't too sure about that, but the contestants will get to meet him as they hunker together Wednesday night and wait for their names to be called as semi-finalists, he said.

-- S.A.

Goosebump alert: Breast cancer survivor's performance

Just got back from listening to the first five competitors in this year's Cliburn Amateur. Glad I'm not on the jury -- each and every one of the pianists was technically deft and full of musicality. I will say, though, that when pianist number three, Christine Cheng, began to play Petri's arrangement of J.S. Bach's "Sheep May Safely Graze" (you've heard it many times at weddings), I got tears in my eyes.

Cheng, a physician from Houston who holds a bachelor's degree in music from UT-Austin, says in her bio that playing the piano helped her recover from breast cancer. Dressed in a sleek one-shoulder black blouse with white pants, Cheng looked like the picture of good health as she dug into the keys on the stage. After her performance, she sat down a few rows in front of me, so I chatted with her.

She was diagnosed with advanced breast cancer 3 years ago, at the young age of 38, she said, and the treatments and surgeries took about 2 years to complete. Afterwards, she felt depressed, she said, like she didn't have any control over her life. So she went out and bought a "beautiful piano" and began practicing just 6 months ago.

Did it all come back easily?

"No," she said. "Until about 4 weeks ago, I thought was was not ready (for the Cliburn)."

But she said she felt good about her preliminary-round performance and plans to listen to the other competitors and enjoy all the music. As for her health now, Cheng was happy to report that her cancer is in remission and she's doing well.

-- S.A.