It’s Van Cliburn Competition Again!
I knew ahead who would be the gold medalist after listening to
those recitals!
Written by Siwen Wong
Vadym Kholodenko, I voted him after I heard his first
recital for 14th Van Cliburn International Competition. After
listening all those most gifted pianists’ performances, then I didn’t have much time
to listen more as that was the time my two 10 and 8 years old children were having their school
holiday; I sent them off by MAS’s excellent "children delivery service" to Miri
to let their aunty and cousins dotting them. The quietness enable me to confine in long hours researches on astronomy,
mtDNA, creation timelines, Book of Enoch, celestial beings etc. in preparing a
future story book with an expecting someone would throw me stones!
It happened that
Kennedy’s birthday is also my old professor’s birthday, he is 90 this year. It
took me 15 years to call him all because youngsters like me don’t like to spend
money anymore on long-distance telephone bills, we rather use free skype and
viber, my professor doesn’t like computer and internet, he told me he still re-learning
his Chopin Ballade last number, we both agreed during re-learning we could dig
out more discoveries!
It was quite heartless for me not to call him for 15
years, but he was always in my heart honestly, frequently telephone him is also
not a good idea, time for him is even more
precious at his age now, I am just so glad that Chopin’s music gives him health,
motivation and satisfaction. Intellectual men and women spend their times in
search for something, whereas men and women with no interest usually would
spend their times gossiping and bragging off their outstanding children in café with
their as equally nothing better-to-do old friends, going to church activities or just watching
Korean soap opera to pass their remaining days on earth!
Two weeks ago, my
Brunei student got all excited informing me that Van Cliburn piano competition was on again, I got as
excited with him and we would share from time to time what we had heard. Then few days later he told me a Chinese
pianist performed so well, but I disagreed with him this time. As I learned with Debussy gold medalist
before, so I won’t appreciation acrobatic expressions on impressionistic music,
but the Italian pianist Beatrice’s Ravel was good. Hmmm……tell you a secret, it’s
because my student has a penchant for talented young Asian girls, when he used his eyes, he closed his perfect
ears too!
Last Cliburn he adored Korean
pianist Joyce, I also loved her cheerful character. As a piano teacher since I
was 15 years old, I listened to timbre after I endured long painstaking self-learning and researching to master in my techniques teaching, as almost everyone of them played with
good interpretations, all of them are extra-gifted than normal pianists, they also
possess high EQ to sustain and endure all those heavy repertoires and lastly they all have records of winning many
competitions since their very young age. In short, they were one of the best in their
generation to represent their respective country. They came together to perform, I would call that as "tempering" to hammer the three best out of all!
The exceptional unfairness
may be the physical size of individual pianist, if one is tall and big size, he
could give titanic result in sound, timbre wise he is still better than those
small strong fingers unfortunately. But there is one medicine to cure …. GO FOR
WEIGHT LIFTING, but must be under special qualified coach!
Last night, I finally got time to share Vadym
Kholodenko’s youtube performance with quite many of my students, I wanted to show and encourage them that I didn’t impart them wrong techniques and they are on the right path! I told them when I taught
a student who didn’t appreciate my techniques; it was like giving a pearl to a
pig! In old days, Asians were conservative and
they didn’t dare to overtly express themselves physically, including no kiss and no hug, so in this new generation most Asian parents and piano teachers would think that in order to
express the music, then ones should express it through "physical movements" (physical gestures), thus
we saw lots of “kinetic movements” like dancing with piano went on when
some Asian pianists performed.
Not many Asian teachers and parents are exposed to Russian and French’s techniques, thus they possess stereo-type expectation on how a pianist should perform, I know a piano teacher in Miri, she expected her students who joined competitions, their every movement on a repertoire were monitored. I believe in training a cat to catch life rats rather than keep feeding the cat with dead rats!
Most Asian countries are practicing so called “spoon-feeding” regime;
teachers, parents and students never like to see their paws getting dirty
during the progress of teaching and learning! Most of the time, Asian parents
with slightly talented kids, they began to flatter their talented kids so much
that they only became humble to westerners (My friend once called me British slave to give me an awakening!) just because they are willing to
submit for what they want and trade-in, yet they would brag and show-off so
much within own Asian circle! I believe many humble and experience Asian piano
teachers who read my article would all agree with me!
I was trained from
beginning of my first day in techniques by Polish concert pianist and then more Polish pianists along the way and eventually an Hungarian, I was taught to listen for timbre
which is above all. I learn that with good strong fingers, their knuckles would
eventually form a specific shape, when ones have good facilities, they don’t
need to use acrobatic gestures to cover the bad (insufficient or limited) facilities. Usually pianists with poor facilities are too
talented that they think techniques as NOTHING, as everything came to them fairly
easily and quick, so most of the time they would prefer fast foods than a formal meal!
They would quickly give up strengthening fingers’ exercises etc. But when all
talented ones got together, finally the one who believes and works hardest on techniques,
his fingers showed obvious difference from others, his sound within the sound, timbre sounded so different from others, his performance seemed effortless to others' view and he could perform with excellent balance aesthetically.
I always told my students, great
techniques is like duck swimming in the water, it endured to the second movement
ending, where I heard some strained timbre around minute 18 -19+, but the minute when a tired duck
got to the land, it flipped its wings, water dropped off, very soon the duck got into the water again, he approached the
third movement concerto with relaxing timbre again!!
Strong fingers are facilities enabling endurance, good visual and aesthetic view from audience's lateral view. Sometimes over reacting movements in soft
lyrical fragments really spoilt the style of specific composer’s music. The
intensity of music is through emotion, and through the intensity of timbre ones
could feel its depth.
So "dancing" with the piano, waving big elbows, every great movements being monitored, taught and prepared by many Asian piano teachers for their most talented students or pianists before they joined the competitions are so common in this Asian pianists' booming generation. And these students or pianists love to jump from one competition to another, as well as jumping from one better teacher to another better, like once I got like a “frog” student, her mom would inform the new teacher that Fou Ts' ong was my professor’s classmate, it really embarrassed me! In that case sure enough the new teacher sure would be impressed to take her, but did those individual teachers ever find out she only learned with me for only few sessions? And her piano teacher mom kept doubting and asking their newly engaged respective teachers if I had taught her daughter wrong kind of techniques! If such mother and her daughter got doubts in my techniques, do you think she would work hard on whatever I imparted her?
So "dancing" with the piano, waving big elbows, every great movements being monitored, taught and prepared by many Asian piano teachers for their most talented students or pianists before they joined the competitions are so common in this Asian pianists' booming generation. And these students or pianists love to jump from one competition to another, as well as jumping from one better teacher to another better, like once I got like a “frog” student, her mom would inform the new teacher that Fou Ts' ong was my professor’s classmate, it really embarrassed me! In that case sure enough the new teacher sure would be impressed to take her, but did those individual teachers ever find out she only learned with me for only few sessions? And her piano teacher mom kept doubting and asking their newly engaged respective teachers if I had taught her daughter wrong kind of techniques! If such mother and her daughter got doubts in my techniques, do you think she would work hard on whatever I imparted her?
For me, pianist Vadym Kholodenko’s performance was way beyond other competitors, I could tell the other runners-up fingers are not as strong as him, he has the specific pianist’s hand shape strongly formed already, French great piano teacher Long believed pianists must develop a specific hand shape. I “judged” and voted him based on his fingers and hands shape, but I did pray for him that no “memory slip” happened to him!
Russian techniques also taught students to memorize music differently even if students have very good musical memory, it’s a painstaking for gifted people when everything comes to them easily but to ask them memorize line by line or separately! That's how memory slip could be prevented!
So as an excellent pianist, he or she must be very patient, including his/her journey to success and famous, usually for those great pianists musicality would always come first to them, they don’t ask for reputation and success, what they want is to achieve and challenge the highest attain in expressing their own performances, artistic expression and expectation, as in music one can never score 100% mark!
