"Do you want to hear something else?" called conductor Robert C. Bowden from the podium following the first encore at Saturday's concert by the Mormon Youth Chorus and Symphony.
Well, yes - like maybe the name of the Junior Gina Bachauer International Piano Competition winner whose barn-burning rendition of Ginastera's "Danza del Gaucho Matrero" had just worked the audience into a frenzy. Because despite speeches fore and aft Saturday, I never heard it. Nor was it included in the printed program.For the record, it's Wing Chong Kam, 17, from Hong Kong, part of whose prize was to solo with the Mormon Youthers in the first movement of Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 3. This he did Saturday in the Salt Lake Tabernacle with the same kind of control and occasional exaggerations of tempo and dynamics that brought him the Level 2 award Friday at the Temple Square Assembly Hall.
There he wowed the judges with his sharply staccato Shostakovich (the Op. 87 Prelude and Fugue in D major) and grandly scaled Liszt ("Vallee d'Obermann"). Similarly in the Beethoven precipitously fast sections alternated with glisten-ingly impressionistic slower ones, at their best perhaps in the impassioned cadenza.
However, as was also the case Friday, the sound he got out of the Schimmel piano tended toward the metallic - too bad, as a $14,000 version of same was also part of his prize. Nor amid the glitter did one detect much real feeling, not surprising in a 17-year-old but a bit disappointing in this piece.
For their part, Bowden & Co. turned in a broadly intoned accompaniment, imposing enough but a mite slurry in places.
Earlier they got things off to an energetic start via the Overture to Mozart's "The Marriage of Figaro," again full-bodied in sound with a tendency to linger over the gentler episodes.
That was followed by the "Hallelujah" chorus from Beethoven's "Christ on the Mount of Olives," which, despite a Klemperer-like expansiveness, had a nice lift to the singing. Nor was the chorus a detriment in the "Polovtsian Dances" from Borodin's "Prince Igor." Indeed, this is really the only way to hear this music, with Konchak's solos voiced by bass-baritone Larry Whipple.
Here and there the woodwinds dragged, the first of several synchronization problems. But the women's chorus, singing in English, was wonderfully ethereal in the "Stranger in Paradise" section, and the lyric abandon Bowden brought to the rest culminated in a swirling finish - again, with some broadly explosive climaxes.
An all-out "Phantom of the Opera" encore put the cap on this enjoyable summer outing. And, as with Kam's Ginastera, it probably showed these performers to greater advantage than anything that had gone before.
Indeed, of the pianists I heard Friday, the one I'd have been most interested in hearing in the Beethoven was 16-year-old So-Yeon Park, whose "Appassionata" Sonata may not have lived up to its nickname but was notable for its imagination and individuality. Ditto her Chopin, the A flat major Ballade. Yet the best the judges could come up with for her was fifth place ($400).
Other Level 2 winners included Logan's Catherine Brower (second, $1,000), whose artfully integrated Barber and Liszt earned her the biggest ovation of the evening; Salt Lake's Jenny Naylor (third, $750); Alpine's Desirae Brown (fourth, $500); and Japan's Chiharu Sudo (sixth, $300).
The top Level 1 prize ($1,000) went to 14-year-old Stephen Beus of Othello, Wash., with second ($500) going to Japan's Erika Numamitzu, third ($400) to Fruit Heights' Jonathan Coombs, fourth ($300) to Alpine's Melody Brown, fifth ($200) to Hawaii's Sean Kennard and sixth ($100) to California's Brandon Stewart.
As it happened, Kennard also presided over the five-member team that came in third ($400) in the PianoTeams Competition. The $1,000 first prize, however, went to a Provo team made up of students of Bachauer artistic director Paul C. Pollei and his associate, Massimilliano Frani. Given their brawlingly exuberant "Dance of the Tumblers" (from Rimsky-Korsakov's "Snow Maiden") I agreed with that verdict, if not the overly deliberate Schubert "Serenade" that earned a team from Orem second ($500).
Other awards went to more than 40 other entrants, including three for 16-year-old Tamas Erdi, who seemed to change nationalities with every announcement. (He is in fact from Budapest).
Which would seem to indicate that Friday as well as Saturday it was hard to tell the players without a program. And even that wasn't always the last word.