1999 GINA BACHAUER YOUNG ARTISTS INTERNATIONAL PIANO COMPETITION, Second Preliminary Round, Wednesday, June 16; Assembly Hall. Open to the public.
The Bachauer Young Artists competition concluded its preliminary round Wednesday with the second half of the 42 pianists performing their programs. And about an hour after the last competitor finished, Douglas Humpherys, chairman of the 10-member jury, announced the names of the 18 pianists who'll go on to the semifinal round.(Humpherys, incidentally, was the gold medal winner of the very first Gina Bachauer International Piano Competition back in 1976, when it was held at Brigham Young University.)
The lucky semifinalists are Esther Jung-A Park (Korea), Yuliang Tu (China), Akari Okada (Japan), Brandon Stewart (U.S.), Adam Nielsen (U.S.), Yurino Izumi (Japan), Caesar Luo (U.S.), Yundi Li (China), Jakob Siecke (Germany), Di Wu (China), Tanya Gabrielian (U.S.), Jonathan Coombs (U.S.), Rushaniya Abbiassova (Russia), Marko Pavlovic (Yugoslavia), Colleen Ka Ling Lee (Hong Kong), Viller Valbonesi (Italy), Hilary Coombs (U.S.) and Natalia Lavrova (Russia).
The semifinal rounds take place Thursday and Friday, June 17-18, starting at 2 p.m., in the Assembly Hall on Temple Square. The concerts are open to the public.
As is always the case with competitions, there were a number of performers who were technically and musically better than their peers.
Marko Pavlovic was one such competitor. He gave a solid, convincing performance of Bach's Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue. Each of the musical lines in this contrapuntal work were clearly defined and distinct. His other work was Chopin's Scherzo in B flat minor. Pavlovic interpreted this work with dramatic flair and style.
Natalia Lavrova was another exceptional performer. She played two Domenico Scarlatti sonatas (in G minor, K. 426, and F sharp major, K. 319) before turning her attention to Liszt's "Sonata Quasi Fantasia ('Apres une lecture du Dante')." She played the Liszt with unbridled passion, unleashing a storm of emotions during her performance.
Of the 18 semifinalists, three are Utahns -- Jonathan and Hilary Coombs, who are brother and sister, and Nielsen. All three presented strong opening round performances. Nielsen gave a powerful performance of two movements from Stravinsky's "Petroushka" and a very sensitive and expressive interpretation of Kreisler's "Liebeslied." Jonathan Coombs was superb in Debussy's "Feux d'artifice" and Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody No. 13 in A minor.
However, Hilary Coombs gave the best overall performance of the three. She was marvelous in "Ondine" from Ravel's "Gaspard de la nuit." Her interpretation quite simply sparkled. And she was fantastic in the immensely difficult Etude Tableau in C minor, op. 39, No. 1 by Rachmaninoff. She also gave an excellent performance of the Prelude from Bach's English Suite No. 3, BMV 808, and a lively interpretation of the first movement of Beethoven's Sonata in A major, op. 2, No. 2.