Review: Cliburn Junior finalists perform

It’s a cliché of piano competitions for the jury chairman to soften the blow to the eliminated by declaring that the choices were unusually tough. In the case of the Junior Cliburn, there’s more than a grain of truth to the cliché.

Starting with the first preliminary round last Sunday, it became pretty clear that this was going to be a strong field. That impression was reinforced with each succeeding day.

By the conclusion of the semifinals on Friday evening, it was clear that the cliché, if it be uttered, had ceased to be a cliché. The semifinal field of six pianists was so strong that one could fantasize about a six-way tie for the finals while knowing it could never be.

The first part of the semifinals on Thursday featured the six playing 40-minute solo recitals. The second part, on Friday, had them playing the first movement of a concerto accompanied by a second piano.

This robbed the performances of some punch, but still gave a good sense of the pianists’ concerto skills. They had plenty of that.

A Cliburn competition can’t be a Cliburn without at least one Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 1. Alim Beisembayev of Kazakhstan provided this one, giving a powerful performance that made one almost not mind the absence of an orchestra.

The rest of the field contributed elegant and lyrical playing of non-Tchaikovsky concertos: Grieg’s A minor (Arsenii Mun of Russia), Chopin’s No. 2 (Youlan Ji of China), Rachmaninoff’s first — no, not the second or third (Wei Luo of China), Chopin’s first (Evelyn Mo of the United States) and Ravel’s G Major (Yukine Kuroki of Japan.

The accompanists were pianists Natsuko Ejiri and Evan Mitchell.

Sure enough, jury chairman Jon Nakamatsu referred to the toughness of the competition when he announced the selection of the finalists at the end of the day. They were Mun, Beisembayev and Ji.

Luo, Mo and Kuroki could take some comfort in knowing the tough field was not just a cliché this time.

The three finalists will get to play their concertos in full with the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra and conductor Mei-Ann Chen on Sunday afternoon in Ed Landreth Hall.

This story was originally published June 26, 2015 at 10:49 PM with the headline "Review: Cliburn Junior finalists perform."