The ‘Yoda’ of the piano world dominates the Tchaikovsky competition
Michael Johnson is a music critic with particular interest in piano.
Johnson worked as a reporter and editor in New York, Moscow, Paris and London over his journalism career. He covered European technology for Business Week for five years, and served nine years as chief editor of International Management magazine and was chief editor of the French technology weekly 01 Informatique. He also spent four years as Moscow correspondent of The Associated Press. He is the author of five books.
Michael Johnson is based in Bordeaux. Besides English and French he is also fluent in Russian.
You can order Michael Johnson's most recent book, a bilingual book, French and English, with drawings by Johnson:
“Portraitures and caricatures: Conductors, Pianist, Composers”
here.
The International Tchaikovsky Competition in St. Petersburg and Moscow ended last night (July 1) in a virtual American sweep in the piano category, with gold and bronze prizes going to American-trained Russian boys and the silver to a Chinese-American player from Boston.
Never has the competition been so influenced by U.S. pedagogical talent.
The audience roared its approval as Dmitri Masleev, 27, the shy, modest pianist from the Siberian city of Ulan-Ude, stepped forward to accept the top prize, worth 20,000 euros, one of the richest piano awards in the world. Second place, for 15,000 euros, had just been announced for George Li, 19, a student of Russell Sherman, and the bronze third prize for 10,000 euros went to Sergei Redkin, 23.
The competition also included categories in voice, violin and cello. Full results are available at the competition site.
Other Tchaikovsky piano winners have included Van Cliburn (1958), Andrei Gavrilov (1974), Barry Douglas (1986) and Boris Berezovsky (1990).
To aficianados of the piano world, the thread linking the first and third prizes last night was the most stunning. Both Masleev and Redkin are studying with William Grant Naboré, [in the picture] the American virtuoso who serves as president and artistic director of the International Piano Academy Lake Como in Dongo, Italy. He personally worked with Masleev and Redkin, even coaching them by phone from during the long trials of the competition.
Naboré’s students have walked off with so many major competition prizes over the past few years that he has acquired the nickname of the “Yoda” of the piano world. Naboré is a black American of small stature, a ready smile and wise teachings.
Reached by phone in Rome, he was relishing his double victory, only the latest in an extraordinary history of training next-generation artists, but he was quick to credit his faculty of master class teachers for their role. “Our academy was founded on the ideal of promoting high art for the piano,” he told me. “All our students and master class faculty are chosen for their adherence to these principles. These latest winners are helping us keep our pianistic utopia alive.”
Current Como faculty include Dmitri Bashkirov, Leon Fleischer and Fou Ts’ong, Malcolm Bilson, Menehem Pressler and Peter Frankl, among others. The late Charles Rosen and Alicia de Larrocha were also regular faculty members. Many donate their time as a way of “giving something back to their art,” said Naboré, “and they are all passionate pedagogues”. The teachers will be critical to the new Como partnership with the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, which will be inaugurated in September.
Among his students who have rocked the competition world are Yulianna Avdeeva, who took first prize in the Chopin Competition in Warsaw in 2010, Denis Kozhukin won first prize in the Queen Elisabeth Music Competition in 2010, Severin Von Eckardstein, who won the Queen Elisabeth Music Competition gold in Brussels in 2009. Martina Filjk won first prize at the Cleveland Piano Competition in 2009, and Behzod Abduraimov won the London International Piano competition in 2009. Stanislav Ioudenich, who won gold at the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in 2001, now serves on the Como faculty.
The Como concept provides about seven young pianists, chosen from about 1,000 applicants annually, with room and board and the freedom to develop repertoire with a minimum of pressure. Teaching is provided by Naboré and his hand-picked faculty who fly in and out of Italy for week-long sessions with the students. Naboré believes competition winners in particular need such breathing space before setting out on a rigorous career path.
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