Young Pianist’s Beethoven Competition

By

Lyn Bronson

 

On Saturday, April 24, six young finalists competed in the Nineteenth Annual Young Pianist’s Beethoven Competition, in the Music Building’s Concert Hall at San Jose State University (SJSU). This competition, founded by Celia Mendez, was jointly presented by the Ira F. Brilliant Center for Beethoven Studies and the College of Humanities and the Arts at San Jose State University. Judges for the final round were Cherie M. Curry and John Delevoryas, SJSU Professors Emeritus, and William Meredith, Director of the Beethoven Center.

 

The finalists performing in the competition were Angela Park, a sophomore at Monte Vista High School, a pupil of John McCarthy; Junyao Peng, a freshman at Laguna Creek High School, a pupil of Richard Cionco; Alan Chen, a Junior at Mission San Jose High School, a pupil of Hans Boepple;  Stepan Rudenko, a senior at Cañada Middle College, a pupil of Anna Polonsky; Hotaik Sung, a sophomore at Lynbrook High School, a pupil of Dr. Jonathan Jou; and Abraham Lin, a junior at Homestead High School, a pupil of Hans Boepple.

 

The three winners, Hotaik Sung, Abraham Lin and Stepan Rudenko, participated during the afternoon in a master class conducted by pianist Charles Rosen, who had appeared in a recital at SJSU on Friday evening. The venerable Mr. Rosen, as distinguished an author as he is a pianist, was in rare form during the proceedings, for he was warm and encouraging, and respected the young pianists’ ideas about the works they were playing, while at the same time offering the benefits of his vast knowledge of Beethoven Sonatas and early nineteenth-century performance practice.

 

Charles Rosen & Hotaik Sung

The first young pianist to perform during the afternoon session was Hotaik Sung, playing Beethoven’s Sonata No. 13 in E-flat Major, Op. 27, No. 1. Rosen praised the performance and offered some pithy suggestions for its improvement. “I am not pedantic,” he said, “and if you find something better then Beethoven’s way, do it. But what you do is not always better, sometimes just less interesting.” They worked together to achieve more clarity in staccato 16^th note passages, and also to observe the precise length of notes and rests. Rosen discussed the difficulties of playing Beethoven on a modern Steinway D as compared to a Beethoven piano and Sung responded instantly to the many suggestions.

 

Abraham Lin

The second pianist, Abraham Lin, gave us an exciting performance of Beethoven’s “Appassionata” Sonata. Mr. Rosen’s first comment was about the slow movement, in which, he contended, Lin had a different tempo for each variation. Rosen demonstrated selecting a more fluid tempo for the theme and maintaining it in the following variations. His second concern was the too rapid tempo in the final movement, which he pointed out, was “Allegro, ma non troppo.” He said that we know that a Beethoven Allegro is most often a brisk quarter note equaling 138, but the final movement has more dignity and just as much excitement at a slower tempo. Concerning the first movement, Rosen commented that Lin had exactly the right length of the second note (the sixteenth note) in the opening motif and all its subsequent appearances, except that when it appears in the A-flat major second theme, the sixteenth note needs to be longer (and actually incorrect metrically) or it sounds too perfunctory and glib. Rosen also mentioned that most performers begin the first movement too slowly, and argued for its being strictly in tempo.

 

Charles Rosen & Stepan Rudenko

The final performer of the session was Stepan Rudenko playing the Sonata No. 11 in B-flat Major, Op. 22. Rosen showed the only irritation of the afternoon in chastising Rudenko and his teacher for using a bad edition — he did not identify which edition was the basis for Rudenko’s performance, but he commented that the editor’s slurring, pedaling and accents, were misleading and based on corrupt and out-of date performance practice. Rosen pointed out that there were scale-like passages in this sonata that cannot be pedaled. “You can’t pedal Beethoven in the style of Schumann,” he said. Consistently, Rosen pointed out that the second note of two quarter notes slurred has to be shortened and played like an eighth note followed by an eighth-note rest. He also mentioned that by the second half of the nineteenth century, in Brahms, for instance, the second quarter note under the slur is played longer, but not in Beethoven.

 

Thus ended a most informative master class, where we had an opportunity to observe that Charles Rosen, who celebrates his 78^th birthday this year, is as keen as ever, has maintained his performance skills at a high level and, most importantly, still burns with a passion about music and is a skillful and compassionate communicator.

 

End