Young Pianists Play It Low Key in Concerto Finals

The finals of a Young Keyboard Artists Assn. competition at Chapman College on Friday night made for a polite affair. There was no outpouring of emotion for a preferred candidate, and no controversy such as at the 1980 Chopin Competition in Warsaw when Martha Argerich stormed off the jury to protest the early elimination of a young Ivo Pogorelich.

But in terms of camaraderie and dedication, the concerto contest that culminated a three-day festival could well have been the finals at the Juilliard school in New York.

Six finalists, selected from more than 100 applicants, were invited to perform one movement of a concerto with orchestra and to compete for a first prize of $1,000, a grand piano and an engagement with the Pacific Symphony at the Orange County Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa.

“This competition seems like a big thing,” said Chapman vocal performance major Lisa Kraft, as she settled into a spectator’s seat in the sixth row at Chapman Auditorium. “I’m so impressed with these kids. I cannot tell whether this will inspire me to work harder or just be frustrating. I’m already 20 and realize I’m not where I should be.”

Kraft’s friend Brian Etheridge stopped by. Introducing himself as the “only percussion major” on campus, Etheridge had been recruited to play cymbals with the orchestra.

“Things have been running smooth here,” he said, reflecting on the overall competition that lured more than 300 pianists, ages 5 to 18, to the campus in Orange to battle it out in six subdivisions.

Etheridge, 19, expressed concern at the involvement of parents in the proceedings. “They’re always around,” he said. “They’re in all the practice rooms, conducting and turning pages and pushing. They’re more nervous and jittery than the kids.”

Juror Louise Lepley, who would join 10 colleagues in evaluating the evening’s performances, concurred that parents determine the outlook of their children.

“Parents either feed them a positive attitude toward winning or give them a killer attitude,” said Lepley, who serves on the faculty at the Community School of the Performing Arts in Los Angeles. “The older kids are the lucky ones. They get to decide what it is they want.”

At 8 p.m., an announcement was made warning patrons about restricted street parking that could result in citations, prompting a mini-exodus from the packed auditorium.

First at the keyboard was Natalie Zhu, 12, of Arcadia, a recent emigre from mainland China. Pretty in pink, she sat rigid awaiting the downbeat from conductor Donn Laurence Mills to members of his Capistrano Valley Symphony in their collaboration on Mozart’s Concerto in A Major, K. 488.

Next up was Reiko Uchida, 17, of Torrance, who played Saint-Saens No. 2 first movement. Hours earlier, Uchida had sat in a nearby rehearsal room lamenting the inadequate rehearsal time with the orchestra.

“I like to take a lot of time; I like my rubato,” Uchida said, as she fiddled with the buttons on her denim jacket.

At performance time, Uchida was transformed into a commanding presence in a shiny satin dress, all to the delight of her cheerleading cronies in the front row.

Mills, chairman of the music department at Chapman College, had also expressed disappointment at the limited rehearsal time. Surrounded by music scores, Mills had been in his office earlier making notations “in case anyone breaks down.”

“It’s so difficult to do Mozart in one rehearsal,” he said, “and it’s especially tough to do the tempo changes in Rachmaninoff.”

Edith Chen, 17, of Hacienda Heights concluded the program with the first movement of the Rachmaninoff Third, a recent addition to her repertory of 15 concertos. Chen said that what matters most to her is how well she plays, regardless of whether she wins.

“This is a lot of pressure,” she said, “but I like competitions and miss them when I don’t play. If you watch wonderful pianists, you are pushed to practice. But if you keep running into the same people at all the same competitions, it’s not that much fun. I must say I found this competition pretty tiring.”

Before Chen’s performance, the audience literally remained in the dark awaiting the appearance of Grace Huang, 18, of San Marino, listed on the program to play Mozart’s Concerto in C Major, K. 467. But when the program proceeded directly from Simon Tom to Edith Chen, organizers offered no explanation for Huang’s absence.

Tom, 14, who played the first movement of the Beethoven Second, said he found competitions nerve-racking.

“It’s like you’re gonna mess up or something,” he said. “I don’t see myself doing a lot of them. I like playing for fun.”

Tom confessed to an interest in basketball and tennis, as well as to a passion for chamber music, which he says he plays a great deal at home in Berkeley.

Also opting for a well-rounded life is Wendy Chen, 15, of Pasadena.

“Music is my only way to the future,” said Chen, who would pound out the Prokofiev Third. “I do well in school and don’t like anything as much as music. But I’m lucky. (Other) Oriental families want their children to go into medical studies. My family wants whatever I want.”

Indeed, parental ambitions are not necessarily in the best interest of a young performer, according to UCLA music professor Aube Tzerko, who has trained several prize-winning pianists including Misha Dichter and Edwin Auer, and for the past year has put Edith Chen through her paces.

“When they (the students) are young, they have these parents that are ambitious, and they offset my judgment that they should try to live a normal life and go to school and learn,” Tzerko said.

Speaking by phone from New York, where he was attending Dichter’s Carnegie Hall recital, Tzerko said competitions are essential to providing performance opportunities but stressed that the winners are not necessarily the ones that have important reputations.

“They’re not very often the most important performers in the competitions,” he said. “Look at Misha. He only came second in the (1966) Tchaikovsky. I make it a point of trying to educate my students who enter contests that this is for the purpose of exposure and to believe in themselves and believe in their abilities. It’s their happiness and position in life when they’re in their 20s that matters, not whether they’re the top prize-winner.”