Piano Gold Medals No Guarantee of Career Success

The Pacific Symphony Orchestra will glitter when it showcases three gold medalists Saturday at Verizon Wireless Amphitheater in Irvine. But don’t let yourself be blinded. Competition victories and professional success don’t necessarily go hand in hand.

Stanislav Ioudenitch, this year’s Van Cliburn gold medal winner, for instance, has the prestige of the event behind him, but no one can truly predict his future. Past winners have failed to make their mark on the international circuit, while “losers” have sometimes enjoyed enormous careers.

Ioudenitch was actually making a comeback. He withdrew from the Cliburn competition in 1997 because of an injury to his hand. Even in winning this year, he shares top honors with Olga Kern, who will play with the Pacific on Aug. 25.

The other two gold medalists Saturday don’t come with Cliburn credentials. They’ve made careers, although of differing scope and with differing ease.

Wendy Chen, 29, won the 1997 Young Concert Artists International Auditions and--when she was 17--the National Chopin Competition. She has done reasonably well. But Robert Edward Thies, 30, who partners with her on the program, has had a harder time since he won the 1995 gold medal at the Second International Prokofiev Competition in St. Petersburg, Russia.

The two competed against each other growing up in the Southland. (“She was often the winner,” Thies said.) They’ve been friends since meeting at the Aspen Music Festival a decade ago.

Chen wanted professional management and got it. Thies decided to take a more individual route and has no agent. They’ll play Saint-Saens’ “Carnival of the Animals,” which requires two pianists. (Ioudenitch will play Mozart’s Concerto No. 21.)

“In 1958, there were 12 competitions in the world,” Thies said recently from his home in West Los Angeles. “Now there are over a hundred. I talked with a manager who said, ‘We can’t possibly take every single gold medal of every competition.’

“It was great that I won one. But I think a lot of people regard it as old news. They want what’s hot now ... That’s the way the business works.”

“Competitions are so controversial,” Chen said from Seattle, where she was playing in the city’s annual summer chamber music festival. “People have hated me, and I’ve dropped out of the first round. When I have been successful, of course, I’ve been very happy. I think a very healthy attitude can provide a very positive experience.

“But I didn’t do it as a route or source for more performances or making a name for myself. I did it to learn a lot of repertory and, yes, reap the rewards. But I never went with expectations of winning or even what they could provide me as a winner.”

The best she could do was to be true to herself. “It becomes tempting to try to second-guess what juries may be looking for and want to get that first prize. But it’s impossible to do that. It’s not done by numbers as in sports. It’s such a subjective thing. Whatever good things may come my way, I’m very thankful.”

So is Thies. “It is a rough world, but I feel very grateful,” he said. “I have to acknowledge I’ve been very, very lucky. There are so many other pianists, equally talented out there, who can’t be heard, struggling to get even a portion of the concerts I get.”

He recently played the Copland Concerto with the Eugene (Ore.) Symphony. He’ll play the Ravel Concerto on July 28 at the John Anson Ford Amphitheatre with the Santa Cecilia Orchestra. He’ll play Dohnanyi’s “Variations on a Nursery Song” next season with the Pasadena Symphony. He’ll also be playing the Schoenberg Concerto with the National Symphony in Mexico in November.

He’s played with the Long Beach Symphony Orchestra, and he has appeared four times in the last 11/2 years with the Mexico City Philharmonic under Jorge Mester.

“I wish I could transfer that kind of success to the States,” he said. There have been no Los Angeles Philharmonic dates so far.

Said Chen: “The Chopin Foundation and Concert Arts in New York have been very good to me and very generous. They’ve helped me create so many opportunities. Those are the great things. But one can also go to competitions, win and get a gold medal and never be heard from again.”

It certainly is unusual to have three winners on a single concert.

“It ended up with quite a lot of pianists,” said Pacific conductor Carl St.Clair. “When we put the program together, we didn’t really know who was going to play what because we didn’t know who was going to win [the Cliburn].

“This was true with all three of the programs in which we have a Cliburn winner. So, a lot of things had to be put on hold.”

The orchestra assumed that Ioudenitch would play the Saint-Saens piece, but he was too busy with the commitments that his new-found fame had brought him to learn it, St.Clair said. The orchestra was able to persuade Chen to change her plans to make a quick weekend trip down to Irvine.

In doing so, they relied on her familiarity with St.Clair and the orchestra--she’s appeared here twice. (Thies--like Ioudenitch--is making his debut with the Pacific, although he soloed with St.Clair leading the USC Symphony in 1997 at a President’s Concert honoring Thies’ Prokofiev competition victory.)

“I really have no idea how many concerts I play every year,” Chen said. “Winter and spring are usually pretty packed traveling. Summer is all chamber music festivals. You go from one to another.

“I think I have an even third--concert engagements, recitals and chamber music--in a year. It feels pretty good. It’s enough for me. For the Irvine concert, I’ll be coming in the day before. It’s a weekend trip. In and out.”

Still, she’s thrilled to be back, she said. “I love Carl St.Clair and the orchestra. I just love them.”

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Pianists Stanislav Ioudenitch, Wendy Chen and Robert Edward Thies will play with the Pacific Symphony led by Carl St.Clair on Saturday at Verizon Wireless Amphitheater, 8808 Irvine Center Drive, Irvine. 8 p.m. $18 to $67. (714) 755-5799 or (949) 855-8096.