Competition of Pianists Ends on a Controversial Note

Evgeni Mikhailov has a shiny new piano and $30,000 he didn’t have last week. Twenty-nine other pianists who traveled from far and wide to Pasadena to trudge through some of Rachmaninoff’s most popular music must return home disappointed.

At the Pasadena Civic Auditorium on Saturday night, a couple thousand people paid as much as $120 a seat to hear a short concert and sit through a long awards ceremony, dominated by commercial sponsors and self-congratulating organizers. A star was not born.

I did not attend the proceedings of the Rachmaninoff International Piano Competition, so I cannot speak about the caliber of all the pianists who entered. I am also willing to accept the sponsors’ claims that the jurors for this new competition voted their sincere enthusiasms, however predictable the prizes they ultimately awarded.

This competition is a Russian enterprise, and a Russian, who tastelessly banged his way through Rachmaninoff’s “Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini” Saturday, took the top honors. The competition also had backing from Kawai, the Japanese piano manufacturer; the Japanese pianist, Mizuka Kano, who won second prize, was bland, if technically secure, in the two short solo Rachmaninoff pieces she played. There was no one deemed worthy of third place.

That these results don’t appear coincidental need not imply funny business from the judges. The funny business began long before the international jury set foot in Pasadena. In fact, the flawed competition was set up in such a way that such results would almost be inevitable.

First, the repertory all but precluded an interesting outcome. The emphasis was on Rachmaninoff’s warhorses, not enterprise.

Then there was the sheer dulling process of hearing, say, 10 sequential performances of Rachmaninoff’s massive second piano sonata (as happened in the second round), which does not make for bright-eyed judging.

Third, Kawai’s pianos may have thrown the competition another curve. This is not a piano commonly selected by recitalists, and the bright, metallic-sounding instrument on the stage Saturday would not likely suit a lyrical player or a colorist. The two prizewinners were, indeed, most notably deficient in buttery lyricism and subtlety of touch.

Fourth, Mikhailov, who is 29 and has appeared often in Moscow, had the benefit of familiarity to at least some of the jurors, many of whom were Russians, and he had previously performed with the celebrated conductor, pianist and juror Vladimir Ashkenazy in Berlin.

Finally, the Muscovite Mikhailov also had the advantage of his familiarity, and compatibility, with the Moscow Radio Tchaikovsky Symphony Orchestra, which accompanied him in the Rhapsody on Saturday (and all the finalists in their Rachmaninoff concertos during the competition). Under the guest conductor, Nikolai Alexeev, it proved a curiously feral ensemble, full of individually expressive players who seemed to like nothing better than to pounce on each phrase and snag it. There was certainly something enjoyable about hearing these blunt musicians in love with vibrato (and not particularly attached to intonation) in Rachmaninoff’s Symphonic Dances, which opened the concert portion of the program. With encouragement from Alexeev, some really odd, and sometimes gripping, sounds poured forth.

This proved an advantage for Mikhailov. In the Rhapsody, the pianist rarely looked up from the keyboard that he was busily smashing; the conductor seldom lifted his head from the score. Yet they hardly needed eye contact, locked in, as they were, to the same unspontaneous wavelength.

What made me most uneasy Saturday, however, was not a vulgar pianist collaborating with a crude orchestra to produce studied excitement. After all, the Rachmaninoff prize is not likely to mean much, one way or another. (It assures no gigs other than a single appearance in Mexico City, and a recording on Pipeline Music, a sponsor of the competition that distributes its CDs by mail order.) Rather it was hard to respect any public presentation that demonstrated such disregard for the audience and performers alike.

Eager to capture every aspect of this occasion for posterity, Pipeline allowed a callous film crew to shine intense, bright light directly into the audience’s eyes whenever there was occasion for applause. By the time that the awards were presented and the performances given, our Pavlovian responses were well trained. There could be no question of sustained clapping for the winner, merely an anticlimactic quick getaway for most of the crowd and a general sense of irritability. There were no encores.

It is also necessary to mention that the city of Pasadena and the state of California were partners in this misguided exercise in Russian chauvinism. California’s first lady, Sharon Davis, spoke during the ceremony, reminding us that music is a universal language. She did not, though, credit Californians--from Henry Cowell to the Kronos Quartet--with their leading role in making that so. Too readily we cede our place to Rachmaninoff, who hardly needs the help.

For all its pomp, the Rachmaninoff International Piano Competition was a hunt for the kind of pianists who are a dime a dozen. And drawing a blank for third place, it didn’t even do a good job at that.