# The Van Cliburn competition



## Lukecash12 (Sep 21, 2009)

I don't know if there's a thread on the Van Cliburn competition, that's already been made, but I want to bring up something specific about the competition, in particular the 2007 competition: *What the cheese and crackers?!* 

Do any of you remember Ken Lisaka? He was one of the competitors in the 2007 amateur Van Cliburn competition. It just so happens that he didn't even place. But guess what he did? He sat down and played the entire first movement of Alkan's concerto for solo piano. And he did a great job of it, too, showing much more impressive dynamic range and the ability to tackle such a large structure.

What did his opponents play? Nothing even remotely comparable technically, really. The bloody massive leaps, wicked ornaments, drum line type repetitive notes, fat suspended chords, difficult rhythms, super hard to live up to dynamic markings, and really nasty hand crossing (for example, the section when the left hand explores the entire keyboard in octaves, crossing over the right hand over and over) all present a demonic challenge to pianists. And what do we see in just this movement? I would say more brevity of exploration, interesting motifs, structure in general, great refrain sections, wild harmonic exploration, and thematic fun (the main motif is one of those barbaric motifs that Alkan so loved), is in this one movement than most whole sonatas contemporary to it. Liszt's sonata in B minor, eat your heart out!

So Ken Lisaka sat down and played the piece. An amateur sat down and played this piece, somehow managing to sustain tenuto and some structural rigidity all throughout, basically wrapping up every pianistic and musically expressive feat into one sit down. His performance was great enough even to rival my LP of Ronald Smith playing it. And the guy didn't even place? I was ready to throttle Van Cliburn, regardless of him being in his seventies. That his panel of jurors would judge Lisaka the way they did, makes me incredulous every time I remember it. So, I thought it was time I made a thread on it.

Listen to the performance yourself. Sorry the sound quality isn't great:






So, am I over-exaggerating this feat, or do I have a point? I don't watch the Van Cliburn competitions any more. Hadn't liked the judging since the 80's, and now I'm just completely turned off. It's not like Mozart isn't great, but playing that certainly shouldn't land you above Lisaka, who is amazing. You can find Lisaka playing Kapustin and Berg on his youtube channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/kiisaka/videos


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## Midnight Reflections (Oct 2, 2017)

Certainly you have a point. Without reducing the accomplishments of the other competitors, i am simply unsure why neither the jury, nor the audience award favored his playing. The following competition, he returned with a completely different sort of program that was also played awfully well, yet only earned him the same result. (With regard his first competition, he said that it occurred during "the most tumultuous time of [his] life.")

Beyond the most obvious matter, the phenomena of piano competitions being bizarre occasions of the moment, my most generous and genuine thought is that I wasn't present and listening over a computer bears little resemblance to sharing the same space. But I listened to a handful of first round competitors within the professional ranks and the performer i found the most interesting, won (amazingly). Then, the author of the above post is, I take it, making a more obvious point. Should it happen that he share more of himself with the public, i would certainly like to hear more of Ken Lisaka and know something of him, personally. He certainly won me over.


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## cimirro (Sep 6, 2016)

I love Alkan music a lot, this guy made a good job indeed!

But the technical challenges in Alkan's music are far from "impressive" as mostly usually claims. They are basically "romantic technique used in long pieces" and this make some of these works less habitual in standard repertoire. (I have played 6 of his minor-key etudes)

There are 3 kind of people who claims Alkan's works are more difficult than others:
1 - The ones who do not play piano...
2 - The ones who do not know much piano's repertoire...
3 - The ones who wants to make their marketing playing Alkan...

Almost all the time (specially in youtube comments) people use "metronome marks" to justify the difficulty of playing these works - eventually "wrong" indications from the editors!!!.
Anyway one of the worst examples is "Le Preux" where the only indication in the first page is "carrément" and "Dans un bon mouvement", and several people claims its "right" tempo must be very fast (for them I would recommend a French dictionary...)

We have several sets of Etudes which are as much technically difficult as Alkan's ones during the romantic period (and even some much harder ones!!!!) but hardly someone is interested in research about new repertoire.

Anyway, yes, I'm happy to see more people playing a great composer like Alkan.
And as all can see, an amateur with courage and dedication can play Alkan, why not? That's great.

I do not think it is strange what happened to him, I really do not believe in the honesty/integrity of these famous competitions and their jury... but that's me...

Thanks for sharing the audio!
All the best
Artur Cimirro


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