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Annual NJSO Young Artists Finals
More than a raised eyebrow
Sunday, April 23, 2006
By Paul M. Somers

New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, Alastair Willis (conductor). 2006 Young Artists Competition Concert. Jae Ook Lee (violin): Sibelius' Violin Concerto in D minor (mvt. 1); Sun-A Park (piano): Rachmaninoff's Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini; Nicholas Bodnar (cello): Dvorák's Cello Concerto in B minor (mvt. 1); Betty Zhou (violin): Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto in D major (mvt. 1). Honorable Mention - Sungpil Kim (piano): Ravel's "Ondine" from Gaspard de la nuit; Courtney Lin Kaita (cello): Bach's Suite no. 2 for solo cello, mvt. 1. State Theatre, New Brunswick.

Reportage

The New Jersey Symhony Orchestra's 31st Annual Young Artists Competition Awarded the $10,000 Henry Lewis Award to 15 year old violinist Betty Zhou of Edison for her performance of the first movement of the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto. Her flawless finger technique and immaculate intonation were her greatest strengths.

The $5,000 Judy Nachison Award was awarded to violinist Jae Ook Lee of Creskill for his intensly musical peformance of the first movement of the Sibelius Violin Concerto.

The $3,000 NJSO League Volunteer Award went to pianist Sun-A Park, who gave a performance of Rachmaninoff's popular Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini which placed it in its proper mid-twentieth-century context.

The $2,000 Conductor's Award was presented to cellist Nicholas Bodnar for his performance of the first movement of Dvorák's Cello Concerto. One has to imagine that his feel for the Czech idiom is derived at least in part from a Bohemian lineage.

The concert began with the orchestra playing an eminently dancable and operatically dramatic "Polonaise" from Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin.

Opinion

In the twenty years I have covered this event I have always done my best to celebrate the young artists no matter where they placed and to not second guess the judges. Chalk it up to reaching my mid-60s and becoming flinty if you must, but this year I must speak out. The lesson to be learned in this edition of the annual competition was sadly the same one which infests so many competitions: show a lot of technique and don't show any individuality. I had hoped the NJSO would not succumb. But now that I think it has - at least this once - allow me to suggest that individuality bit the dust, while cookie-cutter-ism won the day.

The judges were three artists whom I have reviewed at various times and always quite favorably: pianist and NJSO soloist Per Tengstrand, cellist Nicholas Tzavaras, and violinist Adela Peña, the last two of the Shanghai Quartet and the Eroica Trio respectively. So my remarks do not reflect some previously held bias against any of them. But I surely must take issue with them as judges on this occasion.

Pianist Sun-A Park, who they placed third, produced the most fascinating and indivudual performance of the afternoon. She played Rachmaninoff's 1934 Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, composed in America, as if it were not a stylistic anachronism. In this she was aided and abetted by conductor Alastair Willis and the orchestra.

Of the four works, her performance was the most clearly integrated with the orchestra. Both soloist and ensemble revealed the work to be made of quite abstract and disjunct pointillist dashes of color which, through an emphasis on detachment of tones from each other, came to sparkle and glitter like the dots of light in fireworks. Park was always willing to fold her piano passages into the orchestra when they took on the role of colors which should mix with, rather than dominate, the texture. The result was spicy and quite modernist, an element most usually suppressed into a gray sound wash behind the piano. When it was time for the "big tune" (the place where the original Paganini is inverted and played slowly with a much different rhythm), Ms. Park produced lush romanticism rendered all the more effective for sounding like a stylistic throwback within a piece which was intended to be filled with strange modernist hockets in the melodic lines and empty spaces between snippets of sound. Touches of Ravel at his most evanescent were placed into an orchestral vocabulary filled with magical instrumental color shifts in the midst of phrases. And these were matched by Park on the piano shift for shift, color for color. It was, as of this writing, the most interesting - nay, compelling - performance of the work I have ever heard - the antithesis of "classical ear candy." But was it "the usual", "the normal"? No. One thing was for sure, no matter what one expects from a Juilliard Pre-College student, this was not it.

If there is a fault in many young artists competitions, it is that already at their young age they are being taught that "off the Juilliard shelf" will win, and taking interesting if slightly abberrant choices and chances will get you nowhere. If you have a personal vision of a work, don't trot it out with judges around, especially if they came off the Juilliard shelf themselves (I have no idea of the educational past of any of the judges).

Ms. Park did her astonishing Rhapsody anyway, and she was taught a lesson I hope she ignores: Give us sweet syrupy Rach or forget competing. She gave them a Chagal version with floating colors and romantic gestures placed in altered spaces. And she did it all with technical sureness. She was a hands-down first place in my estimation.

The judges' winner was violinist Betty Zhou. She had absolutely fantastic technique. Her intonation put the other two string players to abject shame. But over the years in competitions and with orchestras which engage young artists I have heard the Tchaikovsky again and again. This was the same Tchaikovsky that any Juilliard Pre-College kid with a hot technique comes out to play. Perhaps some may actually put some soul into it, but more often soul seems to not be the point. It certainly wasn't the point with Ms. Zhou, who dazzled the ears with musical ice. Never for one instant did she convince me that this was anything more than another rung on her musical achievement ladder. "Okay, I've got Tchaik down, and I got $10,000 for doing it. What's next?" This is not to suggest that she was anything but gracious in winning or that she is avaricious or cynical. But there wasn't a Russian in the audience who could have said they were moved without risking revocation of their passport or green card. Even so, she was clearly the second place winner.

As for violinist Jae Ook Lee and cellist Nicholas Bodnar, though they both ended up pleading nolo contendere, they both played with a palpable connection to the music. The widely varied styles of Sibelius and Dvorák respectively were conveyed with personal passion. Lee showed off a teen idol charisma, while Bodnar played with a quietly centered focus of mind. But Mr. Lee had intonation problems which I imagined would place him last, even as he opened the competition. But he was surpassed in intonation problems by Mr. Bodnar. Now when I say "intonation problems" I'm not talking about wincing in aural pain. But in a competition winning can sometimes come down to one slightly out of tune pitch, and both young gentlemen had too many of those - especially in double stops - to rate high. Lee's second place was, quite frankly, a surprise gift. In my book Lee was a distant third and Bodnar the fourth he was actually given.

How Ms. Park could have been placed between them is so far beyond my ken that it is what has turned me flinty. I can understand how many would prefer Zhou as winner, but Park in third? No way!

Pianist Sungpil Kim, the first of two Honorable Mention winners to play while the judges deliberated, played a very colorful "Ondine" from Ravel's Gaspard de la Nuit, though a few moments of sloppy passage work hidden from general notice by pedalling showed why he did not make the finals.

It was left to Honorable Mention cellist Courtney Lin Kaita to finally create the balance of technique and emotion lacking in the three finalist string players. In the "Prelude" to Bach's Unaccompanied Suite no. 2, her intonation seemed secure while she exuded deeply felt Bachian phrases. She was last to play, and she left this listener smiling with quiet satisfaction. One has to guess that she was kept from the finals because her concerto wasn't in good enough shape.