The Van Cliburn Virtuoso Next Door

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Hosts Lisa and Shanon Logan and competitor Dasol Kim

Among  the many reasons Fort Worth is such an agreeable place to live is its consistent punching above its weight class in the culture category. There are the crown jewels — The Kimbell and The Modern. In Texas Ballet Theater, it hosts North Texas’ only ballet company. And for music, it’s the Van Cliburn Foundation, which brings artists of the first rank here for its concert series and sponsors one of the best known piano competitions in the world.

This year marks the 15th competition, which has been held every four years since 1962. The competition, which officially began Thursday and runs till June 10, actually began months ago with 290 applicants. From those, 146 were selected for live auditions in London, Hannover, Budapest, Moscow, Seoul, New York, and Fort Worth, where they were heard by a jury of five pianists.

Now culled down to 30 competitors from around the world, each contestant will play a commissioned piece from Canadian composer Marc-André Hamelin and pieces of their own choosing for a maximum of 45 minutes of music in the preliminary round before eliminations.

Many of the contestants have established careers and have already garnered international notice. That certainly holds true for the virtuoso next door, Dasol Kim, being hosted by Briggs Freeman Sotheby’s agent Lisa Logan. The Korean-born pianist makes Berlin his home and has performed with leading orchestras in Europe and the New York Philharmonic. He has also recorded the music of Robert Schumann for Deutsche Grammophon.

I was fortunate to hear Kim’s preliminary round, which was certainly impressive in its breadth, featuring music of  Haydn, Albeniz, and Ravel. Kim is an accomplished artist who plays with an eloquent authority and exhibits a polyglot proficiency in the piano literature. The dazzling stand-out of his performance, which will certainly get the jury’s attention, was his impassioned interpretation of Ravel’s Gaspard de la Nuit. Notoriously difficult to play, in fact designed by Ravel to be so, the tripartite composition is rich in goose-flesh producing harmonies and dynamics that range from musical sighs to crazed tarantellas. Kim effortlessly mastered Gaspard’s subtleties, and complications luxuriating in its many textures and moods. The virtuoso next door may well turn out to be the winner next door.

Tickets may be bought at cliburn.org. If you can’t make it to Fort Worth, you can watch the competition streaming live.

Eric Prokesh is an interior designer whose work has appeared on HGTV, and in books and publications including D Home, Southern Accents, House Beautiful, and House and Garden. In January 2005, HG named Eric one of the 50 tastemakers in America and D Home has included him as one of Dallas’ Best Designers for 10 years. Having lived most of his life in Dallas, he now calls Fort Worth home and is one of our experts on beautiful Fort Worth Dirt.

 

Eric Prokesh is an award-winning interior designer who calls Fort Worth his home.

1 Comment

  1. Eric Prokesh on May 27, 2017 at 9:30 pm

    http://www.star-telegram.com/news/special-reports/van-cliburn/article152896424.html
    Apparently the Star Telegram agrees with your humble correspondent.

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