Honens 2022 first impressions: Competition continues to set a high bar

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Delayed for a year because of COVID-19, the Honens International Piano Competition has returned and is now in full swing at Mount Royal University’s Bella Concert Hall. At the moment, the competition is completing its first semi-final phase with hour-long recitals by contestants taking place twice daily; these will be followed by a second semi-final phase with collaborative recitals with Canadian violinist Martin Beaver, fleshed out with still more solo playing.

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What follows are my impressions of the round of solo recitals, programs chosen by the contestants to display their pianistic wares and to show why they should be chosen to be one of the finalists. As a veteran attendee of all nine of the previous incarnations of Honens, it has been interesting to see both the continuities, as well as some new elements.

The world of piano playing and what constitutes excellence, what constitutes a superior performance of a major work, is by no means static. Tastes in performance, repertoire, approach to piano sound, and technique change over the years. Even within the history of Honens, ideas about performance have shifted, and it’s not so clear that what was successful in the past would be equally successful today.

From the point of view of the contestants, there are many things to slice and dice here. Different from other competitions, Honens is less concerned (as it says) with barnstorming virtuosity and more with the idea of the “complete artist.” To accomplish this purpose, the competition has devised several hurdles, even traps, to catch those who play with evident brilliance but whose total musicianship is limited in some way.

This said, no one without the ability to command the instrument, to play a wide range of repertoire well, and to deliver the goods in a big, romantic piano concerto will have a career – the standard is simply too high on the world stage. Thus, for all contestants, a path has to be found to impress the jury as a pianist in the rawest sense, but also to impress as a “complete artist.”

Compared to other years, the technical standard displayed by all the contestants is equally as high as in the past, if not a trifle stronger. All 10 pianists play astonishingly well, the most fearsome difficulties mastered and taken in stride. Despite the challenges, there was never a sense of struggle or effort to deliver the notes – the very thing that plagues the developing pianist.

Given the general present tendency to explore repertoire that is off the beaten path, this group of semi-finalists is very slightly conservative in its choice of music to perform, with exceptions, of course. The major blockbusters of the classical piano world were much in evidence: the great works of Schumann, Chopin and Liszt, the sonatas of Beethoven, Brahms and Prokofiev, and the music of Rachmaninoff, Debussy and Ravel.

These marvellous works, the heartland of music for the piano, impressed the audience. As always, the foyer was filled at intermission and after each event with piano aficionados, long familiar with these masterpieces, debating the merits of one performance over another. it is the very stuff of competitions.

As maverick in all this was the performance by Rachel Breen of Bach’s Goldberg Variations, an oddity as a work for a competition like this, and performed in a highly individual way. This leads to the salient question: will jury members, who would never play this piece this way, reject the individuality of the performer, or, with a generosity of spirit award the performer for imagination and freedom? Juries have been known to play it both ways.

Another element in the search for the complete artist is part of this competition – the specially-composed set piece. It is a fact of modern life that pianists often need to be able to learn new music quickly and to show a rapid musical understanding of something for which there is no real preparation possible. To this end, each Honens competition commissions a new work. This year it is a piece entitled Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso by the Canadian pianist/composer Stewart Goodyear.

I was only familiar with Goodyear as a pianist, and it was a treat to hear the new work he composed for the competition 10 times. While the title evokes the world of Mendelssohn, the piece itself is much like a French conservatory piece of the previous century. The style of the opening suggests dreamy Ravel and is followed by a toccata-style longer second section that seems to fuse Ravel, Scriabin and Art Tatum in various degrees of influence. The resulting work is, however, completely individual and utterly compelling. It was performed in a great variety of ways for the 10 semi-finalists, some taking to the piece with such evident enjoyment that it became the highlight of their program. As a competition piece, this is a real winner.

A few things, common to all competitions, could be noticed. Pianists whose technical abilities are seemingly without limit, and whose strength is amazing, tended at least sometimes to play to these strengths. There is a wonderful athletic side to virtuoso piano performance, not so different from an Olympic skier or the best tennis player, and if you’ve got it, the tendency is to flaunt it. And so they did here, frequently. Sometimes this led to places where the piano sound can get a bit hard, or speeds were taken beyond what the listener can fully process, things associated with the joy of co-ordination and youth, but not necessarily the marks of the “complete artist.”

How things will play out for the contestants in the later rounds remains to be seen. There are many shoals that lie ahead for the all-fingers-but-not-much-musicianship type of pianist. For example, playing a Beethoven violin sonata needs the performer to be aware of just how much sound the violinist is making – it will be much less than a solo pianist in full killer mode. Can the pianist control the amount and quality of the sound, without resumption to simply grey, unfocussed tone? And then it gets worse: can a pianist who has just climbed Mount Everest, pianistically speaking, suddenly enter the world of Viennese charm in the simple accompaniment of a musical bonbon by Fritz Kreisler?

Having heard just a few rounds of the second part of the semi-final rounds, I can say that there are some contestants whose solo playing commanded the field, only to look like a fish out of water playing an accompaniment they could sightread. Charm, sentiment, and the musical manners of the world of autrefois are almost impossible to teach, but this is the world of the complete artist, one who responds to every musical situation with understanding.

When the present laureate of the last competition played his solo pieces, there were others who also played well. But it took only five minutes of the collaborative round to sense where the ultimate winner was likely to be found. The ability to speak in musical conversation with others in a collaborative way is an important element in today’s musical world.

This ability will be further tested in the rounds to come, especially the finals. Here the contestants will have to show that they can play a Mozart piano concerto with a string quartet, a task in which they are both the soloist and a member of a small group that can have a civilized musical conversation. And then the opposite on the final night: can one command and dominate in the context of a large orchestra with a pianist as hero and ultimate victor? Plenty of music thrills await.

Before then, there will be solo recitals by Nicholas Namoradze and Jeremy Denk on Tuesday and Wednesday evenings, before the two final rounds on Thursday and Friday evenings, the latter at Jack Singer Concert Hall. All these events are worth braving Calgary’s weather to attend.