By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
Playing piano teaches Sophia Kim something about herself.
“The music has me bring out different parts of my emotions and my feelings,” the 16-year-old from New Jersey said. “It really sparks my imagination in a way that normal events in daily life can’t, so it brings out a different aspect of me.”
Kim was crowned the winner of the 12th David D. Dubois Piano Competition Sunday at Bowling Green State University.
The competition and festival brought 17 semifinalists, including musicians from China and Vietnam, to campus for the weekend event.
Renowned pianist Robert McDonald, who teaches at the Juilliard School and Curtis Institute, was the festival’s guest artist. As such he was one of the three judges for the finals.
“There was a certain kind of aliveness in the way she was reacting,” he said of Kim’s playing. “The range in her sound was more pronounced, and her general musical instincts were very strong and natural. I got pleasure out of what her ideas were.”
Other winners were:
- Noah Kim, 15, of Vernon Hills, Illinois, placed second at the event.
- Munan Cheng, 14, of San Jose California, placed third.
- Kejia Gabriella Wei, 13, of Westlake, received honorable mention.
[Click to view recording of livestreamed event.]
McDonald said that the panel of judges – himself, Tian Tian from Oakland University, who studied with McDonald, and Robert Shannon of Oberlin Conservatory – settled quickly on who the top performers were. Then it was a matter of ranking them.
He was impressed with Noah Kim. “The care in how he listens – as soon as he started playing his awareness from that standpoint was on a different level.”
McDonald praised Cheng’s “beautiful fluency.” And, he said, “she barely dropped a note. It was unusual to hear that even in this day and age. So, there were a lot of good basic qualities to what she’s about.”
McDonald did note that Noah Kim’s program was “very standard.” He performed Prelude and Fugue in C-sharp Major by J.S. Bach, Ballade No. 1 in G Minor by Frederic Chopin, and Beethoven’s “Waldstein” sonata.
That latter piece is almost the theme song for the festival because it is played so often. Two other finalists also played the sonata.
It’s all “important music,” McDonald said, “but not necessarily as colorful in range” as what Sophia Kim performed.
That doesn’t always make a difference, but in this case may had swayed the judges, he said.
The winner performed Beethoven’s Sonata in E-Flat Major (all contestants are required to play a sonata from the Classical period), Prelude and Fugue in A-flat Major by J.S. Bach, Hungarian Rhapsody in D-flat by Franz Liszt, and two movements from Gyorgy Ligeti’s “Musica ricercata,” one of only two contemporary pieces performed during the finals.
“I spent the summer listening to pieces and these were ones I liked,” Kim said of how she selected the program.
The Bach was a piece that her mother played, she said, “so I wanted to play as well.”
Her mother, Mansoon Kim, is a pianist and piano teacher with a doctorate from Peabody Institute. She started teaching her daughter when Sophia was 4. Kim now studies in Juilliard’s Pre-College Program.
Kim had wanted to play Liszt’s “Tarantella,” but her teacher was concerned it would be too difficult, not that the rhapsody with its octave stretches was easy.
The Beethoven sonata is “just really beautiful,” Kim said. The musical “questioning” in the beginning drew her in as she explored its contrasts and touches of humor.
And the Ligeti caught her attention. She played the first and third of the 11 movements. The third reminded her of herself. “So I enjoyed learning it.”
Now a high school junior, she knows she wants to continue being involved in music as she goes on to college, though not to what extent.
“I just really like (playing the piano). The more I play, the more connection I feel to the piano. The more I play, the more I discover about the music and myself. It’s something I can’t walk away from at this point.”
