By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
Natasha Wu’s last appearance at Bowling Green was a triumphant one.
One year ago, the Taiwanese teenager came away with the first Prize in the David D. Dubois Piano Festival and Competition.
Bowling Green was the first stop on a college tour of the United States to help her decide where to further her piano studies, which had started at 6.
As it happened she landed not so far from here at Oberlin College.
Wu will return to Bowling Green State University on Thursday, Jan. 30, at 8 p.m., to perform as part of a gala concert to mark the 10th anniversary of the Dubois Piano Festival and Competition. The concert in Bryan Recital Hall in the Moore Musical Arts Center is free. Donations will be accepted to benefit the BGSU Piano Scholarship Fund.
Last year’s guest artist Marina Lomazov said of Wu’s playing: “She played with maturity and depth that really belied her years. There was a tremendous nobility to her playing. She did not show off. She didn’t do anything that the music did not ask her to do. That’s what I really appreciated.”
The gala performance will feature the BGSU piano faculty — Solungga Liu, Laura Melton, Robert Satterlee and Yevgeny Yontov — performing music for four and eight hands on one and two pianos.
Wu will perform Ballade No. 2 in F Major by Frederic Chopin. Last year, she said that Chopin is her favorite composer.
Melton, who has coordinated the Dubois Festival since its inception, said that the inspiration for the concert was the desire to have a piano gala to raise money for scholarships.
The concert seemed an appropriate way to kick off the Dubois Festival.
The festival’s guest artist is Boris Berman, who teaches at Yale University, and has a reputation for nurturing young talent. He has served as a judge for many International competitions. He will be guest judge for the competition’s finals.
Berman will present a master class for BGSU undergraduate pianists on Friday, 2:30-4:30 p.m. in Bryan Recital Hall.
On Saturday night at 8 p.m. also in Bryan he will present a recital. He will perform Piano Sonata in A Major by Franz Schubert on the first half and then he will devote the second half to music by Chopin.
Tickets are $8.
The competition will welcome about two dozen promising teenage pianists from across the country, and one from Hunan, China.
Some aren’t traveling very far, though. Cindy Sang is from Bowling Green, and Run Yu is from Maumee. Returning is last year’s third place winner, Kasey Shao, of Cincinnati, who was also a finalist in 2017.
The pianists range in age from 13 to 18.
All had to submit video auditions to be invited to BGSU. The semifinal round will be held Saturday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Each pianist must prepare 20-30 minutes of music, which includes at least one movement of a classical sonata — Haydn, Beethoven or Mozart, and then pieces representing two other stylistic periods, Baroque, Romantic, or contemporary. All pieces, except those composed after 1945, must be memorized.
During the semifinals, they will play selections from their program. How much each competitor plays in the final round, scheduled for Sunday from 9 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. depends on how many finalists are selected.
Melton said the judges are not given a specific number, so there have been as many as nine finalists.
Both rounds take place in Kobacker Hall, and are open to the public. Listeners can enter and exit quietly between competitors.
The pianists are vying for a first prize of $3,000, second prize of $2,000, and third prize of $1,000.
Those monetary awards are what have attracted of a field of such promising candidates, Melton said.
In the past several years, the level of performers has been very high. These are pianists who may never have heard of, or considered visiting or attending BGSU, Melton said. Recruiting them is difficult — Wu had New England Conservatory and the Juilliard School on her list to visit.
But the competition also puts BGSU on the radar of top teachers around the country who “wouldn’t be aware of our existence.”
“So it’s definitely helped us,” she said
All semifinalists are offered BGSU scholarships and a few have taken advantage of that. They also receive scholarships to the university’s summer piano camp.
To make more of a connection with the young pianists, the BGSU piano faculty offer lessons to them on Friday, or even after they’ve played on Saturday.
The competition is judged by a panel of outside adjudicators.
The event came to BGSU after the Dubois Foundation sent out requests for proposals to 25 music schools around the country, including BGSU.
Then Dean Richard Kennell put the correspondence in Melton’s mail box, and asked her to put together a proposal.
Melton proposed the festival and competition, as well as financial assistance to undergraduates to attend summer music festivals. One element that’s still being explored is an outreach component to have BGSU undergraduate pianists perform away from campus.
Robert Swinehart, who administers the Dubois Foundation, has been lavish in his praise of the festival, noting the high quality of performers who compete.
Swinehart was a long-time friend of the late David Dubois, educator, author and consultant. Dubois loved music and sang in the National Cathedral choir, Swinehart said in 2018. The competition and festival is in line with his desire to help young musicians. “This is a phenomenal event.”
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The semifinalists are:
Lucy Cao, Arlington Heights, Illinois
Abhijit Devalapura, New Albany
Conrad Flake, Salt Lake City, Utah
Logan Hamm, Hebron, Kentucky
Arun Kamath, Cincinnati
Sarah Li, Midland, Michigan
Alena Lu, Potomac, Maryland
Jingwen Luo, Hengyang, Hunan, China
Tan Nguyen, Leesburg, Virginia
Trung Nguyen, Leesburg, Virginia
Cindy Sang, Bowling Green
Maxine Park, Hanover, New Hampshire
Aleks Shameti, Ann Arbor, Michigan
Kasey Shao, Cincinnati
Grace Tubbs, Bloomington, Indiana
Cory Wu, Powell, Ohio
Enle Wu, Interlochen, Michigan
Jean Yu, Rochester Hills, Michigan
Run Yu, Maumee
Hannah Zaborski, Holland, Ohio
Audrey Zhang, Northville, Illinois
Natalie Zhang, Weston, Massachusetts
Xuying Zhou, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
