By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
Natasha Wu’s trip is just beginning.
The Taiwanese 18-year-old kicked off a two-month trip to the United States by winning the David D. Dubois Piano Competition Sunday.
The rest of the trip, the young pianist said, will be devoted to visiting conservatories and colleges to see where the next step in her musical career will take her.
Wu was one of eight finalists who performed for a panel of judges Sunday morning in Kobacker Hall on the Bowling Green State University campus.
The finals capped a three-day competition and festival being hosted for the ninth year by the College of Musical Arts.
Twenty-two semifinalists performed on Saturday. On Friday, a number of the contestants took lessons from BGSU faculty members, and guest artist Marina Lomazov gave a master class for university students.
On Sunday morning Lomazov was sitting at the adjudicator’s table with Sun Min Kim, of Denison University, and Mary Siciliano, a Michigan-based teacher and performer, determining the winner from what was a field of winners. Every one of the competitors, whether they made the finals or not, could boast a list of state and regional victories.
“Obviously it was a really difficult decision,” Lomazov said. “There was a lot of very beautiful playing. “
Still the judges were “cohesive” in selecting those who should receive the awards.
Lomazov said of Wu: “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.”
“I was very happy and glad,” Wu said of winning the top prize of $3,000.
Other winners were: Colin Choi, high school senior from Northbrook Illinois, second place, $2,000; Kasey Shao, 15, from the Cincinnati, third place, $1,000; and Stephanie Petinaux, 16, Cranberry Township in the Pittsburgh area, and Bryant Li, 14, Katy, Texas, both honorable mentions.
Wu said she has been playing since she was 6. Her mother taught piano, and Wu loved the sound of the instrument. She tries to keep that joy alive in her work.
Her competition repertoire included a Beethoven sonata, an etude and scherzo by Chopin, and a sonata by 20th century Hungarian composer Bela Bartok.
The Bartok was a particular challenge, she said, since she has not played much music in that style.
The composer draws on folk music to create pieces with driving rhythms and astringent melodies.
Wu’s favorite composer, though, is the romantic Chopin.
Now her travels will include visits to Oberlin College, New England Conservatory in Boston, and the Juilliard School in New York City.
Her goals are to continue to enjoy music and share it with others.
On Saturday night, Lomazov showed how to do just that in her guest artist recital.
She performed Modest Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition,” a piece best known and beloved in its orchestral arrangement by Maurice Ravel.
Lomazov reclaimed it for the piano, drawing a symphonic range of colors from the piano and complementing the music with projected images of contemporaneous artwork and literary quotations.
She then performed “Blue River Variations,” a piece composed for her by John Fitz Rogers. She told the audience she mentioned to Rogers that she liked to practice. She came to regret that comment when she saw the difficulty of the score, which resulted in some friendly back and forth.
The pianist guided the audience into the piece before performing it. Projecting sections of the score, Lomazov demonstrated how the composer had embedded the theme into the dense textures of the piece.
“Blue River Variations” was deeply influenced by jazz, with evocations of jazz fusion in some sections.
Lomazov concluded with another jazz-influenced work, a set of variations on a theme very much like the opening of Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring,” though, she said the composer, Nikolai Kapustin, denies the connection.
The variations spun out with dizzying virtuosity that sounded totally spontaneous. Some was improvised, Lomazov said.
Robert Swinehart, trustee of the Dubois Foundation that supports the event, said he is always struck by the level of student talent that the Dubois competition draws.
Laura Melton, coordinator of keyboard studies who oversees the festival, said that the level of the finalists has been steady for the past few years with the quality of the overall field continuing to increase.
Anyone who enters the competition is eligible for a BGSU scholarship if they apply and are accepted into the College of Musical Arts.
Three Dubois scholarship recipients are currently students in the college.
Melton said plans are already underway for the 10th festival next Jan. 31 through Feb. 2. Boris Berman, of Yale University, will be the guest artist.
