Reviews of CHS Students at the Mozart Concerto Competition

The Noble and the Beautiful

Six of the youngest members of our Young Artist Class performed this past Saturday in the Mozart Concerto Competition of the Minneapolis Music Teachers Forum. This is a nice “entry level” competition for very young and very gifted students to perform a movement or movements of a Mozart Concerto.  Although the competition is open for students K through 12, we generally send only our youngest players who are deeply involved with Mozart at this stage of their development.  Our teen-agers (as they must) are generally involved with the great, gigantic concertos of the Romantic Period.

All six of our players brought a nobility and beauty to this event that brought tears to our eyes.  They lifted the sublime nature of Mozart much above the event itself.  They performed with a poise and maturity way beyond their years.

Noah Chojnacki, thirteen, (whom we lovingly call Chopinacki) played with his customary integrity of the highest order.  Noah played with an exquisite attention to detail, and an impressive organic sweep.

Daniel Qu, twelve, demonstrated literally phenomenal growth in his technical prowess – especially in the third movement of Mozart’s B-flat Concerto, K. 450.  It is considered to be one of the most difficult and thorny of all the concertos.  In a letter to his father of May 24, 1784, Mozart wrote: “I cannot come to a decision between those two concerto(s) in B-b and D (K. 451).  I consider them both to be concertos and concertos that are bound to make the performer sweat.  From the point of view of difficulty, the Bb concerto beats the one in D”.  (Maurice Hinson)  Daniel worked exceedingly hard on this piece, but if Daniel did any sweating, he did not show it.  He made it seem easy.  This is a great artistic achievement – to not allow the technical difficulties of what one is doing to interfere or deflect from the emotional and artistic content of the work at hand.  Noah and Daniel are now ready to tackle one of the major Romantic concertos.

Matthew Qu, a ten-year-old fourth grader, and Michael Tang, eleven, and in the sixth grade, are very good “piano buddies” and both played brilliantly on Saturday.  They shared a wonderful experience together at our Piano Camp in July of 2009.  As young musicians, they both “speak” with very individual and soulful voices yet they share many highly desirable traits.  They both have brilliant intellectual and emotional command of the works at hand.  They are both developing virtuoso techniques and they play with hair-raising fire and energy.  They have phenomenal memory and have already learned a great deal of literature.  They play with boundless courage and energy.  Jo Anne and I know Michael and Matthew will continue to inspire and encourage each other as they continue to develop their formidable musical and artistic gifts.

Stephanie Ye, our nine-year-old fourth grader, performed her personal best in a piece that is immensely more complicated, lengthy, and sophisticated than the work she performed last year.  Stephanie is experiencing tremendous growth and development.  We had a scary period right before our dress rehearsal for this event.  Stephanie and I mismanaged her practice time as we got involved in new literature.  It is always difficult to juggle the study and preparation of multiple works.  She was not well-prepared for the dress rehearsal.  An alarm went off!  Stephanie had just one more lesson (the next day!) before the competition.  It was Martin Luther King Day, and she “took the bull by the horns” and literally practiced all day.  She came in to her lesson prepared and playing the piece better than before.  This is the definition of “True Grit”.

Our youngest player to perform on Saturday was Nita Qiu, our eight-year-old third grader.  Even at this tender age, Nita shows every sign of becoming an artist of the first rank.  She played her concerto with an amazing depth of understanding and feeling.  And she is developing a major technique to back it up.  She played so beautifully, I had a very hard time concentrating on the orchestra part!  I wanted to just stop and listen.  Her performance was a compelling and captivating experience.

So, one may ask, “If everyone played so great, why didn’t someone win something this time?”  This is a fair question.  But this is the nature of piano competitions.  Decisions are extremely subjective, often fickle, incomprehensible, and sometimes, downright crazy.  But I will have more to say on competitions later.  What I do remember, is the great pianist Jerome Lowenthal telling me – when I was a teen-ager – that the only competition of any importance, is the one with oneself.  In this sense, all of our kids were First Prize Winners.

Yours in Music

Joe & Jo Anne