Beethoven competition
December 23, 2009
Deutsche Telekom hosted its third annual International Beethoven Competition from December 2 to December 12, 2009. Young pianists from more than 10 countries participated in the competition in Bonn. The winner received 30,000 euros ($42,740), studio production for a CD and sponsorship for a series of concerts. Deutsche Welle presents the finalists' performances:
Click on the audio links below to hear the performances.
Hinrich Alpers
Piano Concerto No. 2 in B-flat major, Op. 19, Beethoven
Alpers emerged as a crowd favorite during the competition's early rounds, and the jury selected him as the winner after the finals. Alpers, from Hannover, was assigned Beethoven's second piano concerto for the last round of competition, but he told Deutsche Welle he would have preferred to play the fourth concerto.
"I got a bit unlucky there because I 'only' drew the second, but the fourth concerto usually counts as a bit more flashy and suited to a contest," he said of the draw that led to his assigned piece.
Beethoven himself found the second somewhat lackluster after he premiered it in the mid 1790s. He had begun writing the concerto around 1787 when he was 17 years old. Following its debut, Beethoven reworked the piece and completed it in 1801.
During this early period of Beethoven's composition, he held more closely to classical models developed by predecessors like Mozart than in later works.
Jordi Bitlloch
Piano Concerto No. 4 in G major, Op. 58, Beethoven
In the finals, Bitlloch showed what a crowd-pleaser Beethoven's fourth piano concerto can be. More than half of the audience voted the 25-year-old French pianist as the Audience Favorite. The jury awarded him second place.
The concerto Bitlloch played is a classic of piano literature, written by Beethoven from 1805 to 1806. By that time, the composer had begun suffering significant hearing loss, and he struggled to find a pianist willing and able to perform the piece. Eventually, Beethoven himself premiered the concerto at a private concert in 1807 at his patron Prince Lobkowitz's palace in Vienna.
The piece had its public premiere on December 22, 1808 during a concert featuring multiple historic premiers from Beethoven. In contrast to earlier works like the second concerto, Beethoven moved beyond certain classical conventions with his fourth. At the time, listeners would have been surprised from the outset at hearing a piano open the piece instead of the customary orchestral exposition.
Enaiv Yarden
Piano Concerto No. 4 in G major, Op. 58, Beethoven
Yarden gave her own take on Beethoven's fourth concerto and was awarded third place by the jury. The pianist is from Israel, but she has since made New York her home.
At 31 years old, Yarden was just under the contest's age limit of 32. She told Deutsche Welle that she became serious about music as a teenager and discussed why young audiences are often less interested in classical music than older audiences.
"I think that there is something about our age right now with all this quick media and all this quick gratification and immediate satisfaction," she said. "In this kind of culture, classical music is like being on Mars. And what's most sad about that for me is that people don't have patience and the ability to keep their concentration, which is what you need for classical music. If you're listening to a Beethoven sonata of 25 minutes, it's very different than what you normally hear on the radio."