The Youngest Competitor
He also excels at ping pong and snooker. That would be Haochen Zhang, one of the two Gold Medalists of the 13th Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, and the pianist who will open the 32nd season of Portland Piano International’s Recital Series on October 4th.
A group of around forty patrons of PPI attended the Semi-Final Round of that competition in late May of this year and heard this remarkable young pianist in repertoire of Chopin, Mason Bates and Liszt.
Scott Cantrell of the Dallas Morning News said of his performance, “Zhang . . . demonstrated a musical maturity almost unimaginable in one so young.” I agree. His version of the complete Chopin Preludes, Op. 28 was one of the most moving live performances of the set I have heard. Henry T. Finck, American music critic, and incidentally, raised in Portland, Oregon, said of the Preludes, ” if all piano music in the world were to be destroyed, excepting one collection, my vote should be cast for Chopin’s Preludes.” I could live with that. Although you will not have the chance to hear the Preludes in his upcoming Portland recital, you can still access the live video feed from the competition by going to
and following the instructions there. The technology used by the Cliburn Foundation this year continues to provide me with hours of listening pleasure from the three weeks of the competition.
In addition to performances of the Bates and Liszt works he played in Ft. Worth, Zhang will play other master works of our repertoire in Portland, including Ravel’s Gaspard de la Nuit, Brahms Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Handel and Beethoven’s great Sonata in A Flat Major, Opus 110.
Complete program notes for Haochen Zhang’s Portland recital are here.