Delight was exceeded only by surprise in Leeds at the victory in the International Piano Competition of a local boy, Michael Roll, who, at the age of 17, was the youngest of the 94 competitors accepted, and who, until this victory at Leeds, was not yet committed to a career as a pianist, but was intending to follow in his father’s footsteps as a doctor.
Out of the 10 concertos which were the test-pieces for the third and final stage of the competition on Saturday night, he chose Schumann’s, and certainly made it the most rewarding musical experience of the evening, although it had already been played once in the programme by one of the other three finalists. It was a robust and animated performance, well shaped, with a splendid rhythmic impetus in all three movements, not at all easy to sustain in this work, as had conspicuously been demonstrated to the audience (and to the jury if they needed any reminder) by the earlier contestant, Armenta Adams (a young black woman aged 27 from New York), who had taken the first two movements both too slowly, and was in continual trouble with her scheme of tempi. She was more successful in the last movement, livelier and more stable, and was unlucky to forget her part. John Pritchard, conducting the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, quickly got her re-started, and she finished well. Her final placing, fourth of the four finalists, would not have been any different even if she had not taken this fall.
The jury of 11, including international top flight (Clifford Curzon the only Englishman among them), with Sir Arthur Bliss as chairman, no doubt needed all their courage to award an outright first prize (£1,000 and the Princess Royal Gold Medal) to a local boy, and the youngest contestant at that. A more popular decision with the audience, judging from their applause for the second prize winner, the Russian Vladimir Krainov, would have been the award of first place to the two of them jointly, and this might have been the decision on the strength of the concerto performance alone. But as Sir Arthur pointed out, the jury had also taken into account their playing in the earlier stages of the competition, in work from the piano solo repertory (including a new “Night Piece” specially written for the competition by Benjamin Britten), where, it is said, the Russian had appeared the more limited in his musical sympathies.
Even on Saturday, while Krainov’s sure-handed and aggressively self-confident performance of Liszt’s E Flat Concerto revealed a remarkable technical equipment and an undoubted basic innate musicality, in poetic sensibility it did not approach the unforgettable performance of the same work with which John Ogdon some years ago failed to take first prize in the Liverpool competition, whereas Roll’s performance of his musically more difficult and revealing work, without getting quite to the heart of the lyrical Schumann, had a warmth and feeling that made his the more enjoyable performance.
Nevertheless, it must have been a close finish, and both players are still far from their peak. Krainov is also very young (19) and only just beginning his second year of studies at the Moscow Conservatoire. Pianists are not like swimmers, past their best at 15, though the third prize also went to a relatively young player, Sebastien Risler of France, aged 21, who made an excellent impression with the maturity of sensitiveness of his performance in the first movement of Beethoven’s C Minor Concerto, and in the first half of the slow movement, but then began to tire.
Five other players who failed to reach the final stage, out of the 20 who got past the first eliminating round, were specially commended by the jury. Among them was David Wilde, who was joint winner of the Liszt-Radek competition in Budapest two years ago. Besides the £1,000 for the winner, there was a £500 second prize, £250 third, £100 fourth, and £50 for everybody who reached the second stage. Engagements offered (not necessarily or only to the first prize winner) include appearances at the Edinburgh and Leeds Festivals next year, and concerts at the Royal Festival Hall, in the BBC Home Service, and in the Provinces with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, as well as with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra which played for the finalists on Saturday. A final word of acknowledgement should go to John Pritchard who was punctiliously fair in following all his soloists’ leads and tempi, good and bad alike.
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