This week, the quadrennial Gurwitz International Piano Comepetition brought contestants from around the world to compete for top honors—a Gold Medal—and a cash prize of $30,000 for first place.
The competition continues this week with Round III at the Carver Community Cultural Center’s Jo Long Theater on Thursday, Feb. 1 at 7:00 p.m., and Round IV on Saturday, Feb. 3 at 7:00 p.m., featuring finalists Young Sun Choi, Tatiana Dorokhova, and Yungyung Guo performing with the Mexico City Philharmonic. Both of these programs will be broadcast live on KPAC 88.3 FM.
Adjudicating the competition is a stellar panel of jury members including Grammy-winning music producers, legendary pianists, and chairing the jury, Scott Yoo, conductor and violinist, and host of the PBS series “Now Hear This.”
As part of The Gurwitz’s programming, Musical Bridges Around the World brought Mr. Yoo and three of the jurors to Texas Public Radio’s studio for a wide-ranging conversation on the jurors’ careers as performers and educators.
Panel:
- Sergio Tiempo, professional pianist and recording artist
- Lilya Zilberstein, First Prize at the 1987 Busoni International Piano Competition, currently teaching at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna
- Mikhail Voskresensky, bronze medalist at the very first Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, currently Artist-in-Residence at the Juilliard School of Music
The panel was capped off by a spontaneous performance of Frederic Chopin’s music by pianist Mikhail Voskresensky.
The transcript below has been edited for length and clarity. To listen to the full conversation, use the audio player at the top of this page.
Scott Yoo Hi, my name is Scott Yoo and I am a jury member of the 2024 Gurwitz International Piano Competition. And today I'm with three of my colleagues on the jury—Sergio Tiempo, the famed pianist Lilya Zilberstein, and Mikhail Voskresensky, the famed pianist and pedagogue. It's very nice to be with all three of you. Sergio, you told me yesterday that you are a man of many countries. Your father was a diplomat. Tell me about your background.
Sergio Tiempo That's right. I don't know where I'm from! Because I was born in Venezuela from Argentinean parents. But I grew up in Europe, and my grandparents were from Ukraine and from Italy and everything. So it's a huge fruit salad and, and I feel very comfortable being a guest of the world like this, rather than... I mean, it's very musical in a way.
Scott Yoo And how did you get started in the piano, if I may ask?
Sergio Tiempo My mom was and still is actually, a specialist, in teaching children. So at home in Venezuela, she would give 100 lessons a week. She was working like a maniac. And, my sister and I were two of her students, and, in fact, when I was two years old, I told my mom, "Mom, what's going on? Why is everybody playing the piano except for me?" So she had to start giving me lessons as well!
Scott Yoo It seems to be part of the culture in Venezuela, music education seems to be something that's very valued there.
Sergio Tiempo Well, El Sistema started right about then, when I was born. That was when it was starting to take place. And José Antonio Abreu, at the time, was considered almost like a, like a crazy man! I mean, how can you imagine doing something like this in a country like Venezuela, where there's no infrastructure for it or anything? And he was such a visionary, of course, that it ended up being what it is. But my mom was something else. She had her own group of students, including, for example, Gabriela Montero was a student of my mother. She started piano with her. But of course, we were always very close to José Antonio and to the whole [El Sistema] movement because, you know, we thought it was a fantastic idea.
Scott Yoo And it still is!
Sergio Tiempo And now it's flourished into something extraordinary, of course.
Scott Yoo Lilya Zilberstein, you are Russian and German both. And, you've had a long and storied career playing with the Berlin Philharmonic, recording for Deutsche Grammophon. Tell me about how winning the Busoni competition [in 1987] changed your life.
Lilya Zilberstein Very good questions. Yeah, Busoni completely changed my life because, growing up in a closed country as the USSR was, I didn't have any possibility to travel and even travel to the Busoni competition, to Italy and to Bolzano. It was a big challenge for the whole family and for the whole institute where I studied. It was like I went to the moon! And after that I started to travel, and three years after Busoni, I moved to Germany and I got a contract with Deutsche Grammophon, and four years after Busoni I played with Claudio Abbado and the Berlin Philharmonic.
Scott Yoo Mikhail, I first heard about you reading a fascinating article in The Atlantic magazine two years ago. It read like a spy thriller! Your journey from Russia back here to the United States and your affiliation with the Aspen Music Festival, your affiliation with Juilliard. I saw in an interview that you had left Russia during World War Two. Why did you leave Russia again, in 2022?
Mikhail Voskresensky During the Second World War, I stayed in Russia because my family lived in Sebastopol. Sebastopol, it is [home to] a military fort. The Germans [shot] torpedoes to the Bay of Black Sea and one of the torpedoes exploded in the boulevard of the city. It was an enormous explosion. Everybody woke up except me, because I was six years old and I slept. [laughs] But after this, my mother took me and my small sister, who was only one year old, and went to her parents, to a little city in Ukraine, Berdyansk. Berdyansk now is very well known because it is one of the centers of this criminal war. And we spent all the Second World War in Berdyansk. There I finished musical school, after it was liberated from, occupation. And when I was 13 years old, my mother understood that I must study in Moscow, because in Berdyansk we had no such possibility. In Moscow, I lived with a wonderful lady who loved me very much, and helped me. And it was, of course, a dangerous time, because it was poor time. We lived very, very modest. I entered the Moscow Conservatory and I studied with a great musician, the first prize winner of first Chopin competition, Lev Oborin.
Scott Yoo He played a lot with [David] Oistrakh.
Mikhail Voskresensky Yes, he played wiith Oistrakh a lot... And I made acquaintance with David Fyodorovich Oistrakh. And in 1957 with Oistrakh, we went to the Prague International Festival. Emil Gilels, the pianist, was ill and the officials began to look who can exchange [in his place]. So the choice was for me.
Scott Yoo So you subbed for Emil Gilels in the Prague Festival? With Oistrakh and Yevgeny Mravinsky and all of the greats in 20th century Russian music.
Mikhail Voskresensky Yes… and I [learned] that Shostakovich is composing his new piano concerto for his son, who was two years younger than me, and he was in Central Musical School, and with the help of many friends, they asked Dimitri Shostakovich to permit me to play this concerto also. And Shostakovich was a very kind person. He agreed. And he only asked that the first performance must be with his son, Maxim. So Maxim played in Moscow 10 of May, 1957. I played in Prague the 24th of May the same year, and Shostakovich came to Prague to listen my performance. You know, I received from him three lessons. So I may say now that I am a pupil of Shostakovich! I'm very proud.
Scott Yoo So you're the second person to play the F major Shostakovich concerto! You're the second person.
Mikhail Voskresensky It was premiered in Europe.
Scott Yoo Fantastic.
Mikhail Voskresensky I did not answer your first question, why I left Russia now. Because you know that I went on the 24th of February 2022 when this criminal war began. I immediately understood that I didn't want to connect my name with such a criminal circle. If I stay in Russia, I am a participant, you know? It was my first thought. The second thought was shock, for me, because many people around me supported [the invasion]. Many! And this is a tragedy of the [Russian] nation. It is not only, the tragedy of some people who were killed during the war. It is a tragedy of the nation which does not understand the reality. They don't understand that this war is the decision of only one person. Only one person, who is really criminal. So it was a very difficult decision because I was the chair of the piano faculty. I had many pupils.
Scott Yoo You were the chairman of the piano department at the Moscow Conservatory?
Mikhail Voskresensky Da, yes.
Scott Yoo Did you leave any family behind in Russia?
Mikhail Voskresensky Yes. I have a very big family from my first wife. I have nine grandchildren and four great grandchildren. They stayed in Russia. I have a second marriage and I have a young son like you, Scott, but a little older. He is five years older and we all immigrated to the United States. I feel here very comfortable. I know that I am pure, I am honest. Now I can speak what I want. If I would've stayed in Russia, I could not say anything, because it's now dangerous. You know that in our law it is written that if you tell "this is a war," you may be in prison? Because you must tell that this a "special military operation," it is not "war." This is very stupid, very stupid. Russia has many people who in [their] mind don't support this, but they cannot tell anything.
Scott Yoo Lilya, the first time I heard of you was many, many years ago. And somebody had given me a recording of you playing a flawless Rachmaninoff second and third piano concerto with the Berlin Philharmonic. But, you know, after that, I had seen you, in many contexts, also playing chamber music, especially, with, you could argue, the pianist who has the most similar career as you, Martha Argerich. And I know that you have played lots of sonata collaborations, and you do a lot of things other than stand in front of the orchestra and play a concerto. Tell me about your chamber music collaborations and how did they how did they feed you as a musician?
Lilya Zilberstein I like to play chamber music a lot and I do it with different instruments, but the biggest part, let's say, it's for me, happens most in the festivals. So I play trios, I play a lot of quintets. So when, for example, there was the Lugano Festival of Martha Argerich, every year I play different quintets there. So 15 festivals I played maybe 12 quintets or something like this. And they were all... Many of them were unknown, like...so-- in Europe, Taneyev piano quintet, which is one of the greatest quintets written. I'm a big fan of this music. And we played Medtner and we played Frank Bridge and we played Ferdinand Ries and I don't know. This year I will celebrate, I think, 25 years [performing] with Martha Argerich. The first time we played was in '99. In one month, we’re playing again together. We have three concerts in Germany and in Vienna and in Germany, it's in Castle Elmau. So it's a big hotel which has the name Schloss Elmau in the Alps. And then we play in Vienna in Konzerthaus, and we play in Munich in Hercules Hall. And the program is two pianos. With Martha, and also we play two pianos, eight hands, where my both sons, Anton and Daniel (who were also presented here by Musical Bridges, what 12 years ago) will play four of us, some two pianos, eight hands, we will play Smetana, Sonata and Rondo. Yeah.
Scott Yoo I didn't know that there was eight-hand piano music! That's incredible.
Lilya Zilberstein Yes, there is! Not even only these pieces, there symphonies, we played also once. A Mendelssohn First Symphony arranged by Busoni for two pianos, eight hands.
Scott Yoo You know, as a violinist, I grew up having to make music with other people, because unless you're playing Bach or Paganini, you have to play with somebody else. As pianists, you have the 32 Beethoven sonatas, you have more than 500 Scarlatti sonatas. You do not necessarily have to make music with other people. And you grew up making music by yourselves. I would like to ask each one of you, when you first play music with other people, and you have to suddenly the tempo may not exactly be your tempo, it might be slightly different, or the character might be slightly different. How does that feel as a as a pianist? I mean, all of you are brilliant pianists. Like what was that first experience like, making music with somebody else? I'll start with you, Lilya.
Lilya Zilberstein I don't remember my first experience. I cannot say. But I mean we had a teacher who explained [chamber music to] us. But I always tell my students that we pianists are individuals, but we have to get in contact with other people. And even when I play with an orchestra and, with the biggest concertos, not only Mozart's or Haydn Concertos, but Rachmaninoff and Tchaikovsky, I always play it in communication with other musicians, because, as I played them so many times… if I miss one solo, it's disturbing. I need to [hear] the oboe solo or that clarinet solo. And also when I'm teaching these concertos I say, "Look here we have different dynamic, but we have to wait, when they breathe," and whatever. So like, the second Rachmaninoff concerto, beginning when the flute plays, we have to wait when they breathe. And you never know when [they’re going to] breathe. So you have to kind of adjust to that. So it's a way of communication, I think. And we are communicating in life with many people and the same we do in the chamber music. I think it's that way.
Scott Yoo How about you?
Sergio Tiempo Well, you know, I'm a I'm a big jazz fan. And so, when I started chamber music, for me, it has this element of improvisation in a way, of course, you rehearse and of course you prepare. But what I find the most exciting is what you can't prepare for. And what the other musicians suggest and that you respond to. But I think music in general is like this. If you impose something on it, you're killing it in a way. It has to breathe on its own and ask you what it wants at the very moment that you're playing. And so I think chamber music is one of those situations where you put that in a mise en scene, like a play, in a way, where everyone has a different voice, but to tell the same story. And, I started playing chamber music with my sister on two pianos. And I was much older when I started playing with other musicians. But Martha Argerich was my next door neighbor. And I would play for her, and she was wonderful with me. At one point she said, you really need to do some chamber music with other instrumentalists. And so she was playing a lot with Mischa Maisky so she said, “You should play with Mischa.” And I said, "Come on! Can't I start with somebody a little bit less, huge?" "No, no, no, come on, it's very good for you. You will see." And just by chance, there was a concert that came up, to play the Chopin Sonata with cello, and he proposed it to me. He said, would you like to play? I mean, I knew Mischa of course, but I had never played with him. I said, "Yes, of course. With pleasure!" But I was so nervous and I started practicing like a maniac. And since Martha was my next door neighbor, she could hear me practicing, and at one point she called me and he said, "He's ready. We're coming." And she took me like this from the ear. And that's how I started playing with him a lot, but then with others, of course. And I think I grew more as a musician from doing that than from many, many lessons that I got from teachers. Because, you know, you learn more when you're making music rather than when you're talking about it.
Scott Yoo It's interesting. You know, as a violinist, we have a lot of chamber music to play, but pianists just always have more, because I can't play the Brahms Clarinet Trio. But you do. I mean, there are so many things. I don't play Beethoven cello sonatas. There are five of them. But you do. You pianists have everything. You have so much of everything.
Sergio Tiempo It's enormous amount of repertoire. What's a little bit an injustice, I find, is that sometimes we pianists, have a lot of work in chamber music compared to the others, and we don't get credit for it somehow, especially, especially when we play in duo-sonatas. Where, you know, particularly some, some pieces like the Chopin sonata or the Rachmaninoff Sonata. It's almost like a piano concerto with cello accompaniment! But it's the cellist who is the center of attention.
Scott Yoo What I find unfair is that at most festivals every musician is paid the same! But, you know, for me to learn the violin part of the Brahms C minor piano quartet, you know, any good violinist can learn that part in two hours, but you show me a pianist who can learn the Brahms C minor piano part in two hours. I mean, it doesn't...
Sergio Tiempo Well, I can't, but maybe Lilya or Misha can!
Scott Yoo Mikhail, I heard a story that you had once recorded all of the Mozart piano concertos live. Is that true?
Mikhail Voskresensky This is true.
Scott Yoo Tell me about that experience.
Mikhail Voskresensky When I was 72 years old, my friend, the conductor Leonid Vladimirovich Nikolayev, he was a conductor of conservatory orchestras, proposed me to play, Mozart concertos in one concert, which was dedicated-- you know that in my life, in my life was very many tragedies. In 1994, I lost my lovely daughter who was killed during an accident in South Africa. And, it was such tragedy that my wife did not, live very healthy, and she passed away in 2008. So this concert with three concertos by Mozart was dedicated to the memory of my daughter. So for me, it was a very important concert and it was recorded, very successfully. And one year later, this conductor Nikolayev told me, let us play another three concertos on the same date! And we played it. But the next day after this concert, he called me and said, "Misha, in two weeks we can play another three concertos. Do you have [them learned]?" I said "Yes!" But I understand that I have "no" these concertos! So during two weeks I said I learned number 17, G major, wonderful concerto. And that concerto, it was the most successful! And this was the beginning. After these three concertos, Nikolayev told me, "We recorded nine concertos by Mozart… It is time to play all of them." This idea, of course, for me was like a shock. I had to learn, and I did it! But it was also a tragedy because Nikolayev died during this project. So we finished 11 concertos with my pupil and friend, Konstantin Maslyuk. It was maybe the most successful achievement in my life.
Every concerto, [Mozart] composed it during one week, sometimes shorter. And you understand his growing genius. If you compare his early compositions with his Jupiter Symphony, for example… For me, Mozart is one of the Everests in music.
Scott Yoo Lilya. You told me that you were living in Germany, but now you live in in Vienna, and you've been there for eight years teaching. And obviously with your concert schedule, if you're taking students, you're doing that at quite a large cost to yourself of your time. My question is why did you make that decision? And how does teaching the next generation, how does that feed you?
Lilya Zilberstein I enjoy teaching, and, I enjoy staying in contact with young people. I sometimes I come home after lessons with more energy than when I left home. So, I think that it brings a lot also to my playing. It's always new process, how to [connect with] people. So I feel sometime I'm not only piano teacher, I am also a psychologist, sometimes a psychotherapist! Sometimes, like my colleagues, sometimes they tell me that I have a teacher-mother heart. And I find it as a compliment, even maybe sometimes they think that maybe I'm too soft. I don't know what they mean with that, but I take it as a compliment, because, I am a mother. Both sons were students
What does it mean for parents and for students to teach? What do we all sacrifice when we practice? I always say this is a profession without holidays and without vacation, and you have to know that. I am afraid [of] vacation. Even last year, I traveled a lot, and on the 31st of December I came back from Taiwan, and on the 2nd of January, we planned to go to Budapest to have a holiday. At 5:00 in the morning, I got fever 39°C, because my body didn't know what to do with the holiday! But my students, they know that I give all my time to them and I'm always there. My husband is complaining, “You are always there!” But I say “I was away, so now I have to go and give the lessons and give my time back to the students.” I am very responsible.
For me, music is part of life, but it's not life. And I love life because of music as well.Sergio Tiempo
Scott Yoo So did you teach your own sons how to play the piano?
Lilya Zilberstein Yes, I did. In the beginning, not all the time I did with my oldest son, Daniel. I did it for three years with Anton, with the younger. I did it for one and half years. And then when they played, piano duo, which we did for six years, I was teaching this duo. So we did a lot of, repertoire, and they won a very important competition in Germany for young people. So I have to say that, two sons, of course, [means] two different personalities. Totally different. Daniel was born in February and Anton in August. So totally different horoscope (which I kind of believe), yeah? When Daniel was a teenager, he was practicing at home, and of course I heard him, and he said, "Mama, go out and close the door from the other side." And okay, I left and I was kind of sad. So after ten minutes, I came back and I said, "I know you don't want to hear, but I’ll tell you anyway what you can change!" With Anton [there] was no problem. We did a lot of things together like colleagues. And now we still play together… we play six-hand pieces on one piano.
Scott Yoo I heard, the Rossini “Barber of Seville.” They have an arrangement for six hands, one piano, it's real cute. Sergio, you have two children. Are they musical?
Sergio Tiempo They are musical. But I am not a very engaged, father, musically speaking, because I did have a mother who taught me how to play the piano and, and a sister who was a pianist and the house full of pianists. And I think I got a little bit claustrophobic.
Scott Yoo Did your mother...?
Sergio Tiempo My mother teaches my children.
Scott Yoo And was your mother...
Sergio Tiempo I don't intervene!
Scott Yoo Was your mother tough?
Sergio Tiempo She was. She was challenging in the sense that if she saw that there was potential, she would try to get the most out of that potential. But she was always very fair, I think. And not overpowering or overwhelming. However, as you know, and all of us know here, there's no other way. I mean, when you're a child, if you don't practice and you don't prepare, you will never get anywhere. And of course, I know very few children who want to practice, and I was one of them! I learned how to practice much later in my life, I was already playing concerts everywhere and only found the pleasure in practicing when I was really old. But it happens with many professions, where you have to start very young. I know there's a wonderful book by Andre Agassi, where he talks about his own experiences with tennis and how he hated it because he had to work so hard at it and at the same time, it's a love-hate relationship because of that. But of course, music wins somehow. Music is always the one that saves us, no?
Scott Yoo If you could talk to your early yourself, Sergio, and say, “Don't do this,” or something like that. If you could talk to yourself at any point in your childhood, what would you say?
Sergio Tiempo What a good question. You know, I, I think I wasted a lot of time in my life, a huge amount of time. But I'm happy I did somehow.
Scott Yoo You just played with the Berlin Philharmonic, so I think things are fine.
Sergio Tiempo Well, but it's not a question of that, because the career is something that I still don't understand how it works. You know, there's so many aspects that are due to luck, basically. I know extraordinary musicians who don't make great careers and vice versa. And I think that's not important to me. I mean, it was never important to me. What was important was to see how I could develop and to and to become a better musician through being a better human being, basically. And, that's the only thing that that one has any power over. I think, however, you know, I've always been a hedonist. I love life more than anything else. And I remember Mischa Maisky used to say, you know, if you're a musician, you have to love music more than life itself. And I completely disagree. For me, music is part of life, but it's not life. And I love life because of music as well.
Scott Yoo Lilya, if you could talk to yourself when you were a girl, what would you tell yourself to? Something that you could say to yourself when you were younger? What would it be?
Lilya Zilberstein I don't know. I don't know. I did so much, and we studied a lot. And so, it's very difficult. Very difficult. I was very good student, a very good pupil. I finished the school with gold medal. And I practiced a lot. And so I don't know.
Scott Yoo You have no regrets, that's good! That's a good way to live. Misha, if you could say something to yourself two years ago, ten years ago, 30 years ago, 50 years ago, 70 years ago, that you would do differently? What would it be?
Mikhail Voskresensky Different?
Scott Yoo Different.
Mikhail Voskresensky Of course. I was taught by wonderful teachers. I knew Russian traditions, and I was educated very well. But, when make some interpretation [of compositions] I did it intuitively. I’ve tried sometimes… I listened to me from the outside, from the recording I compare. But with the years [passing] I begin to think more, about a composer, about his life, about what did he tell in this composition? And, especially in this case, I have known that a lot from Beethoven's life, who also [had] a very tragic life. And, when we play “Moonlight Sonata,” we don't understand how deep this music is, because it is not connected with the moon! Everybody knows that. But you must understand the tragedy of this man who was in love and who began to be deaf. The learning of Mozart concertos, not so long ago. It was a wonderful school, because Mozart, it is perfectness without anything more. Perfectness of an angel. It is pure art, but so sensitive, so intimate, so fulfilled by feelings, by even suffering. We sometimes say that Mozart is a sunny composer. No. Mozart's a very tragic composer. He has only two minor [key] concertos, but in [his] other major concertos, there are so many tragic places. This small middle part in the 23rd Concerto, even in the ninth concerto, “Jeunhomme,” this second movement is so tragic, so tragic. And it is very difficult because it is very few, very few notes. Every note has such weight of wisdom, of thinking. So I think that every day we are growing, we are learning. I still learn many things in my life now, at my age, and my pupil sometimes teaches me.
Lilya Zilberstein I think it's kind of continuation of all the questions. How would life change us? We are all growing. Yeah. Sergio was speaking about that, and we all speaking about that because we are developing in life and, because I am a woman, but you also have children. When my first son was born, my husband said, "Now you play double better, somehow!" I got to be a mother, and it changed something inside of me.
I also have this example: when you learn the piece and you play it in the concert is one thing, but when you record the piece and you hear recording it comes on a different level, yeah? So it's like, it also doesn't depend on me. It's a process of whatever learning the piece, playing the piece, hearing the piece, hearing myself, learning from myself.
In one musical calendar, which was once we got as a present, I found a phrase of famous singer who was a friend of Rachmaninov, Chaliapin, you know, [Feodor] Chaliapin. I cut it from the calendar, I framed it and they have it in my class. It's one phrase "When I'm on the stage, there are two Chaliapins. One is performing, one is observing." And this is what we learn during life... We just learn it and we’re growing. And it's all a process of our life, until we leave.
