Russian concertos inspire American Piano Awards finalists

The dash and lyricism of Russian mastery dominates the repertoire choices in the concerto round of the 2025 American Piano Awards at Hilbert Circle Theatre.

Guest conductor JoAnn Falletta seemed happy to be there. 

Three of the five finalists played on opening night of the finals Friday, and the program was neatly divided between Rachmaninoff and Prokofiev. Accompanied by the Indianapolis
Symphony Orchestra under the direction of JoAnn Falletta, Angie Zhang, Elliot Wuu, and Michael Davidman displayed their fitness for  the last stage of an abundantly rewarded competition that has covered the whole 2024-25 musical season.

Once Avery Gagliano and Sasha Kasman Laude have revealed their concerto interpretations this evening, the jury will announce the latest winner of the Christel DeHaan Classical Fellowship. The prize has an estimated value of more than $200,000, including a debut recording, a recital tour, and career support.

Long ago, a patron at the city's other major classical contest, the International Violin Competition of Indianapolis, pressed upon me his opinion that contestants should be evaluated in the same music at each stage. I thought that would make the competition resemble athletic rivalries more than it should, besides being tedious for the audience. In the performing arts, there is a broad basis for comparison without putting interpretations of the same score side by side.

But the artist's freedom to choose may still turn up duplicating choices, and that's what we have in this year's APA. The most expansive and by reputation fearsome work in the two nights of finals is Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 3 in D minor, op. 30. Tonight we will hear Laude's version just before the jury deliberates; on Friday Davidman's performance of this stirring, challenging monster likewise ended the evening's music.

The concert began with Rachmaninoff's one-movement masterpiece, Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, op. 43. Angie Zhang, the finalist whose participation in the previous round, a Jazz Kitchen program of short pieces, was delayed because of Wednesday's threatening weather, entered the stage on schedule — meteorological fireworks and deluge would come after the music. Like her colleagues, she was introduced to an international audience live-streamed by the ebullient Indianapolis diva Angela Brown, in dialogue with APA laureate Dominic Cheli.

Zhang's sensitive mixture of pacing and her liquid runs, all precisely coordinated by Falletta and the orchestra, stood out. Treatment of the "Dies irae" chant the composer exploits was stunning. After the beloved 18th variation on the Paganini theme from the much-admired 24th Caprice, there was an absolute partnership match, especially with rhythm, in the subsequent variations, right through to the end, with its understated final flourish. 

The other Rachmaninoff on the program produced the expected dazzle and subtlety as played by Davidman. I've been openly a fan of Davidman since he was a finalist in the 2021 competition, its phases under some squeezing in the aftermath of the pandemic. I was particularly inspired by his mastery of chamber music (a stage I missed this year)  in the Cesar Franck piano quintet. Treading into territory I usually avoid — comparison with recordings of the masters — I evoked the shade of Alfred Cortot (1877-1962) and that French pianist's "intense sensitivity and ample yet varied tone."

That phrase also applies in magnified form to how he played the Rachmaninoff Third Friday night. In the torrential first-movement cadenza, I was struck by a matter of posture: There is no wasted motion in Davidman's attack. Sure, the hands fly up sometimes when phrases end a "paragraph," but as phrase succeeds phrase in succession he is all business. 

He seems capable of the most vigorous playing using the same posture and almost the same hand and arm positions that he does in the melting lyricism that also pervades the work. This control allows him to put so much variety of expression in slow-moving music (the second movement) and to make crescendos seem to build strength from within rather than having loudness imposed upon them as they mount in intensity. Naturally, that way of husbanding his resources allowed him to apply the extra forcefulness required in the finale with aplomb. In  one of the concerto repertoire's most exciting conclusions, Davidman's tonal mastery meant that there was no banging to be heard, felt, or seen in his performance. 

Elliot Wuu showed his mettle in Prokofiev.

The venture into modernism in this program was welcome in Wuu's performance of Prokofiev's Piano Concerto No. 3 in C major, op. 26.  The passages of filigree in the first movement were aptly molten. In the mostly slow middle movement, the outbursts of rapid playing were fully projected: Wuu is clearly a player who likes to make the most of contrasts, rather than merely stating them and hoping the audience will notice. The orchestra was especially eloquent in bringing forth the wealth of color and wit in Prokofiev's writing. Falletta drew some of the most impressive work of the evening from the variegated accompaniment. 

Russian eloquence will get some relief tonight when the finalist not yet mentioned here, Avery Gagliano, will venture with the ISO through Frederic Chopin's better of two concertos, No. 1 in E minor, as if to demonstrate that breadth  and individuality of choices should always be a feature of artistic competitions.