Following the 11th Taipei International Youth Chopin Piano Competition, which took place July 26-Aug. 4 in Wufong Township, Taichung County. Taiwan Journal staff writer June Tsai visited Anna Azusa Fujita, head of the judging panel, at her studio in Taipei Aug. 18, where she was giving a masterclass to two of the winning competitors.
"Hats off, gentlemen. A genius!" German Romantic composer and pianist Robert Schumann wrote of the young Polish composer Chopin in 1834. One hundred and seventy-two years later, Japan-born pianist and teacher Anna Azusa Fujita asked audience members to offer similar encouragement to each of the young pianists competing in the final round of the 11th Taipei International Youth Chopin Piano Competition.
"I am so surprised and pleased at hearing them play. They are young and yet so good," said Fujita, who in 1985 founded the Frederic Chopin Foundation Taipei, co-organizer with the Council of Cultural Affairs of the competition.
"Look at the small boy, with such small hands. I don't even know how he made it," Fujita exclaimed, referring to 10-year-old Chang Chia-rui who, with Hsu Shang-chi, 11, and Tang Shin-yu, 12, was one of three winners of the Special Prize. As many of the contestants were still elementary school children, Fujita said "The competition repertoire could be a challenge for them. When I was nine, playing with a symphony orchestra, I played the Haydn Concerto," which, she explained, did not require so much physical strength and dexterity.
In 1955, Fujita was the youngest music teacher at the Osaka College of Music and, as a widely touring virtuoso, became a household name for music lovers in Taiwan. Following a marriage "made of music" to a Taiwanese violinist and relocation to the "music-thirsty" island, she has since dedicated most of her life from the early 1960s on to performing and teaching successive generations of Taiwan's young musicians. She founded the Chopin foundation to promote musical performance and education, and has helped organize various local and international piano competitions for young people.
This year, for its 11th appearance, the piano competition moved to Taichung County in central Taiwan, which is also home to the National Taiwan Symphony Orchestra. Open to pianists aged between nine and 16, the contest attracted 88 entries, mostly from Taiwan but also from as far-off as Japan, Indonesia, China, Austria and Luxembourg. In addition to Fujita, who chaired the jury, other judges included pianists from Taiwan, Japan, China and Finland.
The Taipei foundation also plans to sponsor the winning Taiwanese musicians to participate at the world's most prestigious Chopin recital competition, the International Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw. This will next be held in 2010, but, due to age restrictions, fourth-grader Chang will have to wait until 2015.
With entries being accepted from younger age groups at the Taiwan event, Chang--who only earlier this year grew tall enough to reach the piano pedals with his feet--easily made his way to the final round of the best 10 pianists having stood out in the first two stages of the competition.
He played Debussy beautifully, said Fujita, adding that Taiwanese students generally have good expression of what she called "that sense of color in Debussy's works."
The Debussy prelude was part of the semifinal repertoire. "With regards to the age category, it is not possible to ask them to play all Chopin," said Fujita, though of course Chopin was still the most important element of the contest bearing his name.
In the preliminary round, contestants had to play a Chopin etude, along with one of the fugues from the 24 pieces comprising Bach's "Well-Tempered Clavier" and three pieces from Beethoven's bagatelles. For the semifinal, in addition to the Debussy, pieces included a choice from Chopin's polonaises, ballades, scherzi and barcarolles, as well as a required piece, a Chopin mazurka.
For the final round, competitors played the first movement of a Mozart piano concerto accompanied by the NTSO, a decision that had less to do with the 250th anniversary of Mozart's birth than it was a consideration for the young pianists' physical limitation.
"I liked the repertoire choice of the Chopin Competition in its entirety of three rounds at once," said Luxembourger Maxim Ladid, 15, in an e-mail interview, explaining his willingness to travel from Europe to Taiwan to take part in the competition. Another reason, he said, was that he had started to study Mandarin with a Taiwanese teacher, and "felt the urge to meet and discover the Taiwanese people and land in real."
One thing that impressed him most about the event was that finalists had a chance to play with the NTSO. "I like particularly the possibility to work during two rehearsals with the NTSO under the conductor Maestro Chia-Hong Drapal Liao with whom I had an instant and perfect musical understanding," Ladid wrote.
This understanding was manifest in the competition when Ladid was awarded joint first prize with his Taiwanese rival Shen Men-sheng, 16.
Fujita remarked that Ladid performed well across the board, irrespective of composer and piece. Ladid evidently agreed, saying "I liked many other composers as well, from baroque to contemporary music. As a matter of fact, I always like the composer whose works I am studying at the very moment."
Rivalry between the participants was minimal in comparison to the camaraderie. Ladid was reported to have greeted his Taiwanese fellow contestants with a friendly "ni hao" meaning "how are you," while they commonly wished him "viel Glück," German for "good luck," as he was about to take the stage with the NTSO. "Actually," he said, "there are no boundaries in the global music world" since musicians are accustomed to expressing their feelings through music.
That some of the young Taiwanese pianists spoke German was not surprising, as many attend music schools in Europe and were combining a trip home over their summer break with participation in the competition.
Fifteen-year-old Huang Kang was one such example. Jointly awarded the second prize with Japanese pianist Yasunori Yagi, 14, Huang is a student at the Universit?t f?r Musik und Darstellende Kunst in Graz, Austria. Unlike most of the other Taiwanese pianists who had studied under some of Taiwan's top teachers before going to Europe or the United States for further immersion in Western classical music and culture, Huang had never received formal piano lessons in Taiwan.
The devastating magnitude 7.3 earthquake that hit Taiwan on Sept. 21, 1999 and the ensuing chaos and reconstruction work disrupted Huang's life just as he was beginning to learn the piano. Huang, an Atayal aborigine from the mountainous Songhe area of Taichung County--one of the areas hit hardest by the earthquake--was further impacted by the torrential rains of Typhoon Mindulle in July 2004 when landslides washed away his piano.
Music had always been a part of Huang's life, however, and it finally carried him to Austria at the age of 12. Chopin's music, which he describes as "providing a channel to express yourself," has long been his favorite. His rendition of the Chopin mazurka won high praise from Fujita. "He has a very good sense of rhythm," she noted, to which Huang, laughing, replied "Perhaps that has something to do with my aboriginal 'genes,' as people have said." His performance of the Beethoven bagatelle, Fujita remarked, had a genuine Beethoven style that she attributed to his training in Austria. Huang responded that he very much appreciated studying in a foreign environment, where he could truly focus on music. Huang practices six to eight hours a day.
Nevertheless, he misses home and, in particular, it was only having left his hometown that Huang discovered how much his Atayal heritage meant to him. This was something he was now keen to recover through his music. To demonstrate what he meant, he played an Atayal song composed by his grandfather Halu Yagau called "Remembering My Tribespeople," which he had infused with the late Romantic feel of Chopin.
Fujita was enthusiastic and, while offering musical tips, recommended Huang follow the example of Chopin, who had rendered Polish folk dances such as the mazurka into what are now considered classical masterpieces.
Fujita, who has served the cause of music in Taiwan for over four decades, keeps in contact with many of the competition-winning young musicians later in their careers. Although she organized the competition and chaired the jury, her role is much more complex. Ladid, for example, constantly referred to her as Professor Anna, while she said that, since having companions accompany the youngsters would make the trip even more expensive, "we do our best to make sure that those kids far away from home are well taken care of."
It seems that to these future maestros, Fujita is part-judge, part-teacher and part-mother.