The Orchester symphonique de Montréal organized the final of its competition on Saturday, in front of a well-filled audience of spectators, the first in history to benefit from orchestral accompaniment. At the end of the exercise, the jury consecrated Godwin Friesen, pianist from Saskatchewan, ahead of Jaeden Izik-Dzurko and Jonathan Mak. But that’s not what we need to remember from the afternoon.
For the information on the competition and its outcome to be clear: Godwin Friesen beat Jaeden Izik-Dzurko in the 2022 OSM Competition. You can write this sentence down or frame it. If in a few years, during an evening, the atmosphere falls a little, you can always bring it out; she will be a good laugh.
So decided a jury made up of Angela Hewitt, Mari Kodama, Isolde Lagacé and two artistic managers of venues that have just hosted the OSM on tour: Gillian Moore and Rico Gulda. That is. It can happen, and it’s not the first time: in 2013, for example, the violinist Yolanda Bruno, a very competent instrumentalist, was preferred to the great artist who was already Kerson Leong.
The Keyboard Singer
Getting down to basics, Saturday’s concert confirmed the exceptional talent of a pianist to add to the list of young greats from here: Jaeden Izik-Dzurko. The one who won everything at the Maria Canals Competition in Barcelona last April is distinguished by his rare instinct for the vocalization of music.
Jaeden Izik-Dzurko manages to make the piano sing, to make the phrases flow, to fit together the themes with a powerful poetic instinct. This feline pianist does not overplay the power, while the 3e Concerto of Rachmaninoff that he had chosen has become a battle of tough guys (Matsuev, Bronfman). Izik-Dzurko nevertheless possesses this power, since his sound comes from his shoulders and the whole of his upper body (while Friesen’s uninteresting dry production is a sound from the arms and forearms), but he prefers to dig into the gradation of shades from pianissimo into fascinating energy surges.
But this feline is injured, skinned. His Rachmaninoff, with an unstoppable internal logic, takes refuge in dreamy beaches, a type of interpretation which we are no longer used to and which may have shocked. But the finesse of this pianist’s playing, the quality of what professionals call “the voicing » (a way of nourishing the sound between the notes or bringing secondary ideas to life) is of very rare quality and maturity for a young artist who we now dream of hearing in one of Chopin’s concertos. It should be noted in passing that Izik-Dzurko splendidly absorbed an orchestral mess before the cadence of 1er movement.
It is therefore appropriate to put Jaeden Izik-Dzurko on the list of Canadian pianists who have emerged in recent years. There we find Jan Lisiecki, whom we once knew fabulous, young, here and who, carried by his contract with DG, is in his career. Now stand out Charles Richard-Hamelin and Bruce Liu and these Ontarians whom we so strangely misunderstand: Tony Yike Yang, 5e of the 2015 Chopin Competition and the formidable JJ Bui, 6e of the 2021 Chopin Competition.
Faced with this revelation, which was essential from the first sentence of his concerto, the two other candidates were deserving. We appreciated Jonathan Mak’s mastery in the 1er Concerto of Brahms. Solid but wise, with an interesting sound production, it shells the music a little too much. As for the laureate, who reminds us that the piano is a percussion instrument, he is an undeniable virtuoso, a solid instrumentalist with no specific characteristics, neither in musicality nor in piano art, who would make you want to travel for the hear in concerto or recital. All this, and the accompaniment in passing, can be gauged on parts in the video available on the competition site.