Europe has added a pianist competition: the YPF Piano Competition, until this year only open to Dutch pianists, is now open to pianists up to the age of 27 from all over Europe. Spaniard Juan Pedro García Oliva (2001), bachelor’s student at the Conservatory of Amsterdam, won the final and the audience award on Sunday. With the Piano Concerto by Robert Schumann, he made a deep impression on the jury and the public. Earlier in the competition he already won a chamber music prize for his performance of Brahms’ Third Piano Quartet together with students from the Amsterdam Conservatory and the prize for the best performance of the commissioned composition Ti’afa’a by composer Reza Namavar. The Grand Prix Youri Egorov, which the jury only awards for exceptional performance, was not awarded.
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García Oliva’s biggest competitor was Noah Zhou (2001), a student at England’s Royal College of Music, who won second prize for muscular and warm-blooded playing. From his main work, Beethovens Fifth Piano Concerto, he made a showpiece. Beethoven’s arpeggios rushed down like birds of prey and you could hear Romantic mountain landscapes echoing in its full chords. At times it seemed as if the entire orchestra was pouring out of Zhou’s fingers. But his body language was a little chatty at times: with every cadence in the Finale, he swung horribly backwards. No wonder he had to wipe the sweat from his forehead afterwards.
The third prize went to Carlos Marín Rayo (1994), just like García Oliva a student at the Amsterdam Conservatory. His beautifully delicate execution of Namavar’s commissioned composition was overshadowed by an inattentive page-turner. Marín Rayo himself had to stop playing to put the loose pages back in the right order. A pianist’s nightmare, which you heard in Marín Rayo’s Beethoven: at times real intimacy smouldered between him and an alert Phion led by Antony Hermus, but for the most part Marín Rayo kept searching and hesitating.
García Oliva played the golden mean. He was unwaveringly strong in Schumanns Piano Concerto† The notes flowed like water from García Olivia’s fingers, a brook in the softest parts, but a crystal clear stream in the loud ones. The best part was the Intermezzo: Schumann’s long lines washed through the hall. Where you always had to be on the edge of your seat with the other finalists, you could just let the music come over you with García Oliva. With him you forgot it was a competition.
Half of the audience left before the end of the jury deliberations, but the remaining audience bridged the gap with Chopin, played by pianist Yang Yang Cai, winner of the then Dutch YPF competition in 2019. Now she showed that she is also easy to get to. can measure up to European competition. Chopin’s Third sonata fizzled and glittered in her hands.