From the lobby of TCU’s Walsh Center for the Performing Arts, there travels a narrow, dim, down-sloping hallway. If you were not a music major in college, you might find it foreboding. But those of us who carry our lives in a case would immediately recognize this as where the practice rooms are located. Here lives the echoes of moaning vocalists, warming their voices; arpeggiating brass players; a cellist cursing a perilous passage. (That cellist was me).
This is where I met three competitors at the auditions for The Cliburn International Piano Competition: Zitong Wang, from China; Pedro Lopez Salas, 27, from Spain, and Adam Balogh, 27, from Hungary.
The competitors face an incredibly tight itinerary. Some travel 10 to 14 hours to get to Fort Worth and arrive the night before their audition.
“So I arrived here around 9,” said Lopez Salas. “So when I got to the hotel, it was already half past 10, 11. And then just basically slept and came here and warmed up. So, yeah, it was a bit tough.”
“I came here and I am going back through London to Budapest because now I teach in Hungary and I am based there,” said Balogh. “So, it is going to be tiring and actually, I get home in the morning of Wednesday and I am already teaching in the afternoon, so it will be exciting to have some sleep on the plane, hopefully.”
Many of this week’s competitors have history with the Cliburn. Some, like Wang and Balogh, competed in the Cliburn’s first ever Junior Competition in 2015.
“It feels very friendly, and almost like home coming home here to Texas,” said Balogh. “I am looking forward to playing for the audience, who is always enthusiastic here.”
“I never watched my Junior Competition video,” said Wang. “I know it’s still on YouTube, but I’m really scared to watch it because I am just going to feel like I am so old!”
Others are trying for the first time to make their name at one of the most prestigious piano competitions in the world.
“I think it is a dream for everyone to come here and get a prize, for sure,” said Lopez Salas.
“I feel like performing is like going into a gladiator fight with a lion,” said Balogh. “You have to know the lion, you have to know what you’re up against, and then you prepare to die, basically.”
All competitors must face the challenge of putting together the perfect 25-minute program to impress the five members of the screening jury, in order to keep their hopes of advancing to the full competition in May alive.
“What’s so great about Cliburn is that it’s all free-program and you can basically show yourself in so many different way,” said Wang. “It’s pretty hard to pick a program that’s 25 minutes, within the range, and show your capacity.”
Despite the extremely high stakes, the camaraderie among the competitors is palpable.
“It’s just a nice feeling for me to see familiar faces,” said Balogh.
“And I feel very comfortable because we probably went to the same school, we went to the same festival,” Wang said. “It’s like a reunion every time.”
After the day’s performances, none of our competitors seem to be able to tell me how they played.
The perspective, the perception tends to change from reality because we are very hard on ourselves,” said Lopez Salas. “So, I don’t actually know how I played, to be honest.”
“It’s behind me, but I really enjoyed it, actually,” said Balogh.
Auditions for the Cliburn International Competition continue through Saturday at TCU. They are free to attend. Details.
