Ali Mushtaq, a Washington statistical contractor, won first place Sunday at the ninth annual Washington International Piano Artists Competition (WIPAC).
Carlos Ibay, who freelances as a tenor and pianist, was a close second, and Kathleen Penny, a Canadian corporate lawyer, placed third. Sunday’s remaining pianists were Dana K.J. Morgan, Daniel Bertram and Keng Siong Sim.
The French Embassy again hosted the contest, first held in 2003, which provides a chance for amateur pianists 31 or older to compete. They must qualify as nonprofessional pianists to be eligible. The competition included lawyers, a freelance writer, a software and graphic designer, physicians, a microbiologist, a French teacher and other professions. The pianists came from as far as Singapore, Moldova, Britain, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Japan — and as close as Washington, D.C.
The competition capped WIPAC’s Festival of Music 2011, which offered piano recitals at the Anderson House and the Polish and other embassies.
WIPAC’s selection process began Friday with 24 contestants and was whittled down Saturday to 12 for the semifinals and then to six for Sunday’s finals.
Mushtaq opened with the fourth movement of Schubert’s Sonata in A, D. 595, Liszt’s “Gnomenreigen” and Prokofiev’s Sonata No. 3 in A Minor, Op. 28. He fell a little short of giving an unflagging sense of Schubert’s overall direction, so necessary for reining in the composer’s hybrid mix of sonata-allegro form, rondo underpinning and variation technique. And as this composer is wont to do, everything is fragmented as the conclusion approaches. But Mushtaq tended to treat each idea as a separate entity.
Not so in the Prokofiev. Here, the pianist hovered sensitively over the more lyrical spots; then, as if empowered by nuclear energy, he raced over the music’s harrowing technical demands to forge profound meaning for the whole composition. Mushtaq bounced through Liszt’s ebullient, Mendelssohnian, spritely escapade with seeming ease.
Ibay, who is blind, has formidable technical prowess coupled with all the sensitive nuances needed for Schumann’s Carnaval, Op. 9. The pianist fully captured the composer’s quixotic temperament, thrusting through a lengthy slew of miniature sketches, now tender, now maniacal.
Penny offered Chopin’s Nocturne in C, Op. 48, No. 1, Denis Gougeon’s “Piano-Soleil” and four selections from Schumann’s “Fantasiestucke,” Op. 12. Her Chopin was skillfully weighted, securing a delicate legato while she clearly conveyed every degree of rubato.
All in all, WIPAC and its supporters are enlivening the Washington musical scene.
Porter is a freelance writer.
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