Violinists draw bows for battle

Finalists (from left) Sergey Malov, Richard Lin and Xiang Yu with competition founder Michael Hill. Photo / Supplied

Tonight, three of the world's most talented young violinists take the Town Hall stage to vie for first prize in this year's Michael Hill International Violin Competition.

With last weekend's Queenstown rounds behind them, six semifinalists took part in this week's chamber music trials, providing what must have been two of the most suspense-filled evenings in the city's musical calendar.

Each contestant chose a trio by Beethoven, Schumann or Dvorak, playing alongside pianist Michael Houstoun and cellist Ashley Brown.

And little wonder that the competition's executive director Anne Rodda singled out the "Herculean performances by two New Zealand treasures" at the end of the second evening.

Sir Michael Hill can be very proud of how his competition has taken hold over 10 years. The successes of previous winners speak for themselves, the most recent being the appointment of Joseph Lin as first violinist with the Juilliard String Quartet.

Richard Lin, the first of tonight's finalists, will play the Brahms Concerto with the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra under Arvo Volmer.

The 19-year-old Taiwanese American is studying at Philadelphia's Curtis Institute and says this competition is "famous around the world" - the previous two winners also came from his school.

Lin has already carried off the $2000 prize for performing Gyftiko, a specially commissioned solo by John Psathas, and his winning turn is viewable online.

I hear that some of the judging panel are keen to take the Psathas into their own repertoire and Lin sums it up rather neatly as having "a fantastic beginning, a very special creative middle and a very stylish ending".

This is Lin's first international competition, but rival Xiang Yu at 22 is a seasoned veteran. The Chinese violinist carried off three prizes in last year's Yehudi Menuhin International Competition and praises Psathas' piece as "the best so far from the four competitions in which I've been required to play a local composition".

Lin chose Schumann in Thursday's semifinals but Yu decided on Beethoven's Ghost Trio because "it was the hardest of the four choices," he says with a smile.

He has praise for Houstoun and Brown who "had to play three Ghost Trios and they followed our directions and characters so perfectly".

While Lin hankers for a solo career, Yu feels chamber music is his first love.

"People say I have a soloist sound, but I want to interact with others," he says. "I enjoy communicating. I don't want to be there at the top of the mountain looking down; I'd like to have humanity around me."

Yu's Beethoven brought the semifinals to an impressive close, particularly with the finesse of his duetting with Brown's cello and his impish humour in the work's Finale.

The third finalist, Sergey Malov, closed Wednesday's concert dramatically with the same trio, selected, he says, because it is "the absolute pearl of violin literature".

This 28-year-old is nothing if not cosmopolitan, leaving his native Russia at 18 and spending time in Austria and Spain before settling in Berlin.

Xiang Yu will play Prokofiev's Second Concerto tonight because "the audience must want to hear something they don't hear that often", but Malov's choice of Bartok's Second Concerto is a more personal one. "It's definitely the most important concerto of the 20th century," he enthuses. "And it's played far too little."

This is a man of many talents. Malov won the Tokyo International Viola Competition in 2009.

"My long-term project is studying jazz violin in Vienna, which means different halls, different music and different approaches," he says. "The people in this world are much more open to what's happening around them at the moment than those in the classical world."

Tonight's concert looks intriguing. Perhaps there will be a touch of the Magyar blues when Malov plays Bartok, making an interesting connection with the gypsy fire that closes Lin's Brahms.

With the Prokofiev giving Xiang Yu the chance to waltz through its Finale, this promises to be the liveliest and perhaps most closely contested Michael Hill competition grand finale yet.

Performance

What: Michael Hill International Violin Competition Finals

Where and when: Auckland Town Hall, tonight at 7.30pm