“Canadian Thomas Yu wowed the Bass Hall audience and judges with an impressive Saint-Saëns piano concerto movement, earning him first place in the Seventh Cliburn International Amateur Piano Competition,” writes Andrea Ahles in Saturday’s (6/25) Star-Telegram (Fort Worth, Texas). “Yu, a 38-year-old periodontist, received a $2,000 cash prize and a pair of tickets to the Fifteenth Van Cliburn International Piano Competition next year.… He said he had attempted to petition the Cliburn to lower its minimum age requirement of 35 before the 2011 amateur competition; this was the first year he was eligible to enter. For the first time in a Cliburn Amateur, the finalists performed a single concerto movement with the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra, under conductor Damon Gupton. Saturday was Yu’s first time to play the fast-paced third movement of Saint-Saëns Piano Concerto No. 5 in F Major.… The oldest finalist, Michael Slavin, a 65-year-old retired ophthalmologist from New York, won second place, receiving a $1,500 cash prize. Xavier Aymonod, a 40-year-old strategy consultant from Paris, placed third, receiving a $1,000 cash prize. Both played the first movement of Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 3 in C Minor.”
Posted June 27, 2016
