Since at dawn last Thursday, the winners of the XVIII Edition of the International Piano Competition Fryderyk Chopin will be announced. Martín García García (Gijón, 1996) has not stopped receiving calls and messages.
“I’m living a dream,” he recognizes the Asturian pianist from a taxi than Brujua through the streets of Warsaw.
“I feel a mixture of extreme emotion and infinite fatigue … I will need a few days to digest all this».
And it is not for less: He has just made history as the first Spanish at the final of the famous contest and, in addition, has opened the palmarés with a bronze medal and the special prize of the Warsaw Philharmonic at the best interpreter of the last round
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This has been decided by a jury composed of 17 pianists chaired by Katarzyna Popowa-Zydro, who has granted the first place to Canadian Bruce Liu and the second, ex Aequo, to Italian Alexander Gadjiev and Japanese Kyohei Sorita.
“If I say that the most important thing in these contests is to get to the final anyone could think that I am justifying myself, but it is true.
Because the difference between a fifth position and the first can be two notes, “he says the Asturian interpreter.
«If I feel winner is because I have given everything in each round and also because the history of the great contests, such as Chopin, the Tchaikovski, the Rubinstein or Queen Elizabeth, has shown that all its finalists have ended up having a race to
Long term »adds Martín García.
It occurred with Maurizio Pollini, whose name and reputation were linked to the Polish composer since 1960 was made with the first award in an edition chaired by Arthur Rubinstein.
Krystian Zimerman beat a record of precocity on the rise with this symbolic recognition a few days before the age of majority.
And the Argentine pianist Martha Argerich, who also won him, abandoned years later the jury as protesting the scoring system, not exempt from political interference.
“All that has changed,” the Spanish interpreter was honest, which was selected for the first round together with another 86 pianists.
“Now the competition climate is much healthier.
The piano can not serve as a throwing weapon, but a meeting point between cultures and sensitivities. ”
Since five years old, I started studying with Natalia Mazoun and Ilya Golfab Ioffe, Martín García has fantasized with sitting in front of an orchestra.
“Although my parents are not musicians, my brother played the piano and I did not take off the instrument, so they decided to sign up at classes.”
He formed the heat of the demanding Soviet school that in those years he represented Galina Eguiazarova, a teacher of the Reina Sofia School and Teacher of Large Pianists, as his admired Arcadi Volodes.
“From her I learned that aristocratic elegance so far from cheap virtuosity that allows you to delve into the tiny details of the score, which is what at the end makes a difference.”
In fact, the last edition of the Chopin contest could have altered the order of priorities with which the abilities of the soloist are evaluated.
“It gives me the feeling that the jury has looked for something more than agility and technique, which of course occurs for granted at a certain level.”
According to the pianist, in an increasingly globalized world and with immediate access to hundreds of recordings over the same repertoire, the cult perfectly that is sometimes imposed from the pedagogical system has been losing validity.
“Music is an abstract art that moves in other parameters that usually obey more than a slow and peaceful assimilation of scores than to the automation of formulas or styles.”
During the final, it was retransmitted live by streaming, the 24-year-old pianist played Chopin’s second concert.
“We talk about a work of youth that was mastery and absolute control of proportions, with a sense of beauty that overflows from start to finish.”
Among the hundreds of comments that have appeared these days in social networks, some have been awarded to compare the intervention of it with that of large pianists, including that of him venerated Vladimir Horowitz.
“I have the feet well stuck to the ground.
I know that I have a lot to improve and that, as Eguiazarova told me, there are always flies that sneak into concerts and recordings. ”
It is not the only musical gesture that has starred this year Martín García, which in August proclaimed the victor of the prestigious Cleveland piano contest.
“It could be said that the closure months of the pandemic have allowed me to strengthen certain technical aspects on which the emotion and feeling can then be deployed, but it is convenient to work separately.”
Not in vain Chopin’s body was buried at the Père-Lachaise cemetery in Paris while the heart of him custodated in a Warsaw church.
“I would like that one day I would give me the opportunity to record the third sonata of Him, which in just four movements summarizes everything because of what deserves to fight in this life.”
