Keyboard Magic

Clara Jung-Yang Shin’s fingers move so fast that they seem to be racing each other up and down the keyboard. Her hands bounce and crisscross like those of a magician performing sleights of hand, though the magic here is pure—no tricks needed.

She attacks a crescendo and delicately maneuvers the passage back into a sensitive lull. Her petite body appears to jump off the bench as she coaxes, pleads, and demands that the grand piano surrender to her desires.

When Shin, a doctoral student at the Shepherd School of Music, finishes the piece—Claude Debussy’s Isle of Joy, a complex weave of harmonies and dissonances—she is visibly moved and breathing heavily. “Playing takes a lot of energy,” she says. “When I perform, I try to throw myself into the music and the piano, and in the end, I get exhausted.”

With that same intensity, Shin threw herself into the 2004 World Piano Competition and won the silver medal. The competition is considered one of the most prestigious piano events behind the Van Cliburn and Tchaikovsky competitions.

More than 100 people from 17 countries applied to take part in the World Piano Competition by submitting a compact disc of their music. Twelve eventually were selected as semi-finalists and competed at the Aronoff Center for the Arts in Cincinnati. Among those chosen were pianists who had trained or were still training at some of the best music schools in the world.

“When one prepares for one of these things, it is like training for the Olympics,” says Robert Roux, professor of piano at the Shepherd School of Music. “The amount of pressure is unimaginable. You have to eliminate the possibility of missing a passage.”

Shin practiced eight hours a day for two months. Having been in other competitions, she knew the rigors such events required. In recent years, she has won the Ruth Burr Award, the Entergy Young Texas Artists Music Competition, and the Hemphill-Wells Sorantin Young Artist Award. As a chamber musician, she also won the Byrd Competition for Duo Piano.

But the magnitude of the World Piano Competition was something Shin never had experienced. Although she had prepared physically and mentally, she still found the five-day competition grueling and exhaustive. Every day, she performed in front of an audience and a jury, and by end of the week, she had played 10 pieces by such composers as Rachmaninoff, Mozart, Szymanowski, Chopin, Menotti, Prokofieff, Liszt, and Beethoven. She had one day to rehearse with the orchestra for the performance of two concertos.

When she wasn’t performing, Shin tried to relax by taking long walks, eating well, and sleeping. “I also prayed that I would do my best and touch the audience,” she says. And she knew she was reaching them because of the positive responses she received. “I got a feeling,” she says, “that I had a good chance to win.”

For the finals, Shin played Liszt’s Totentanz (Dance of the Dead), a dramatic, sober piece that quickly unravels into a burst of lightning-fast passages, and she enthralled the audience with her poise, skill, and emotion. “One of the judges told me he could see the people responding to my playing,” she says. “He said that is a very important quality I have.”

The competition was so intense that the judges decided not to award a bronze medal but rather bestow two silver medals, with the other going to Anastasya Terenkova from Russia. Both women received $4,000 and a chance to perform in Cincinnati’s Jason Kaplan Theater. Shin appeared there on October 5, playing pieces by Rachmaninoff and Debussy.

Shin was born in Montreal, where her mother and father were pursuing doctoral degrees in chemistry at McGill University. She grew up, however, in her parents’ native country of South Korea, and her parents now teach chemistry at a national university in Seoul.

Piano music always has been a part of Shin’s life. “My father had a great love of piano music,” she says. “He was quite crazy about it. He collected piano recordings and listened to them all the time.” The influence apparently rubbed off. “As a young child I used to tell people I wanted to be a pianist,” she says. And performance always has come easily to her. She can’t remember a time when she didn’t want to perform, even at the age of seven when she started taking piano classes.

Her parents, she believes, were very wise in introducing her to the piano. While some parents want their child to do a variety of activities—piano, tennis, art—Shin’s parents limited her choice. “They asked me if I wanted to go to kindergarten or play the piano. I chose the piano.”

At nine years old, Shin already had won her first victory—in a competition sponsored by the Hankuk Daily newspaper in Seoul. She did it by practicing six hours a day. Piano was quickly taking over her life, and by the fifth grade, she found herself having to decide if she really wanted to pursue a life as a concert pianist. If so, she had to prepare to enter a conservatory in the seventh grade, and the effort would prove to be an enormous challenge.

Although her father was against Shin pursuing a career in piano, thinking it was too difficult a profession, Shin felt her own calling. “At one point in the sixth grade,” she recalls, “I realized I couldn’t live without the piano. I had too much fun, and I knew good things would happen if I worked hard.”

Without her father knowing, Shin prepared mercilessly for the conservatory entrance exam. Her father only became aware of what she was up to on the day of the test. Rather than being angry with her, he promptly drove her to the school to take the exam. When it was over, Shin was among the 80 top seventh-grade pianists in South Korea to be admitted.

Getting to the conservatory school from her house was a task in itself. Shin had to travel alone by public bus an hour and a half each way, but she didn’t mind the inconvenience. A music school was where Shin wanted to be, and she has been in one ever since.

When Shin graduated from high school, the Korean National University of Arts had just opened, and she was one of 12 students admitted into its piano program. She studied with several outstanding teachers, the last of whom was Choong-Mo Kang. It was during her debut performance at the Seoul Arts Center that Shin realized just how comfortable she felt playing in front of large audiences.

But at the same time, Shin was beginning to question her identity and purpose as a pianist. “I discovered that I needed to make my personality reflect the character of the music; that they had to become one,” she says. She developed an interest in 20th century music and began playing pieces by composers who found their sources in traditional Korean music.

In 1997, Shin married and moved with her husband, Yun Daniel Park, to the University of Florida, where he pursued a PhD in physics while she began a master’s of music in piano. Studying under the renowned piano professor Boaz Sharon, Shin felt privileged to have such a good teacher. “It is unique,” she says, “to be able to find a very good teacher who gives you a lot of attention.”

After Shin completed her master’s, she asked Sharon to suggest the very best teacher in the United States to help her make the important transition from student to artist. Sharon suggested Roux. Before she committed to applying to Rice for a doctorate, though, Shin took a master class with Roux that is held each summer in Prague. “The first thing that struck me,” she recalls, “was that his playing has a beautiful and natural tone.”

Four years later, Shin continues to study with Roux and feels forever grateful for her decision. “Whenever you study with a high-profile teacher, he may tend to be reserved or cold,” she explains. “But Dr. Roux is a very inviting person. He always is willing to explain things when I have questions. He takes the time to teach what a student needs.” She credits Roux for developing her repertoire while at the same time allowing her to keep her “personality,” or style of playing.
Shin also believes that the Shepherd School of Music has the best piano program in the country. “I wouldn’t go to any other school,” she says. “That’s how strongly I feel about this program. I don’t think I would have achieved as much had I gone to another school.”

Although the Shepherd School is a relatively young institution compared to other excellent music schools, it has wasted no time in establishing itself as one of the premier music schools in the country. “The quality of students goes up every year,” notes Roux, who is chair of the keyboard department. “We are getting better students because the music world is very small. Word travels fast. All these students auditioning at different schools do their homework. They find out where the hot schools are, who the inspiring teachers are.”

But Roux emphasizes that it is not enough to be a knowledgeable teacher or an accomplished musician. “We choose faculty very carefully for their human qualities,” he says. “They must be cultured, knowledgeable, and interested in many things, and they must be excellent colleagues.”

The keyboard department is privileged to have five highly distinguished teachers who exemplify this kind of balance. Each is world class in solo and collaborative playing as well as in teaching. Jon Kimura Parker won the gold medal in the Leeds International Piano Competition and was awarded the Order of Canada, his native country’s highest honor. Brian Connelly, well known to Da Camera and Context audiences, is a versatile and prolific performer, knowledgeable in modern repertoire as well as historical instruments. Jeanne Kierman Fischer is the keyboard half of the renowned Fischer Duo—the other half is her husband, Norman, who teaches cello at the Shepherd School. She is a proponent of collaborative playing and of Dalcroze Eurthymics. C.

Dean Shank has taught award-winning students in the piano preparatory department and is head of piano pedagogy and piano technology. And there is Roux, who has performed at the White House and has had a number of students over the years who have succeeded at national and international competitions. A child prodigy, Roux made his career debut at age nine on the nationally televised Lawrence Welk Show. He has won a fair share of competitions, most notably the United States Information Agency’s Artistic Ambassador Competition.
Winning competitions may appeal to some, but Roux prefers teaching and giving recitals. Teaching provides a satisfaction that is beyond words, he says. “When one gets into this beautiful music—the most profound utterances ever made by the human spirit—there is a euphoric kind of feeling between the teacher and student.”

As a teacher, he says, he avoids students whose playing reflects a high degree of technique but little substance—virtuosos who fail to move the audience. “Our motto at the Shepherd School is that you are a musician first and a pianist second. I would go even further by saying that you are a human being first and a musician second.”

Today’s world, he explains, places tremendous emphasis on craft and too little on the spiritual side of music. “The number of people who can play perfectly is staggering, but you don’t often find people who can move the soul and stir the emotions.”

That’s why Roux readily welcomed Shin as a student. “She is the kind of person who presents a unique and personal point of view about the music she plays,” he says. “It jumps across the instrument at you.”
It was his job, Roux adds, not to kill that strong personality or replace it with his own. His job was to help her hone and perfect her own largesse of spirit, and that took a great deal of sensitivity, tact, and judgment. The role of the teacher is to know how to communicate with each particular student; to know how and when to offer words of advice and criticism.

With Shin, Roux didn’t have to worry too much about offending her. “She is eminently teachable, and that is an important factor,” he says. “She always is willing to give up what she is comfortable with for something that initially may be a little difficult for her but that ultimately leads to a more artistic kind of playing.”

Shin again will be giving up comfort as she prepares for the ultimate piano competition. After taking a breather from the World Piano Competition, She already is gearing up for the Van Cliburn International, which will take place in Fort Worth in May. Hundreds of pianists from around the world will apply to compete, and if Shin qualifies, it will be a childhood dream come true. “My father had a recording of Van Cliburn that he would listen to all the time,” she says. “He had to trade a lot of his favorite things to get that album.” Van Cliburn inspired Shin as a child, and even today, his playing continues to amaze her.

Shin will have to put in a lot of practice to participate in the Van Cliburn, and she plans to throw herself, body and spirit, into the effort. But she feels up to the demands, and it’s no trick to see that music is the magic she loves.

—David D. Medina