A Surprise in Texas: The Thirteenth Van Cliburn International Piano Compe tition (review)

Peter Rosen's documentary A Surprise in Texas is about the 2009 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, which was held in Fort Worth, Texas. There can be little "surprise" to the competition's outcome: judges awarded no third prize, but a second prize to Korean Yeol Eum Son and joint first prizes to Haochen Zhang and blind Japanese pianist Nobuyuki Tsujii. The filmmakers have tried very hard to recreate the suspense of being in the midst of the competition, and the results are generally successful, particularly when it comes to Tsujii's "surprising" success in each round of the competition.

The film highlights three of the required performances in the Van Cliburn: the first round, which features a number of pianists playing solo repertory; the chamber music portion of the second round, with twelve pianists playing quintets with the Takács Quartet; and the third round, with six pianists performing concertos with the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra under James Conlon. To anyone who has seen American Idol or X Factor, this form and the approach to editing will seem familiar. Excerpts from performances are interspersed with public and private moments of the competitors and comments from the judges. By the time the film is over, the competition winners have become real people to the viewer, their very significant musical accomplishments made to support a sketch of their characters.

As often happens with reality TV, the eventual winners are also the competitors who get the most screen time from the beginning of the film. In a film that lasts only 92 minutes, the viewer gets to know competition winner "Nobu" Tsujii, and also his mother, his principal translator (of all the finalists, he was the only one who could not speak English), his host family in Texas (John and Carol Davidson), and his Japanese piano teacher (Yukio Yokoyama). On no other competitor is such time spent. Although the emotional payoff is considerable—it is heart-warming to see Tsujii succeed, to hug the man who gave the competition its name as he accepts his trophy—this makes the film differ in obvious and important ways from the experience for audience members or judges. Rosen's film leaves the viewer with the impression that the people who won deserved to win, not simply because of their remarkable performances, but because they are sympathetic and even heroic human beings. Rosen has possibly created a film to make us feel better about competitive music-making: the best players happen to be great people, so competitions like the Van Cliburn are validated. That competition might be a far uglier thing and that it may reward other qualities than decency is a suggestion wholly absent from A Surprise in Texas.

Even if the viewer feels that competing for "fastest, cleanest Liszt" is a more ambiguous affair than Rosen does, there are other commendable aspects of the film. Menahem Pressler, who served as a judge in the 2009 competition, drops sage comments about the competitors and music-making in general, and James Conlon and members of the Takács Quartet offer up insights about working with Tsujii. As a bonus feature, the DVD includes fifty minutes of performances by the three competition winners. Interested viewers may also enjoy They Came to Play (2008), Alex Rotaru's documentary about the Van Cliburn Foundation's competition for amateur pianists, which presents an altogether quirkier vision of music as competition. Viewers intrigued by Tsujii should certainly know Roko Belic's Genghis Blues (1999), which documents blind musician Paul Pena's participation in a Tuvan throat singing competition in 1995.