Jacobs student wins world competition

One minute and 17 seconds into the second movement, Brian Ciach hit the piano too hard.

A screw fell out, hitting the inside of the piano with a loud ping and causing a cloud of dust to blow straight into his face.

Ciach was shocked, but he had just experienced his first “Lisztian” moment.

Three years later, Ciach had his second when that piece, “Piano Sonata 2” tied for first place in the American Liszt Society’s Bicentennial Composition Competition this July.

Ciach and his fellow winner, Gilad Cohen of Princeton University, are splitting the $4,000 prize provided by Steinway and Sons.

The American Liszt Society is named after Franz Liszt, the famous Hungarian composer and piano virtuoso known for his dramatic flair.

“I feel like I’m inspired by his spirit,” said Ciach, a doctoral candidate in the composition department at the Jacobs School of Music. “I like to, in a sense, put on a show. But it’s all in the service of the sound of the music.” 

However, in the American Liszt Society’s competition, Ciach couldn’t rely on loose screws to create drama and excitement in his music.

Composers from 11 countries submitted 32 previously unpublished pieces to the composition, explained Richard Zimdars, artistic director of the American Liszt Society’s bicentennial festival and music professor at the University of Georgia. 

Zimdars said he was happy that pieces were stylistically all over the map, as they weren’t looking for imitations of Liszt’s works.

“I looked at the pieces, and the styles ranged from very conservative to really far and good avant-garde,” he said.

Ciach places his piece in the middle, but he does so with the typical Liszt virtuoso flair.

“It’s definitely not standard or entirely avant-garde,” he said. “I added some percussive effects where you’re knocking on the key board or slapping your hands. It’s a physically demanding piece.”

The full use of the instrument and the resulting music from it are what competition judge Paul Barnes liked about Ciach’s piece.

“He had a very effective use of the piano that was innovative,” said Barnes, a Jacobs School of Music alumnus and music professor at the University of Nebraska. “It was also incredibly expressive... it is something that makes you look inward.”

It was the internal desire to play piano that made Ciach write the sonata.

Ciach’s sonata will be played this February for an international crowd at the American Liszt Society’s Bicentennial Festival at the University of Georgia.

“My inspiration was just the internal need to play music,” Ciach said. “When I got the e-mail that I won, I was surprised and beguiled. I wrote it essentially for myself.”