Whitman Junior Wins National Piano Performance Competition
WALLA WALLA, Wash. -- Stephen Beus, a 21-year-old junior at Whitman College, recently added to his long list of piano performance accomplishments by winning the Music Teachers National Association (MTNA) Young Artist Piano Competition in Salt Lake City, Utah.
As the first-place winner, Beus receives a Steinway & Sons piano, model M, valued at about $42,000. Beus will fly later this summer, courtesy of the Steinway Company, to its New York factory, where he will select his piano.
"I'm almost as excited about seeing the Steinway factory as I am about owning my own Steinway piano," Beus says.
Steinway & Sons, founded in 1853 by a German immigrant, quickly rose to international prominence for the quality of its pianos. The company now crafts about 5,000 pianos a year worldwide. More than 1,300 renowned artists and ensembles around the world are recognized as Steinway Artists in keeping with a commitment to own Steinway pianos and perform with them professionally.
The MTNA Young Artist Piano Competition began last November with state competitions. After winning the Washington state contest, Beus advanced to the national competition in mid-March by winning one of seven regional contests scattered around the country.
Competing at the Salt Palace Convention Center, Beus played four classical pieces that took close to 80 minutes to perform. He opened with Rachmaninov's Prelude in G Major, Op. 32 #5, which he calls a "beautifully delicate piece" which lasts only about three minutes. "Much of my program was virtuosic and violent -- I've broken several piano strings practicing and performing this program, so beginning with a simple piece, I felt, was ideal."
For his second piece, Beus played Rachmaninov's Concerto in D Minor, #3. "This monster of a piece lasts 40 minutes and is considered by many pianists to be the most difficult piece written for piano," Beus says. "This piece is exhausting, both physically and emotionally, but is perhaps the most overwhelmingly beautiful piece of music I have ever encountered."
Orchestral accompaniment, normally required for concertos, was not available during the national competition. In such cases, a second piano is provided for accompaniment. "Tonya Siderius, a Whitman senior, came with me and played the orchestral reduction," Beus says. "She did a wonderful job."
His third piece was a set of Mozart variations that provided a "great contrast to the dark, passionate personality of the concerto," he says. "The Mozart was light, playful and full of childlike fun."
His final piece was a 20-minute "marathon of a piece, the Barber Sonata," Beus says. "The four movements of this work, although masterfully written, are terribly difficult to understand and physically endure. After one of my earlier performances of this music, my father (Glenn) said he didn't know how many performances of the work a piano could endure and still be playable. The piece is dark, violent and scary. I love it."
Taken as a whole, his program at nationals "allowed me to play different styles and show different aspects of my musical personality," Beus says. He also enjoyed having his own rooting section. More than 60 members of his family, including his parents and four of his siblings, were in the audience.
Beus, a native of Othello, Wash., was no stranger to victory at the MTNA national competition. Although this was his first entry in the collegiate division, he twice entered the high school contest, placing first in 2000 and second in 1999. He also placed third in the junior high division.
His list of other accomplishments is surprisingly long for a pianist so young. Beus was a finalist in the 1993 Gina Bachauer International Junior Piano Competition and won first place in that contest in 1996. He also won the Corpus Christi International Young Artists Concerto Competition (pre-college division) in 1997.
In 1999, after being judged the Outstanding North American applicant to the Van Cliburn Summer Institute in Fort Worth, Texas, Beus was a full scholarship recipient for that summer study program. In 2000, he was invited to be a featured soloist at the World Piano Pedagogy Conference in Missouri; placed second in the Kociuszko Chopin Competition in New York; participated in National Public Radio's "From the Top" broadcast from Spokane's Metropolitan Performing Arts Center; and made his Seattle debut at the prestigious Benaroya Hall.
In September 2000, Beus began a two-year mission for his church in Finland. While there, he toured and performed extensively, although his practice time was curtailed because of his church commitment.
Beus made his first symphony appearance at the age of nine with the Oregon East Symphony in Pendleton, Ore. He has since performed with orchestras in Walla Walla, Richland, Kennewick, Spokane, Omak and Chelan in the state of Washington, and with orchestras in Fort Worth, Texas, and Vaasa, Finland. This spring, he will perform with the Whitman College Symphony Orchestra on Easter Sunday, April 20. A solo recital on the Whitman campus is planned for May.
The fourth of eight children, Beus began to play the piano at age five at the family home, a five-acre apple orchard near Othello. His mother, Kathy, is a "wonderful pianist and has a deep understanding of music," he says. She studied music and languages in college, and could have "easily pursued a career in music, but she had other ambitions -- to have a family."
By age eight, Beus had completed the Suzuki repertoire, a method that emphasizes ear training. "I performed with my first orchestra when I had not yet learned to read music," he recalls. "I remember being young and thinking it would be cool if I could read music. I would place the score and the music stand and start playing. I would stare at the book as I played, pretending to be one of those smart pianists who knew how to read music."
At age eight Beus also auditioned and was accepted as a student of Leonard Richter, a member of the music faculty at both Walla Walla College and Whitman. That student-teacher relationship continues today.
When he was younger, Beus was the first of his family out of bed in the morning, rising early to practice on his family's "very loud" piano. "Looking back, I feel moderately guilty about practicing while the rest of the family was sleeping."
That didn't stop him, however, from teasing his oldest brother, Joel, about the benefits he received from listening to early morning music. Noting that some studies suggest that listening to Mozart can raise a person's IQ, Beus promptly took credit for his older brother's academic accomplishments -- graduating from high school as class valedictorian and eventually gaining acceptance to Harvard Law School, where he continues to study.
Older brother Joel was ready with his own good-natured retort, arguing the Mozart studies were obviously flawed. "His point was that I had the most exposure to that music and I still dropped out of high school," Beus says.
In reality, Beus never started high school, even though his father is a high school English teacher. Home-schooled by his mother during what would have been his freshman and sophomore years, he then enrolled in the Running Start program at Columbia Basin College in Pasco, completing two years of college credits before leaving on his church mission. He entered Whitman last fall with junior academic standings.
After graduating from Whitman, where he is majoring in piano performance, Beus hopes to continue with graduate music studies at either the Julliard School of Music in New York or Texas Christian University.
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