Pianist Busy After Award

Vadym Kholodenko’s Cliburn gold has turned into the busy concert pianist career he had hoped for.

A few months after winning the prestigious piano competition in Fort Worth, the 26-year-old Ukrainian pianist is slated to perform at more than 50 concerts between now and next May (including a stop in North Carolina) – the busiest Kholodenko said he has ever been during a piano concert season.

“It’s opened more American stages for my career,” said Kholodenko, who recently performed at the Aspen Music Festival in Colorado and Sunriver Music Festival in Oregon. “It’s just a new level of concerts. I never would have imagined I would be able to play these concerts.”

As the winner June 9 of the 2013 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, Kholodenko received $50,000 along with three years of international concert management from the Cliburn Foundation.

With that professional management came a professional photo shoot in the legendary late pianist’s Fort Worth home.

During the shoot, Kholodenko, who describes himself as “quite serious,” was told he needed to smile more, he said. The photographer tried to get him to joke around with third-place winner Sean Chen, who was also there for photos. Instead, the two pianists sat down at Cliburn’s Steinway and played a short duet.

“It was so interesting to be in Van Cliburn’s home and just to feel the atmosphere of culture and intelligence in his house,” said Kholodenko, who enjoyed looking at the framed photos of Cliburn in Russia and with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev. “I was very excited with it all.”

Before his busy concert season began, Kholodenko was able to spend some time at home in Moscow with his wife, Sofia, and his daughter, Nika. He even let Nika play with his gold medal, which, he said, luckily, she didn’t drop.

“She’s almost 3, but I’m not sure she really understands it just yet,” Kholodenko said.

There were also a few parties to celebrate his Cliburn win, but they were “really intelligent, modern parties,” he said.

With concerts in Fort Worth, San Francisco and Charlotte (Oct. 18 at Halton Theater), Kholodenko doesn’t know when he’ll be back home in Ukraine again or when he’ll see his family. But he hopes they will be able to join him on part of his concert tour in the United States – possibly in October or November – so he can show them the U.S.

Traveling to new cities in America has been an added bonus for the pianist. Kholodenko, who likes to hike and take nature walks, said he was very impressed with Crater Lake. “It was so beautiful,” he said, having a hard time trying to describe his amazement about the Oregon lake that formed inside a volcanic crater some 6,000 feet above sea level.

And with all of the concerts, Kholodenko is making new fans of classical music. Oftentimes, he said, he is greeted at the stage door after concerts by audience members who want to take his picture, some of which get posted on Facebook. There was one fan, he remembered, who seemed particularly moved by his performance.

“He said he was so touched by the music,” Kholodenko said, “and in this case, I sensed that I did something special.”