2025 Cliburn Competition: Aristo Sham - Semifinal Round (Live)

Thanks to his piano-teaching mother, Aristo Sham showed a prodigious gift for the piano early in his life. From the age of 10, while juggling piano studies with regular school, he was already performing in public. Ultimately, a career on the concert platform beckoned, and after a dual degree programme at Harvard and the New England Conservatory, Sham headed to New York’s Juilliard School. Among his many accolades to date are first prizes at the Ettlingen, Gina Bachauer and Monte Carlo Music Masters competitions. So far, Sham tells Apple Music Classical, the Cliburn has been “an amazing experience in how much I felt the development of my artistry, pianism and performances”. For his semi-final recital, he opted for an almost exclusively Russian programme, beginning with Rachmaninoff’s Romantic reimagining of a Bach solo violin partita. Crisp articulation combines with a beautiful sense of phrasing that highlights Rachmaninoff’s clear affection for Bach. Scriabin’s Piano Sonata No. 10 follows—the composer’s last. Cast in one continuous movement, the music is alive with trills and tremolos that Sham plays with a natural fluidity, while lavishing his incredible touch on Scriabin’s most introspective moments, giving the music vivid shape. Finally, he returns to Rachmaninoff, and the composer’s Études-tableaux, Op. 39, a set of nine studies that test any pianist’s technical and musical skill. The collection, Sham says, is “an extraordinary set of paintings spanning a huge range of emotions, aesthetics, narratives—all through Rachmaninoff's unparalleled mastery in his use of the instrument.” Sham is technically astounding in each, his assured fingerwork matched by a seemingly natural instinct sense for melodic line and dynamic control.