Pianist Aristo Sham, gold medalist of the 2025 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, will appear in a sold-out recital on Sunday, October 18 at 4 p.m. at the Cori Terry Theatre in Kalamazoo as part of The Gilmore's Rising Stars Series. Speaking with Cara Lieurance, Sham joins from Gävle, Sweden, where he is preparing to play Grieg's Piano Concerto with the Gävle Symphony Orchestra. He says the orchestra's sound blends the intimacy of a chamber orchestra with the impact of a full symphony, and that Scandinavian musicians feel Grieg's music very personally.
Sweden is a second home for Sham. He has spent nine years there, studying and teaching, and works closely with his mentor, Julia Mustonen-Dahlkvist, whom he met at a competition in Norway. Together they guide students at the Ingesund Piano Center, which Sham describes as "sort of like a year-round summer camp," set in a small town surrounded by lakes and forest. "Every time I come back, I feel like I'm cleansed and I can breathe," he says.
His Gilmore program, new this season, is framed by two Beethoven sonatas from Opus 27, each subtitled "quasi una fantasia": the lesser-known No. 1 and No. 2, the "Moonlight." Sham says the pair matters in music history because "it's one of the first examples of breaking free from classical forms," as Beethoven tests how far a sonata can stretch while remaining a sonata.
At the center of the program are Rachmaninoff's Moments musicaux and Chopin's Four Impromptus, which Sham calls snapshots of a particular scene or feeling. He notes that Chopin wrote for a different instrument than today's piano, so the challenge is to interpret every interval and harmony rather than brushing past music that can feel deceptively easy.
Reflecting on the Cliburn, Sham says the decision to apply came about two years beforehand. He consulted more than 20 people about his repertoire, which wasn't settled until two months before the competition. During the event itself, he says, "every second of every day, I was using every fiber of my body to try to be better, to try to stretch myself to beyond the maximum of my capabilities."
The concert is sold out. A waiting list is available at thegilmore.org.
The interview was summarized by Claude AI and edited by the author.
