TheHonens Way
AN ORAL HISTORY OF THE FIRST THREE DECADES
By Stephen Hunt
By Stephen Hunt
TheHonens Way
“My vision is to identify the finest of today’s young pianists, to bring them to Calgary in a competition that is held in the highest international esteem, and to create a legacy of musical excellence that can be enjoyed by Canadians for countless generations.”
Esther HonensTHE BEGINNING
“A legacy of excellence to be shared for generations”—that was the dream of 89-year-old Esther Honens when she endowed $5 million to launch the Esther Honens International Piano Competition Foundation in 1991.
It all started in Honens’ living room, where she was joined by her lawyer, Don Hatch, and her accountant, Michael Kociuba.
“She had been to the Van Cliburn Competition in Fort Worth, Texas,” Hatch says, “and enjoyed it so much, she thought Calgary should have one, too.”
“Then she asked us, ‘What do you think?’”
“To be honest, neither of us was particularly entrenched in the local music community, let alone the world of international music competitions, so we weren’t the right people to ask,” Hatch says, “but we agreed to mak e some inquiries.”
To seek further advice and direction, one of the first people Hatch approached was Calgary lawyer and classical music devotee, Russ McKinnon, who had helped establish the Calgary Organ Festival in 1990. Thankfully, Russ enthusiastically agreed to help, but there was still a ways to go.
One day, Esther’s doctor, Paul Crossfield, called to ask Hatch if he might be interested in coming to his home to enjoy an intimate piano recital. He accepted. There, he met Gloria Saarinen, a well-respected Calgary pianist and teacher, who performed the music of Mozart for the assembled group. The group mused about what a Calgary-style international piano competition might look and, more importantly, feel like…and from that point, the ball was rolling.
Noted Calgary businessman and philanthropist, Bill Kilbourne was asked to lead the charge. He accepted, and in turn, approached long-time Calgary arts champion, Jenny Belzberg, to join him on the Board to help turn Esther’s dream into reality. Bill later became Honens’ founding Board Chair and Jenny, a founding Board Member. The next steps were to create a plan and build a business.
“We needed to formalize the organization,” Hatch says. “Esther was donating $5 million, which is a lot of money even by today’s standards but was even more back then. Ultimately, we decided to entrust the funds to the Calgary Foundation, in the form of an endowment, where it has remained and grown for the past thirty years.”
Long-time Calgary Herald music critic, Kenneth Delong, remembers hearing about a new international piano competition that was planned to be hosted in Calgary in 1993. “The first thing I thought was the implausibility of the whole idea,” he says. “Who was Esther Honens, of all people, to be taking on a project so ambitious? The whole thing sounded a little crazy!”
Crazy or not, planning was well underway, and the Honens International Piano Competition was launched. But before the organizers had a chance to put their plan into action, they realized that their timeline needed to be shortened.
ONE YEAR TO LAUNCH
Sadly, as planning entered its initial stages, Esther Honens learned she was dying. Although only recently diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease, she was in rapid decline.
“Her health started to fail,” says Don Hatch. “We decided to move the event up by a full year in an attempt to have the first Honens before Esther died.”
1992 Honens Laureates L to R: Sergei Babayan, Yi Wu (Prize Laureate), Krzysztof Jablonski, Jean-Efflam Bavouzet, Dmitry Nesterov. Nesterov and Jablonski enjoyed their experiences so much that following the Competition, each decided to move to Calgary from their respective countries, Russia and Poland.
French pianist Jean-Efflam Bavouzet learned about this new international piano competition and two things caught his attention. “It was the first competition to have a completely free repertoire,” he says, ”and none of the jurors were professional jury members—they were all professional concert pianists.”
“That was all a part of the type of piano competition that Gloria Saarinen, Honens’ first Artistic Director, envisioned,” says Hatch. “She wanted the jury group to be musicians, not professional jury members. One objective she had was for Honens to have a ‘music festival-like’ approach. She wanted it to be more pleasant for audience members and performers alike—and it’s proven to be a successful formula for all subsequent competitions.”
At the same time, Russian pianist Dmitry Nesterov was scheduled to compete in an international piano competition in Spain when he received a call indicating that the event had been canceled.
“I was very, very upset,” said Nesterov. “But after much research we learned that there was a new competition taking place in Canada and I was asked if I would like to go. Of course, I said, ‘Yes!’”
The first Honens International Piano Competition took place 13 to 28 November 1992 and drew 40 pianists from many countries to Calgary, where they competed for a $20,000 grand prize.
Esther Honens watched the inaugural Competition from a private booth at the back of the Jack Singer Concert Hall.
“She was quite delighted and very grateful,” says Hatch. “It filled her with satisfaction and pride.”
Five days later, Esther Honens died. The Competition’s first Prize Laureate, Yi Wu, was flown in from Argentina to Calgary to play at her funeral…barely a week after the first-ever Honens International Piano Competition had heard its final cadence.
1996 Honens Laureates
L to R: Maxim Philippov (Prize Laureate), Albert Tiu, Eugene Watanabe. 1996 was host to the second Honens Piano Competition as the first three Competitions were held four years apart.
“Honens has become one of the two cultural events that has put Calgary on the map (the other one is the annual rodeo).”—BBC Music Magazine
2000 Honens Laureates
L to R: Katherine Chi (Prize Laureate), Alessandra Ammara, Marko Martin. To date, Katherine Chi remains the only female and Canadian to be named Honens Prize Laureate.
THE HONENS WAY
The first Honens took place shortly after the 1988 Olympics and Calgary had become well-known for its volunteerism and high level of community spirit and engagement.
“So here we were, an international piano competition and people were more than happy to volunteer,” says Jenny Belzberg.
2003
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“What would my life be without Honens—certainly my career would have been less successful and my life emptier.”
—Roberto Plano
As the competition continued to grow, the organization sought ways to engage Calgary’s business community. Belzberg knew a lot of oilmen in town who weren’t conversant in classical music, but she had a hunch that if they got up close in a comfortable, familiar setting, they might just fall in love with it and form a new musical community in the process.
Inspired by Andrew Raeburn, Honens’ second Artistic and Executive Director, and launched in Belzberg’s home, the Honens Laureate Circle was born. “In Mozart’s time, they did things in people’s homes, and it worked,” Belzberg says. “People got interested.”
“Honens Laureate Circle events feature intimate recitals performed by past Laureates at the homes of Laureate Circle Members and in other unique and interesting venues, creating some unforgettable musical moments,” says Honens’ Artistic Director Jon Kimura Parker. “You never know what’s going to happen at one of these events. All the ones I’ve participated in have created their own energy. There is something truly special about them.” Admittedly, the Honens way differs vastly from that of other piano competitions, but it’s truly appreciated by artists.
“That’s the difference between Honens and other competitions in the world,” says 2006 Prize Laureate Minsoo Sohn. “I don’t even like to think of Honens as solely a competition. It’s more about the music and everything we share together, almost like a foundation, a musical foundation. The real deal starts after the Competition. They explore lots of different details—how to become an artist—and they support you full-heartedly.”
Honens Laureates to R: Roberto Plano, Xiang Zou (Prize Laureate), Winston Choi.“I always look to my Honens Laureate years as life-defining... I gained a whole new perspective on what it means to be an artist and a glimpse of what it means to live a life that is so rich and full of meaning when the totality of the artistic experience is embraced.”
—Winston Choi, 2003 Honens Laureate
HOST HOMES
The Calgary volunteer spirit extended to providing housing for competitors. At that time, Honens Quarterfinals took place in Calgary, meaning the organization had to find host homes for 40 competitors! Jackie Flanagan was one of the original hosts.
“Mrs. Honens was still alive, and it was the first year of the Competition,” Flanagan says, “and there was quite a bit of excitement about it. A call went out for people with grand pianos, asking if they would be willing to billet people for the duration of the event.”
Billeting meant, and still means (at least for Honens), rehearsals in the living room, meaningful discussion over dinner, and sharing in the challenges of performing in a major international piano competition while being a guest in a stranger’s home.
Back in 1992, Flanagan hosted Dmitry Nesterov as her billet. She then lived on Riverdale Avenue, and as luck would have it, three different Riverdale Avenue families hosted Honens competitors that year.
“People in the neighbourhood would go out for an evening walk and hear beautiful music coming from many homes along the street—it was a phenomenon! It seemed as if the entire city was alive with music.”
The tradition of pairing competitors with host families continues to change lives today through forever-forged-friendships. As 2006 Prize Laureate, Minsoo Sohn says, “The everlasting spirit and heart of these special people have made an irreplaceable impact on my life. It made me who I am now.”
ARTISTIC DIRECTOR EVOLUTION
For Kenneth Delong, the key to explaining the growth and evolution of Honens into the well-established piano competition it has become, was the substantial role played by Andrew Raeburn, who took over as Artistic Director from Gloria Saarinen following the first Honens Competition.
“It was his knowledge of music, his knowledge of the variety of ways in which one can display oneself as both a pianist and musician, and how you could organize these things to bring these qualities to the fore. That takes a particular kind of understanding, both of the organization and also of the thing being organized, which is how to determine who is a really good pianist. The manner in which he set that up and organized it for a number
Gloria Saarinen, 1992; Andrew Raeburn, 1993 to 2004; Stephen McHolm, 2004 to 2016; Jon Kimura Parker, 2018 to present; Neil Edwards, President & CEO, 2016 to 2022.
2006 Honens Laureates L to R: Hong Xu, Hinrich Alpers, Minsoo Sohn (Prize Laureate). In 2021, Alpers became a Member of the Honens Board of Directors.
of years set the foundation for the Honens tradition that has evolved, and when Stephen McHolm took over in 2004, he had a very strong basis upon which to proceed.”
And proceed he did. During his tenure with Honens, McHolm made indelible impressions upon the organization, not the least of which was the introduction of the annual Honens Festival (named 2015 Festival of the Year at the Calgary White Hat Awards) and renowned late-night cabaret, Bison Noir. In 2015, the Honens Board of Directors made the decision to divide the organization’s administrative and artistic functions into two distinct roles and a global search began. In September 2016, Neil Edwards began his journey with Honens as its first President & CEO. His first order of business? To identify and secure a new Artistic Director to carry on the organization’s strong international reputation of excellence.
“It was important that we find the perfect Artistic Director,” says Edwards, “someone who not only embodied Honens’ ethos, but who had a deep understanding of and respect for Esther’s remarkable vision. Working closely in tandem with Eric Friesen, who was then a Member of the Board, we knew we would only find that in one person: Jon Kimura Parker. Thankfully, Jackie said yes because, as Eric says, ‘There was no Plan B.’” Parker, who had been a member of the Second Jury at the inaugural Competition in 1992, assumed his current role in January 2018 and continues to investigate ways to keep Honens innovative, to grow its brand identity at both home and abroad, and to carry on the extraordinary legacy of the Artistic Directors who came before him.
2009 Honens Laureates L to R: Gilles Vonsattel, Georgy Tchaidze (Prize Laureate), Evgeny Starodubtsev. This is the final competition that named multiple laureates before moving to a single laureate format.HONENS: IT’S PERSONAL, NOT BUSINESS
Over the past three decades, the Honens way has extended its reach into the musical communities of Calgary, Alberta, Canada, and the world.
For anyone who has ever attended the final night of a Honens International Piano Competition, who has witnessed the anointing of a new Prize Laureate, there’s a magic quality that binds the audience to the performance. Kenneth Delong, who has seen them all, says, “There is an almost magical world one can fall into when you have people who can interpret and communicate the greatest pieces at the highest level,” he says, “and this happens at every Honens.”
“Esther would be absolutely delighted,” says Don Hatch, who has been there since day one. “She knew this would be something Calgary would embrace, and she would be thrilled to see how it has grown to become such an important part of our community over all these years.”
2012 Honens Finalists and Prize Laureate L to R: Lorenzo Cossi, Maria Mazo, Jong Hai Park, Pavel Kolesnikov (Prize Laureate), Eric Zuber. Kolesnikov is the youngest to be awarded Prize Laureate.
2015 Honens Finalists and Prize Laureate L to R: Henry Kramer, Luca Buratto (Prize Laureate), Artem Yasynskyy.
2018 Honens Finalists and Prize Laureate L to R: Nicolas Namoradze (Prize Laureate), Lewellyn Sanchez-Werner, Han Chen.
Cover image: An oil painting of Esther Honens by Calgary artist John M. Compton.
This story features interviews the author conducted for articles that appeared in the Calgary Herald, video interviews that appear on the Honens website, and interviews with 8VA, Kenneth Delong, Jon Kimura Parker, and Don Hatch.
