The Gold Standard

Palisadian Prodigy Plays for Piano Competition’s Top Prize

By DEAN CHIEN | Intern

“Mephisto” may turn up in the title of his winning piece but this was no deal with the Devil; just sheer talent and hard work which propelled 15-year-old Palisadian and Brentwood School sophomore Evan Epstein to win the 2015 Los Angeles Gold Star Young Pianist Competition.

The piano prodigy, competing against students from around the world and up to two years older than him, came away with the victory for his performance of Liszt’s “Mephisto Waltz.”

For winning the competition, Epstein received a trophy and a $100 scholarship. The pair of judges that saw him perform was so impressed by his recital that they allowed him to play the entirety of the 40-page, 11½ minute-long piece while other competitors were cut off at the eight-minute mark.

Although Epstein has played and competed in venues around the country, including the occasional piano store back room, the Los Angeles Gold Star Competition afforded him the opportunity to play in front of a rapt audience on the grand stage of Munson Chapel, located at Azusa Pacific University.

The soft-spoken and thoughtful Epstein sat down with the Palisadian-Post to share his experience. Six-foot-three and dressed in workout clothes (Epstein had just gotten done exercising at the Palisades-Malibu YMCA), one would never guess that the athletic-looking Epstein would also be a musical genius. But that’s exactly the word that describes the young man, who has been playing since age 4 and whose talent has netted him numerous awards, honors and opportunities.

In 2011, at just 11 years old, Epstein delivered a recital of Chopin’s “Fantaisie-Impromptu” at New York City’s famed Carnegie Hall for winning at the American Fine Arts Festival. His impressive performance at the 2014 Robert Turner Piano Concerto Competition granted him the opportunity to play a movement of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 15 with the Los Angeles Doctors Symphony Orchestra. And, for the past four years running, Epstein has received an annual scholarship from the Westside Committee of the Los Angeles Philharmonic for his outstanding work.

This is just a highlight reel of Epstein’s many accomplishments on the piano, an instrument that presents him a unique challenge every time he goes up for competition. Unlike other musicians, who are generally able to carry their instruments with them, Epstein almost never knows what kind of piano he’ll have to perform on for a given event. In the case of the 2015 Los Angeles Gold Star Young Pianist Competition, Epstein was tasked with playing an American Steinway, despite practicing day-in and day-out on an Italian Fazioli.

One of the keys of Epstein’s success is indeed daily practice. No matter what piano he’s playing on or who he’s playing for or against in competition, Epstein’s often months-long preparation allows him to play by memory thousands of notes of music to near perfection. After practicing at least an hour a day for nearly a year on “Mephisto Waltz”, Epstein believed his execution of the piece in the Los Angeles Gold Star Competition became “more mental than physical.” Competing against older students didn’t seem to faze Epstein, who felt comfortable that his musical selection “fitted his playing style.”

Following his winning performance, the Marquez Knolls resident Epstein modestly admitted he felt “nervous, but confident” about his work. The judges were more effusive in their praise.

Parents Scott Epstein and Tiffany Hu could not be more proud of their son’s dedication and the rewards that came with it.

“We experienced the day-to-day preparation,” explained Epstein’s father. “There is a pride and a pleasure in seeing it all come to fruition, to witness the finished product.”

Hu is herself an accomplished musician who has played violin at many orchestral concerts and has contributed to the scores of myriad movies.

“While I was pregnant [playing] the violin solo in the movie ‘Anna and the King’ at the end of pregnancy, I felt his movement when I was making beautiful music,” she said.

Hu added that Evan’s father is also an amateur pianist “so there was constant music in our house,” she said.

“One day, when Evan was 4, Scott called me over to the living room and said he has a surprise for me,” Hu remembered. “He asked Evan to turn away from the piano, and asked him to tell us the note when Scott played on the piano, Evan could tell us exactly the note and the name of it, then we started adding more notes, four, five notes at once. He got them all correct. We concluded that Evan has perfect pitch and was born with it.”

From there, Scott and Tiffany nurtured Epstein’s musical interests.

“We started taking Evan to classical music concert when he was 3, and then he was a regular at the Los Angeles Philharmonic subscription concerts, met many well known pianists backstage, and got autographs and encourage words from them,” Hu said.

Besides studying with Palisadian concert pianist Maria Demina, when Evan was 6, Hu traveled with him to her hometown of Shanghai, China, during the summers to study piano, and at age 8, he started studying with Professor Wu Zi Jie of Shanghai Conservatory of Music.

“I rented a service apartment and a piano while in Shanghai, usually from 3 to 6 weeks, and he practiced three to four hours a day and took three lessons a week,” Hu said. “It was intense.”

Dedication and perseverance aren’t only limited to piano playing for Evan, who works out regularly at the YMCA with his friends (“I used to be really skinny,” Epstein jokes) and is taking a year off from basketball in order to focus more on his academics.

The well-rounded young man also speaks fluent Mandarin and recently won runner-up at the Mr. Palisades Teen Contest, not coincidentally on the strength of his performance of an excerpt of “Mephisto Waltz.”

As for what the future holds for him, Epstein is convinced music will be a part of it, though perhaps not in the way one might think given his classical track record. Epstein is not afraid to experiment with new musical styles aside from his Chopin- and Beethoven-based repertoire, recently joining his school’s jazz band and following “Kygo, this DJ-type guy” as one of his new favorite electronic artists. He hopes one day to be “composing, producing and mixing things up” in the music world.

But there is still one constant: Epstein plans to use piano-based melodies. When asked what he enjoys about playing this instrument, Epstein answers without hesitation, “It’s all in the emotion of the piano. Music is made of that.”