Natacha Kudritskaya, a 25-year-old Ukrainian, drew the often-dreaded first position on Wednesday night and will lead off the 13th Van Cliburn International Piano Competition at 1 p.m. Friday in Bass Performance Hall.

Her selection means that the first notes in the 2 1/2-week musical marathon will be by Chopin, his Sonata No. 2 in B-flat minor. Music by Ravel and Scriabin will also be on her preliminary program.

The 29 competitors drew for position at an opening dinner and draw party at the Renaissance Worthington Hotel in downtown Fort Worth. Six contestants, three in the afternoon and three in the evening, will play in the preliminaries each day through Tuesday. Twelve semifinalists will be named Tuesday night.

Here is the complete preliminaries schedule:

May 22

Matinee Performance

1 p.m.   Kudritskaya

2:05 p.m.   Stephen Beus, United States, 27

3:10 p.m.   Ran Dank, Israel, 27

Evening Performance

7:30 p.m.   Chetan Tierra, United States, 25

8:35 p.m.   Spencer Myer, United States, 30

9:40 p.m.   Eduard Kunz, Russia, 28

May 23

Matinee Performance

1 p.m.   Soyeon Lee, Korea, 29

2:05 p.m.   Di Wu, China, 24

3:10 p.m.   Vassilis Varvaresos, Greece, 26

Evening Performance

7:30 p.m.   Nobuyuki Tsujii, Japan, 20

8:35 p.m.   Naomi Kudo, United States/Japan, 22

9:40 p.m.   Zhang Zuo, China, 20

May 24

Matinee Performance

1 p.m.   Ning Zhou, China, 21

2:05 p.m.   Michail Lifits, Germany, 26

3:10 p.m.   Alessandro Deljavan, Italy, 22

Evening Performance

7:30 p.m.   Lukas Vondracek, Czech Republic, 22

8:35 p.m.   Feng Zhang, China, 23

9:40 p.m.   Mariangela Vacatello, Italy, 27

May 25

Matinee Performance

1 p.m.   Victor Stanislavsky, Israel, 26

2:05 p.m.   Evgeni Bozhanov, Bulgaria, 25

3:10 p.m.   Ilya Rashkovskiy, Russia, 24

Evening Performance

7:30 p.m.   Ang Li, Canada, 24

8:35 p.m.   Andrea Lam, Australia, 27

9:40 p.m.   Haochen Zhang, China, 19

May 26

Matinee Performance

1 p.m.   Amy J. Yang, United States/China, 25

2:05 p.m.   Yoonjung Han, Korea, 24

3:10 p.m.   Kyu Yeon Kim, Korea, 23

Evening Performance

7:30 p.m.   Yeol Eum Son, Korea, 23

8:35 p.m.   Mayumi Sakamoto, Japan, 26