Cleveland Classical

Blossom Music Center: opening a summer home for The Cleveland Orchestra (second of three articles)

by Alice Koeninger

50 years ago, the Cleveland-Akron area was bursting with anticipation of Blossom Music Center’s opening on July 19, 1968. For the two weeks leading up to the inaugural performance –– which began with The Star Spangled Banner and continued with Beethoven’s Consecration of the House Overture and the Ninth Symphony –– newspapers ran a continuous flow of previews to hype the event. Articles about the coupon books being sold (tickets were only $2 for the lawn), the relaxed dress code (an Akron Beacon Journal headline read “Wear what you please”), and the planned broadcast of the program in color on Channel 3 and on WCLV-FM, all added to the excitement. [Read on…]

Ten remain in Cooper Piano Competition

Following the second semifinal round on Monday, the jury for the Thomas and Evon Cooper International Piano Competition announced the ten competitors who will play full concertos with collaborative pianists on Tuesday, July 17 at 2:00 pm and 7:00 pm in Warner Concert Hall at the Oberlin Conservatory. Admission is free. The sessions will be streamed live here.

2 p.m. session:

Ryan Zhu (age 14), Vancouver, Canada
Liszt: Concerto No. 1 in E-flat
Bo Zhang (17), Hangzhou, China
Chopin: Concerto No. 1 in e
William Yang (17), Natick, Massachusetts, U.S.
Chopin: Concerto No. 1 in e
Kai-Min Chang (17), Changhua County, Taiwan
Chopin: Concerto No. 1 in e
Tony Yun (17), Toronto, Canada
Tchaikovsky: Concerto No. 1 in b-flat
William Chen (15), New York, New York, U.S.
Tchaikovsky: Concerto No. 1 in b-flat

7 p.m. session:

Yunchan Lim (14), Siheung-si, Gyeonggi-do, South Korea
Chopin: Concerto No. 2 in f
Yangrui Cai (17), Guangzhou, China
Prokofiev: Concerto No. 3 in C
Tyler Kim (15), Temecula, California, U.S.
Chopin: Concerto No. 2 in f
Anton Mejias (17), Helsinki, Finland
Rachmaninoff: Concerto No. 3 in d

Kent Blossom Chamber Orchestra:
A conversation with Vinay Parameswaran

by Mike Telin

This weekend The Cleveland Orchestra turns its attention to young musicians. On Friday, July 20 at 7:30 pm at Severance Hall, the three finalists from the Cooper International Piano Competition will perform complete concertos with The Cleveland Orchestra under the direction of Jahja Ling. Tickets available online.

The following evening, July 21 at Blossom Music Center, Ling and The Orchestra will focus on the participants in the 50th annual Kent Blossom Music Festival. The concert will begin at 7:00 pm, when Vinay Parameswaran will lead the Kent Blossom Chamber Orchestra in Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 1 (Classical) and de Falla’s Suite No. 1 from The Three-Cornered Hat.

At 8:00 pm that student ensemble will join The Cleveland Orchestra and Jahja Ling in a side-by-side performance of Berlioz’s Overture to Benvenuto Cellini, and Vaughan Williams’ Serenade to Music featuring the Blossom Festival Chorus. The marathon event will continue around 9:00 pm when Ling and TCO return to the stage for Mahler’s Symphony No. 1 (“Titan”). [Read on…]

Ohio Light Opera continues season
with Iolanthe, La Périchole & Cloclo

by Kelly Ferjutz
Special to ClevelandClassical

Once the glitter and glitz of opening night and getting the season up on its feet is in the past, Ohio Light Opera settles into the imported, more traditional, part of the season. As it happened, the first four productions were all from the American Lyric Theater. Now we’ll be treated to Iolanthe, a not-so-well-known Gilbert & Sullivan; La Périchole by the French master, Offenbach, and closing the season will be a Viennese confection by Franz Lehár. Cloclo (an OLO premiere) is a sort of step-sister to The Merry Widow.

Any operetta by Gilbert & Sullivan is full of confusion, disguises, mistaken identities, and so forth, and all set to wonderful music, of course. But Iolanthe seems to go a bit over the top. In this one, the women are all fairies, or ‘peri’, while the men are all Peers of the Realm, always in full regalia, no matter the setting or purpose. It’s really a dandy battle of the sexes – in disguise. First there was Iolanthe, herself, falling in love with a peer, who turns out to be the Lord High Chancellor. They have a son, Strephon, who is a fairy above the waist but his legs are mortal. [Read on…]

Kent/Blossom Music Festival: a conversation with the Emerson Quartet’s Philip Setzer

by Delaney Meyers

On Wednesday, July 18 at 7:30 pm, The Emerson String Quartet will perform with cellist Jerry Grossman in Ludwig Recital Hall as part of Kent/Blossom Music Festival’s 50th anniversary concert season. I spoke with Philip Setzer, violinist of the Emerson, by telephone and asked about the program and his personal connections with KBMF as an alumnus. The Quartet is this year’s Kulas Guest Artist.

Setzer said that “the theme, if there is one, is of loss and mourning, but also a celebration of life.” The all-20th century first half will open with the adagio from Barber’s string quartet, a work that is very meaningful to the ensemble. Setzer said that the string orchestra version, known as Adagio for Strings, “has become iconic as a piece of national and international mourning.” [Read on…]

31 young pianists arrive this week for Oberlin Cooper Competition

by Daniel Hathaway

Piano professor Robert Shannon is eagerly waiting to welcome this year’s participants in the Thomas & Evon Cooper Piano Competition to the Oberlin campus later this week. “This year the lineup is stronger than ever,” Shannon said in a recent telephone conversation. “There’re some impressive people, and the overall level is consistently high.” (Photo: the semifinalists in 2016.)

The biennial piano contest, which alternates with a violin competition, will be fueled by 31 young players from seven different countries (see the roster of competitors and their repertoire here). The 13-18 year-olds have been selected from a field of some 90 applicants who have been drawn to the Cooper event through its reputation alone. “We don’t actively recruit,” Shannon said. “We just publish the announcement and we’re well enough known by now that it just happens. The first year we held the Cooper we had something like 140 pianists apply, but then I think people figured out how challenging it was going to be. We’ve stabilized now at about 90 applicants.”

This year’s competitors include eleven U.S. citizens, seven from China, five from Canada, three from South Korea, two each from Finland and Taiwan, and one from Norway.

[Read on…]

The Oberlin Cooper Competition: a conversation with Kasey Shao

by Mike Telin

This year’s sole competitor from Ohio in the Cooper International Piano Competition, fourteen-year-old Kasey Shao began her studies at age six. During a recent telephone conversation from her home in Cincinnati, the Walnut Hills High School sophomore said that she has known about the Cooper Competition from the time it began. “I’ve watched the live streams and broadcasts, and I’ve always wanted to compete in it. Now that I’m finally old enough, I applied and got in. I’m very excited to compete and to meet the other contestants.”

No stranger to the competition world, Shao is a two-time grand-prize winner of the National League of Performing Arts. She has been awarded first prize at the Crescendo International Music Competition, West Chester Piano Competition, and Princeton Festival Piano Competition, as well as grand prize and first place at the Steinway Society of New Jersey Young Pianist Competition. [Read on…]

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