DIARY: Weekend, July 31-August 2, 2026

July 31, 2026 by Daniel Hathaway

by Daniel Hathaway

PIANO CLEVELAND ANNOUNCES WINNERS:

Following the Friday evening Final Concerto Round at CIM, the jury announced the winners of the 2026 Cleveland International Piano Competition for Young Artists:

Junior Division
1st Prize: Ryan Huang (Canada|US)
2nd Prize: Jueon Lee (South Korea)
3rd Prize: Yixin Shen (China)

Senior Division
1st Prize: Chenxu Han (China)
2nd Prize: Guillermo Hernandez Barrocal (Spain)
3rd Prize: Yurim Kim (South Korea)

Previously announced, Rising Star Division
1st Prize: Wilson Liu (US)

WEEKEND CLASSICAL MUSIC HIGHLIGHTS:

Ohio Light Opera closes its 45th season with The Merry Widow (Saturday at 2 pm), The Yeomen of the Guard (Saturday at 7:30), and My Fair Lady (Sunday at 2 pm) in Freedlander Theatre at the College of Wooster.

And Kazuki Yamada leads The Cleveland Orchestra and Blossom Festival Chorus in Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalms at Blossom on Saturday at 7 pm.

For Details of these and other classical music events, please visit the ClevelandClassical.com concert listings.

WEEKEND ALMANAC:

On the last day of July in 1886, Hungarian composer and piano virtuoso Franz Liszt died in Bayreuth, Germany at the age of 74. The 19th-century classical equivalent of a 20th-century rock star, Liszt’s solo piano performances gave rise to such pan-European fame that the poet Heinrich Heine characterized audience acclaim as “Lisztomania.” The composer ended his career as “the Abbé Liszt” after taking minor orders in the Catholic Church.

Listen to two Cleveland performances that feature his forward-looking piano music. Vladimir Horowitz played Liszt’s B-Minor Sonata at Severance Hall on October 31 of 1976, and third-place winner François Dumont programmed his tone poem, Vallée d’Obermann, for his semi-final round in the 2013 Cleveland International Piano Competition.

About Daniel Hathaway

Daniel Hathaway founded ClevelandClassical.com in September, 2008, after a thirty-one year tenure as music director of Cleveland’s Trinity Cathedral, where he founded the Wednesday Noon Brownbag Concert Series and Trinity Chamber Orchestra. A graduate of Harvard College and the Episcopal Divinity School, he also studied historical musicology at Princeton and Harvard Universities. Before coming to Cleveland in 1977, he served as head of humanities at the Sunset Hill School in Kansas City and as head of arts at Groton School in Massachusetts. In Cleveland, he has served on the music staff of Cleveland Opera, Great Lakes Theater Festival, and the faculty of Laurel School. As an organist, Hathaway has played recitals in the U.S., England, France, Germany, and Austria. He team-teaches Music Journalism at Oberlin College and Conservatory and is a member of the Music Critics Association of North America.

Cooper International Competition for Violin: Concerto Finals (Aug. 10)

by Daniel Hathaway

Monday evening’s Cooper International Competition for Violin concerto finals in Oberlin’s Warner Concert Hall marked the culmination of a week’s worth of public playing that took the measure of an impressive group of young musicians in solo recitals.

Now, joined onstage by conductor David Danzmayr and the Columbus ProMusica Chamber Orchestra, the three performers who had risen to the top would demonstrate their ability to put full concertos across. Grace under pressure, a spirit of collaboration, and a deep feeling for the music were among the requirements.

Elizabeth Poppy Song (center), age 16, from the United States, led off with a beautiful opening statement of the lyrical theme in Sergei Prokofiev’s Concerto No. 2 in G minor, and gradually and with great control shifted the music into a more spirited mood. She maintained good coordination with Danzmyr and the orchestra as the first movement alternated between technical and lyric passages and culminated in an exciting pizzicato ending.

[Read on…]

Jean-Yves Thibaudet plays Debussy’s Préludes to his strengths (July 30)

by Stephanie Manning

Performing Claude Debussy’s complete Préludes in recital is rare, but Jean-Yves Thibaudet has been making a habit of it. Over the past few years, the pianist has appeared in venues across the country to play the entirety of Book I and Book II as a 90-minute concert. He presented that program on July 30 in Gartner Auditorium at the Cleveland Museum of Art.

What brought Thibaudet to Cleveland was not just his solo recital — he also gave masterclasses as part of the Cleveland International Piano Competition for Young Artists. By July 30, all six finalists had already participated in sessions with Thibaudet, testing their ability to adapt to feedback. And on the eve of the Competition’s concerto round, the time was ripe for both contestants and audience to sit back and listen to the master pianist himself.

[Read on…]

Kazuki Yamada brings sunny energy to multifaceted Cleveland Orchestra program (Aug. 1)

by Stephanie Manning

This article was originally published on Cleveland.com

CUYAHOGA FALLS, Ohio — To clap or not to clap between movements — that is the question many Cleveland Orchestra audience members faced on Saturday night at Blossom Music Center. Luckily, Japanese guest conductor Kazuki Yamada had an answer.

Hearing some scattered applause after the first movement of Robert Schumann’s Symphony No. 2, Yamada turned his head, smiled, and gently put his own hands together. That moment gave the crowd the green light they needed to join in.

Yamada’s willingness to engage with listeners felt like an extension of his genial personality, which allowed him to lead The Cleveland Orchestra on August 1 with both excitement and poise.

[Read on…]

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