by Daniel Hathaway
One of the more attractive aspects of the Cleveland International Piano competition is that all competitors get to play two rounds before eliminations begin. So if your first round program didn’t go as well as you hoped, you have a second opportunity to make a positive impression. [Read more…]
by Mike Telin
For many keyboard players, performing J.S. Bach’s Goldberg Variations is a daunting task, but jazz pianist Dan Tepfer has taken things one step further. Not only does he play the monumental work in its entirety, he follows each of Bach’s 30 variations with one of his own.
On Sunday, July 31 at 8:00 pm in the Maltz Center for the Performing Arts, Dan Tepfer will present his critically acclaimed project titled “Goldberg Variations/Variations” as part of the Cleveland International Piano Competition and Festival.
By his own admission, Tepfer’s upbringing was anything but typical. “I grew up in Paris, France with American parents, and outside of popular culture. We never had a TV, but I played a lot of music and read a lot of books, so the way I experienced culture was different,” the pianist said during a telephone conversation from his home in Brooklyn, New York. [Read more…]
10:30 am – Competition Conversation: Q&A with 2013 Mixon First Prize winner Stanislav Khristenko, hosted by Zsolt Bognár. Free event. Cleveland Museum of Art – Lecture Hall.
SECOND ROUND
SESSION 1
1:00 pm – Yuta Yano
1:35 pm – Ilya Kondratiev
2:10 pm – Ruoyu Huang
—
3:05 pm – Łukasz Krupiński
3:40 pm – Yunquing Zhou
4:15 pm – Shen Lu
SESSION 2
7:00 pm – Luka Okros
7:35 pm – Ronaldo Rolim
8:15 pm – Alexei Tartakovsky
—
9:05 pm – Georgy Tchaidze
9:35 pm – Nikita Mndoyants
Repertory details are listed here.
Follow the live stream from Gartner Auditorium at the Cleveland Museum of Art here.
View the contestants’ biographies here.
by Daniel Hathaway
A strong cast of singer-actors and superb production values made Nightingale Opera Theatre’s recent production of Mark Adamo’s Little Women a beautiful experience. I saw the second of two performances in the intimate theater of the Barlow Community Center in Hudson on Sunday afternoon, July 16. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Clevelanders and classical music fans near and far already know Zsolt Bognár as a talented concert pianist who specializes in Germanic, Russian, and Romantic repertoire. But there’s more. He’s a writer, a speaker, and a skilled interviewer. His speaking engagements have included two TEDMED talks and guest appearances on National Public Radio programs dealing with a variety of subjects. And he’s recently become the Charlie Rose of the classical music world as host of the Elyria Pictures film series “Living the Classical Life.”
As part of the Cleveland International Piano Competition’s 2016 Festival, Bognár will emcee three morning sessions this week in the Lecture Hall at the Cleveland Museum of Art. [Read more…]
by Robert Rollin
A remarkable event took place last Friday evening at the Cleveland Botanical Gardens sponsored by the Credo Summer Chamber Music Festival — a night of Mendelssohn in Cleveland’s Botanical Gardens. The established three-week event for exceptional musicians ages 16-23 selects the top students from 35 states and several foreign countries, drawing gifted students from schools like Juilliard, Eastman, Oberlin and others. [Read more…]
by Kelly Ferjutz
Special to ClevelandClassical.com
The Dancing Years, an OLO premiere this season, first appeared in the UK in 1939, and ran for 1150 performances, well into the beginning of WWII. Ivor Novello wrote the book and the music, while the lyrics are by Christopher Hassall. Novello was heavily influenced by the approaching war and the situation he had encountered in Vienna shortly before beginning this work. [Read more…]
by Mike Telin
When pianists Greg Anderson and Elizabeth Joy Roe left their respective hometowns in the Midwest to pursue their undergraduate studies at the Juilliard School, the two found themselves by happenstance assigned to the same floor of the famed music school’s dormitory.
The two became fast friends and soon discovered that they had a shared mission for their musical lives: to make classical music a relevant and powerful force in society. “Both of us had big dreams of how to do that,” Roe said during a recent joint telephone conversation with Greg Anderson. “So we both unexpectedly found the perfect partner in crime.” [Read more…]
by Neil McCalmont
If you were to travel to Italy in the summer and jaunt through their Renaissance gardens, you would hear the Italian people speaking their lovely language, water rushing through fountains, and concerts of gorgeous music. That delightful atmosphere will waft through Cleveland’s Italian Cultural Garden during a special opera concert of operatic arias and ensemble numbers on Sunday, July 31 at 6 pm.
“Opera in the Italian Garden” will be presented by Opera Circle Cleveland and the Cleveland Ballet, carrying on the tradition that originally began in the 1930s, and was revived in 2008. “We thought that nobody was going to show up,” said Joyce Mariani, Executive Director of the Italian Cultural Garden Foundation, over a recent telephone call. “But over 200 people came. The next year it more than doubled to 500, and last year we had an audience of 2,000. The audience makes the event what it is. We just present it.” [Read more…]
by Neil McCalmont
The opening sessions of the Cleveland International Piano Competition’s first round proved to be a thrilling start on Monday, July 25 at the Cleveland Museum of Art’s Gartner Auditorium. Eleven fine contestants showcased their virtuosity and poesy before eight jurors — all of whom are renowned pianists in their own right. [Read more…]