Piano Cleveland announces 30 pianists for its Virtu(al)oso global competition

July 1, 2020 by Daniel Hathaway

by Daniel Hathaway

Drawing from a pool of 158 pianists from 33 countries who range in age from 18-32, Piano Cleveland’s four-member screening jury announced today the names of the 30 who will record two rounds of performances under local health and safety guidelines at Steinway galleries in Cleveland, New York, London, Hamburg, and Beijing for the organization’s first-ever virtual competition, Virtu(al)oso.

First-round sessions will be streamed nightly at 7:00 pm EDT beginning on July 30 on the Piano Cleveland website. After eliminations, the final round for the six remaining contestants will be streamed on August 7 and 8 (WCLV 104.9 Ideastream will air the final rounds on August 8 and 9 from 2:00 to 4:00 pm). Winners will be announced during an awards ceremony on August 9.

Competitors include Lorenzo Adamo (20, Italy), Kevin Ahfat (25, Canada), Jonas Aumiller (22, Germany), Martin Bartlett (24, United Kingdom), Sergey Belyavskiy (26, Russia), Elia Cecino (19, Italy), Han Chen (28, Taiwan), Michael Davidman (23, United States), Madoka Fukami (32, Japan), Martin Garcia Garcia (23, Spain), Francesco Granata (21, Italy), Arseny Gusev (21, Russia), Anna Han (24, United States), Andrei Iliushkin (25, Russia), Saetbyeol Kim (31, South Korea), Roman Kosyakov (27, Russia), Abuzar Manafzade (30, Azerbaijan), Lovre Marusic (27, Croatia), Arsenii Mun (21, Russia), Mariia Narodytska (32, Ukraine), Priscila Navarro (26, Peru), Josquin Otal (27, France), Chaeyoung Park (23, South Korea/United States), Tamila Salimdjanova (28, Uzbekistan), Tian Tang (27, China), Kiron Atom Tellian (18, Austria), Julian Miles Trevelyan (21, United Kingdom), Xiaoya Wan (20, China), Lin Ye (28, China), and Wang Zhu (23, China).

An Opening Ceremony will kick off the competition on July 30, presented by pianist and Living the Classical Life host Zsolt Bognár, together with Piano Cleveland President Yaron Kohlberg. The event will include a performance by Israeli pianist Omri Mor, and guests from around the world.

Following the competition itself, an online roundtable discussion with the jury is scheduled for Saturday, August 15 at 11:00 am.

And for the younger set, from July 16-28, nine 15-minute videos featuring “crafting components and kinesthetic activities” will be released on the Virtual PianoKids page and remain there for on-demand viewing. A live-streamed interactive performance on August 5 at 11:30 am will wrap up the series.

Viewers can count on high-quality production values throughout the virtual competition. Video production will once again be in the hands of Cleveland Orchestra violinist Mark Dumm, longtime partner of the Cleveland International Piano Competition, who will oversee the recordings in all five Steinway locations.

That “big” competition has been rescheduled for the summer of 2021.

Published on ClevelandClassical.com July 1, 2020.

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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.

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