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Cleveland International Piano Competition: Round 1, Session 4

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by Daniel Hathaway

Cleveland, OH — July 28, 2011

Thursday evening’s session introduced four more pianists to the audience at the Cleveland Play House and those listening in or watching the proceedings over the airwaves or through the Internet.

Mr. Pavel Gintov (27, Ukraine) took the risky decision to play a single, long work for his first round: Schumann’s Kreisleriana, op. 16. In many ways, he pulled it off and did so with flair. There were many admirable moments in his interpretation as Schumann’s music moved between stormily dramatic and dreamily lyrical moods, but his sense of pacing sometimes went awry as he moved from section to section (and recapitulated earlier material) and sometimes he didn’t leave the music quite enough space to breathe. There were episodes of sheer power that became left-hand heavy and a few moments when we wondered if Mr. Gintov might push the Hamburg Steinway into the red zone. [Read more…]

Cleveland International Piano Competition: Round 1, Session 3

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by Daniel Hathaway

Cleveland, OH — July 28, 2011

Thursday afternoon’s session gave us the first general impressions of five more pianists, and revealed some personality traits which will be interesting to revisit when the second round begins.

Mr. Scipione Sangiovanni (23, Italy) was by far the most idiomatic player we’ve heard so far. He began with a stylized performance of Handel’s Suite in d featuring extravagantly decorated repeats, extremely staccato bass lines and rather capricious dynamics changes that sometimes seemed at odds with the structure of the piece. The famous Chaconne was less a continuous set of divisions than a chain of isolated variations (the last ended so abruptly that the audience missed its cue to applaud). But he brought beautiful colors, clear articulations and fine finger dexterity to the task, even if the overall interpretation was a bit off the beaten path. His second piece, Croatian composer Ivo Josipovic’s Jubulus (2010), sounded like a mashup of borrowed musical references and styles with stock piano effects (black note glissandi, chord clusters and sheer noise) interleaved with toccatalike gestures, a triumphant chordal paean and even a passage that suggested balalaikas. Mr. Sangiovanni went at the piece with power, enthusiasm and great seriousness of purpose. He topped off his set with Haydn’s Sonata in E-flat, Hob. XVI:52, a performance distinguished by dark colors, fluent runs and a good sense of the whole range of dynamic possibilities. Some of his playing here was mannered, with oddly calculated phrasing and unmetrical pauses. [Read more…]

Cleveland International Piano Competition Round 1:,Session 2

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By Daniel Hathaway

Cleveland, OH — July 27, 2011

Four more pianists gave us first examples of their playing this evening — two of whom actually updated our impressions from when we first heard them in 2009.

Mr. Shinnosuke Inugai (29, Japan) immediately seized our attention with a dramatic and highly profiled performance of Beethoven’s “Appassionata” Sonata, op. 57. Violent contrasts, explosive gestures and unrelenting — well, passion — marked the first movement and inspired applause from an audience that knew they shouldn’t clap then but wanted to anyway. In the second movement, Mr. Inugai relieved the tension with playful dotted rhythms that sounded almost frivolous after what had gone before. His fleet fingerwork and skillful layering of material brought the finale to a resounding conclusion. Perhaps his reading of Chopin’s Etude in A-flat, op. 10, no. 10 was more articulate than dreamy and poetic, but the Beethoven was still in our ears and the second piece seemed almost unnecessary. [Read more…]

Cleveland International Piano Competition: Round 1, Session 1

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by Daniel Hathaway

Cleveland, OH — July 27, 2011

As Round One of the 2011 Cleveland International Piano Competition got underway at the Cleveland Play House’s Bolton Theater this afternoon, it was time to get to know an almost entirely new group of musicians.

Twenty-six pianists will have 25-30 minutes each over the next three days to seize our attention and tell us — through their choice of repertory and its execution — who they are as musicians.

Ms. Anna Fedorova (21, Ukraine) drew the first of this afternoon’s four slots, and began with a big, bravura performance of Beethoven’s early Sonata in A, op. 2, no. 2. She impressed us with her strength and the extreme range of dynamic contrasts she drew from the piano, though apparent nervousness made for some uneven runs and dropped notes. She followed Beethoven with the famous Chopin Etude in a, op. 25, no. 11, “Winter Wind”, a piece that begins with a few bars of introspection and suddenly turns into a maelstrom. Ms. Fedorova’s performance ebbed and flowed like an ocean.
[Read more…]

Cleveland International Piano Competition: The 26 Contestants

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by Daniel Hathaway

Winners 2009When the contestants for the 2011 Cleveland International Piano Competion assemble for the first time on Tuesday, July 26 to draw lots for their performance order, they’ll represent a slightly smaller pool of talent than in 2009 (26 now, 33 then) but they’ll also be slightly older and more experienced.

CIPC is open to pianists between the age of 18 and 30 by a certain cutoff date. Two years ago, Martina Filjak of Croatia and Dmitri Levkovich of Canada (pictured front and right) had both turned thirty when the contest began. Experience must count, as the two eventually won first and second place once all those thousands of notes had faded away.

Two years ago, the youngest pianist was 19. There were five 20-year olds, four each were 25 and 26, three each were 21, 22 and 24, and pairs of competitors were 23, 27, 28 and 29. [Read more…]

2011 Cleveland International Piano Competition begins July 27

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by Daniel Hathaway

Contestants 2009On Tuesday, July 26, twenty-seven young pianists will draw for positions in the 2011 Cleveland International Piano Competition, and begin a ten-day journey which — for the last four pianists left standing — will end with two days of final concerto rounds at Severance Hall with The Cleveland Orchestra followed by the crowning of winners.

The stakes are high: the top award, the Mixon First Prize, comes with $50,000 in cash, a New York debut recital at Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall, and two years of management services. Second, third and fourth prizes of $25,000, $15,000 and $10,000 will also be awarded at the end of the second Severance Hall round on Saturday, August 6, and there are a slew of boutique awards for excellence in the performance of Baroque, contemporary, American and Russian music, and the compositions of Beethoven, Chopin and Mozart. The audience gets to vote as well: an audience prize will be given to the popular favorite in the final round, and the junior jury chooses its own prize winner. [Read more…]

A conversation with composer Margi Griebling-Haigh

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by Mike Telin

Cleveland composer Margi Griebling-Haigh has written a new piece on commission from Cleveland Orchestra assistant principal bassoonist Barrick Stees. Sortilège will have its premiere on Mr. Stees concert, “Instrument of Enchantment: the Supernatural Bassoon” in Tucker Hall of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Cleveland Heights on Friday, May 6 at 7:30 pm.

Ms. Griebling-Haigh comes from a family which boasts three generations of composers, including her father, her mother, her sister and her daughter.

A native of Akron, she began music study with her parents and before graduating from high school, had already won awards for her compositions from BMI and the National Federation of Music Clubs. An oboist, she took her Bachelor’s degree from Eastman, studying with Robert Sprenkle, and Master’s degree from the San Francisco Conservatory, studying with Marc Lifschey.

In addition to the commission from Barrick Stees, she has been asked to compose for other Cleveland Orchestra soloists, including principal hornist Richard King and the late principal oboist, John Mack. Other commissions have come from organist Karel Paukert, the Schenectady Symphony, the Greater Akron Music Association and the Cleveland area chamber ensemble Panorámicos.

Her daughter Gabrielle (Gabby) is following in the tradition. Currently training to be a classicist at Clare College, Cambridge, where she sings soprano in the Chapel Choir, her Symphony No. 1 was premiered recently by the Monterey Symphony Orchestra.

We spoke with Margi Griebling-Haigh by telephone to talk about her career as a composer, her remarkable family and about the new work she has written for Barrick Stees.

[Read more…]

Concert report: Cleveland Orchestra with Robert Walters at Oberlin (February 25)

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by Brittany Brahn

Brittany Brahn is an Oberlin student who participated in the Winter Term course in Digital Musical Journalism co-sponsored by ClevelandClassical.

Robert WaltersThe tradition of the Cleveland Orchestra performing at Oberlin College is a long and well-loved one, which began in 1919 only six months after the orchestra was first formed. Since that initial concert, the Cleveland Orchestra has performed at Oberlin 209 times through the college’s Artist Recital Series, which is incidentally one of the oldest continuing concert series in the United States. In addition to the Cleveland Orchestra, the Artist Recital Series has also brought musicians such as Joshua Bell, Yo-Yo Ma, Denyce Graves and Juan Diego Flóres to the campus, much to the delight of the students and residents of Oberlin.

The Cleveland Orchestra’s latest return to Oberlin was on the evening of Friday, February 25th in Finney Chapel under the direction of Russian conductor Andrey Boreyko. The program, Boreyko’s debut with the Cleveland Orchestra, showcased a refreshing array of Eastern European works that complemented each other well, including Stravinsky’s Divertimento from the ballet Le Baiser de la fée, Peteris Vasks’s English horn Concerto, and Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 5 in B-flat Major. The sweetness of the Divertimento provided an enjoyable juxtaposition to the full-bodied, fiery drama of the Symphony.

Vasks is a Latvian composer who is less familiar to Western audiences than Stravinsky or Prokofiev, yet his English horn concerto proved to be an ambitious and highly successful addition to the repertoire. By the time Vasks had written the piece in 1989, he had spent the majority of his compositional life overshadowed by the rigid policies of the Soviet Union. Two years prior to Latvia’s independence, the English horn concerto was commissioned by the American musician Thomas Stacy and the Stamford Chamber Orchestra. [Read more…]

Opera and scale (again)

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by Nicholas Jones

Today we went to the cineplex to watch the latest Met HD Live broadcast: there are five more this spring! Thank you, Peter Gelb! This one was Susan Graham and Placido Domingo in Gluck’s amazing opera, Iphigénie en Tauride, or Iphigenia in the land of the Scythians (my translation). Graham and Domingo both had colds — they called it a NYC epidemic — but they sounded pretty darn good.

For me, coincidentally, this opera, which Gluck adapted from a little-known Greek tragedy by Euripides, came on the heels of four wonderful lectures at Oberlin by Toronto classicist Victoria Wohl, about how strange Euripides’ plays are, and how that strangeness can clue us into their political and ideological messages.

This is a strange opera, to be sure. And I’d love to know what its messages about friendship, sibling love, revenge, and barbarianism might have meant in the court of Marie Antoinette.

Whatever it meant there, it was not sung in a hall like the Metropolitan Opera at Lincoln Center. And that aspect of scale must have been part of what it meant.

In the Met, the singers’ voices have to be BIG. In the HD simulcasts, you get to meet the singers backstage. Here were Graham and Domingo, both obviously struggling with colds, talking to us and host Natalie Dessay, perky as always. Domingo almost sadly gestured to the microphone he was holding for the interview, and commented “we don’t get to use these onstage.” [Read more…]

An interview with Cleveland Orchestra English hornist Robert Walters

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by Mike Telin

Robert WaltersTo read Cleveland Orchestra solo English horn player Robert Walter’s resume, one could easily assume that he has not had a lot of time for anything other than music. Prior to joining the Orchestra in 2004, he served as solo English horn and oboe player with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. Prior to those positions, Mr. Walters performed with the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, the American Ballet Theatre, the American Symphony Orchestra, the Brooklyn Philharmonic, and the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. He also was a frequent performer with James Levine and the MET Chamber Ensemble at Carnegie Hall. As a soloist, Mr. Walters has appeared with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, the Beijing Radio Symphony, the New York Chamber Soloists, and the Concerto Soloists of Philadelphia.

The passing down of musical traditions to young players is something that brings him great joy. He is a faculty member at the Aspen Music Festival as well as professor of oboe and English horn at the Oberlin Conservatory. But when we telephoned Mr. Walters last week to talk about his upcoming performance of Latvian composer Peteris Vasks’ English horn concerto with The Cleveland Orchestra under the direction of Andrey Boreyko, we discovered that his artistic interests and talents extend far beyond the concert stage.

Mike Telin: How did you discover the Vasks concerto?

Robert Walters: Actually it was through Andrey Boreyko, who is conducting the concert. I was playing in Aspen a few summers ago where he was conducting. He asked me if I knew this concerto, at which point I didn’t. I heard some of it on the radio once, and I remember thinking that it was intriguing, so with his prompting, I did some research, and discovered that it has been recorded twice — which is interesting for an English horn concerto — but even more interesting is that it was recorded by the same person. [Read more…]

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