by Daniel Hathaway
In the last event in its concert series before it turns its attention to the 2020 contest, the Cleveland International Piano Competition presented duo-pianists Shai Wosner and Orion Weiss in a viscerally thrilling and intellectually stimulating recital on Saturday evening, September 14 in Reinberger Chamber Hall at Severance Hall.
by Daniel Hathaway
The final event in the Cleveland International Piano Competition’s 2019 Concert Series will feature the duo-piano team of Orion Weiss and Shai Wosner in music by Schubert, Brahms, and David Lang on Saturday, September 14 at 8:00 pm in Reinberger Chamber Hall at Severance Hall.
The recital reunites two longtime friends and colleagues and introduces the Israeli-born Wosner to Cleveland (Weiss, born in Gates Mills, is well-known in these parts). I caught up with Shai Wosner by telephone earlier this month and began by asking whether he and Weiss have played this particular program before.
Shai Wosner: We performed it at the Kennedy Center earlier this year, and will play it in New Mexico next month. We’re having a great time with it.
Daniel Hathaway: You and Orion have a long history of performing together.
SW: We go back nearly twenty years. For a long time we were each doing our own thing, but a few years ago we thought it was time to play together again. We had this unusual idea for a program with two huge pieces. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
When Roberto Plano won gold in the Cleveland International Piano Competition in 2001, the contest hadn’t yet established a chamber music requirement in addition to solo recitals and a concerto. Plano more than made up for that in his most recent return to Cleveland. On Saturday evening, June 8, he joined the Omni Quartet to end his CIPC Concert Series recital in CIM’s Kulas Hall with a stunning performance of Brahms’ f-minor Piano Trio. [Read more…]
by Mike Telin
When I asked Xiaoxuan Li how he started playing the piano, he gave me an honest answer. “I was four years old, so I remember nothing, but my mom let me study it and I really loved it,” Li said during a telephone conversation. “She said that many kids didn’t want to practice but I was totally different.”
On Saturday, March 2 at 8:00 pm at the Cleveland Museum of Art’s Gartner Auditorium, the Cleveland International Piano Competition Concert Series will present Xiaoxuan Li, the winner of the 2018 CIPC for Young Artists Competition senior division. His program will include works by Chopin, Rachmaninoff, and Liszt. The evening will also feature Eva Gevorgyan, winner of the 2018 junior division. Together, Li and Gevorgyan will play four-hand arrangements of excerpts from The Nutcracker.