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Tri-C Classical Piano Series: Pierre Réach at CMA (Feb. 9)

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by Nicholas Stevens

Musicians love a good metaphor: take, for instance, that of summiting a mountain. When a violinist speaks this way after playing all of Bach’s partitas, or a soprano recalls preparations for a Wagner opera, the image of the artist mounting some hostile peak offers implications of persistence, struggle, and of course triumph. Pianists might describe Beethoven’s sonatas this way. But how many have actually played at the top of a mountain? Archival video confirms that French pianist Pierre Réach literalized this image of the soloist at the summit over twenty years ago. A recent concert in Cleveland confirmed that the figurative Everest of Beethoven’s piano music still bears his banner as well. [Read more…]

Tri-C Classical Piano Series: Soyeon Kate Lee at CMA (Nov. 24)

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by Nicholas Stevens

On Sunday, November 24 at the Cleveland Museum of Art, the audience in Gartner Auditorium clustered to the left, embracing the asymmetry typical of a piano recital. Yet if one shape came to mind repeatedly during the program, it was the ultimate figure of symmetry: the circle. Soloist Soyeon Kate Lee would come full circle that day, playing Mozart sixteen years after winning the Mozart Prize at the 2003 Cleveland International Piano Competition. [Read more…]

Tri-C Classical Piano Series: catching up with Soyeon Kate Lee

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by Daniel Hathaway

Pianist Soyeon Kate Lee, a medalist at the Cleveland International Piano Competition in 2003, will return to play a free concert on the Tri-C Classical Piano Series at the Cleveland Museum of Art on Sunday, November 24 at 3:00 pm. Her program includes works by Mozart, Debussy, Auerbach, and Chopin.

We last spoke with the pianist and her husband, Ran Dank, who both teach at the Cincinnati College-Conservatory, before their duo-piano recital in June of 2018 under the auspices of CIPC’s Competition for Young Artists. In the meantime, they’ve welcomed their second child into the family. “Was that just a year ago? That’s amazing. I can’t keep track of what’s going on,” Lee said in a late October telephone conversation.

“In a nutshell, I teach and practice, and try to juggle life. Last night at 11, I was at Kroger’s for some last-minute Halloween decorating and shopping. Our older child just turned five. He’s going to dress up as Superman. He asked me what I was going as and I said, ‘Can I just be a really tired lady?’ Lee said, laughing. “But things are good, though I’ve been on the road a lot, which leaves me with a massive number of makeup lessons at the moment. Ran and I try to take turns with the kids, and we don’t do as many duo concerts now because of the logistics.” [Read more…]

Concert-hopping in University Circle: pianist Daniela Liebman at CMA & organist Jonathan Moyer at The Covenant (Oct. 13)

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by Daniel Hathaway

The nice thing about cultural density is that you can catch more than one concert in an afternoon without much travel or downtime. On Sunday, October 13 at 2:00 pm, the Tri-C Classical Piano Series brought 17-year-old Mexican pianist Daniela Liebman to Gartner Auditorium at the Cleveland Museum of Art. Then at 4:00 pm, Church of the Covenant organist Jonathan Moyer celebrated his first decade in Cleveland with a recital using both of the organs in the nave. Beautiful fall weather in University Circle both enhanced the experience and took its toll on audiences. [Read more…]

Mexican pianist Daniela Liebman returns to Tri-C Classical Piano Series

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by Daniel Hathaway

She was fourteen when she first played on the Tri-C Classical Piano Series in 2016. Three years later, Mexican pianist Daniela Liebman returns for a free recital of works by Beethoven, Debussy, Prokofiev, and Chopin on Sunday, October 13 at 2:00 pm in Gartner Auditorium at the Cleveland Museum of Art.

The original invitation to play in 2016 came through Antonio Pompa-Baldi. “He was on the jury when I won the Russian Piano Competition in California at the age of nine,” Liebman said by telephone from Fort Worth, Texas. “I came to Cleveland to study with him for a couple of months, and I was delighted that he and Emanuela Friscioni invited me to play on the Tri-C series.”

Born in Guadalajara to an American father and Mexican mother, Liebman began studying the piano at a young age. “My dad’s a violinist who graduated from Eastman, but he ended up going into business. He started me on piano at the age of five. [Read more…]

Tri-C Classical Piano Series: Pompa-Baldi & Friscioni (Mar. 24)

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by David Kulma

Pianists occupy a central place in the classical music world. They are ubiquitous in solo recital, out front in concertos, and they collaborate with vocalists and instrumentalists in chamber music of all kinds. But what is surprisingly rare is pianists playing together, even though two people sitting together at one or two pianos was a major form of at-home entertainment in the 19th century. [Read more…]

Tri-C Classical Piano Series: Alon Goldstein at CMA (Nov. 18)

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by David Kulma

The delightful second concert of Tri-C’s free Classical Piano Series at the Cleveland Museum of Art in Gartner Auditorium on Sunday, November 18 featured Alon Goldstein. The program featured his gloriously precise pianism across three centuries from Scarlatti to Bernstein, including helpful speaking from the stage along the way. [Read more…]

Tri-C Classical Piano Series: Hughes Leclère’s Debussy collage (Oct. 28)

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by David Kulma

If given a single choice for the first major figure of musical modernism, my choice would be the succulent weirdness of French composer Claude Debussy, who died 100 years ago. Unlike other candidates, Debussy’s revolt threw off received musical ideas in the name of more beauty rather than the ugly truth. He made music more intoxicating rather than more disturbing. French pianist Hughes Leclère connected works by living composers to Debussy’s 1915 Études in his Tri-C Classical Piano Series recital on Sunday afternoon, October 28 at the Cleveland Museum of Art’s Gartner Auditorium. [Read more…]

“Late Night with Leonard Bernstein” — a conversation with his daughter Jamie

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by Jarrett Hoffman

Jamie BernsteinIn a year when arts organizations across the globe have looked back on the life of Leonard Bernstein, it’s easy to lose sight of what his centennial might mean to one of his own children.

Jamie Bernstein will give a personal look at the maestro, composer, pianist, and father in “Late Night with Leonard Bernstein” this Sunday, May 6 at 2:00 pm at the Cleveland Museum of Art’s Gartner Auditorium, as part of the Tri-C Classical Piano Series.

“It provides an all-around portrait of my dad, which you wouldn’t necessarily get in a more traditional concert of his works,” Jamie said during a phone interview. “As I say in my narration, it’s like a guided tour inside my father’s insomniac brain. And it has some fun surprises in it too.”

[Read more…]

Tri-C Classical Piano Series: Lise de la Salle at CMA (March 18)

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by Nicholas Stevens

De La Salle-LiseActive on the international piano scene for around a decade, Lise de la Salle continues to rise. In a recital for the Tri-C Classical Piano Series this week, she explored one of the fundamental elements of the human condition, often invoked yet seldom considered in depth: love. At the Cleveland Museum of Art’s Gartner Auditorium on March 18, though de la Salle often explained to the audience the reasoning behind her programming choices, these commentaries proved less powerful than the combination of her musical and gestural sensibilities. [Read more…]

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