by Daniel Hathaway
Italian pianist Roberto Plano, who won the Cleveland International Piano Competition in 2001, returned to open the Tri-C Classical Piano Series in Gartner Auditorium at the Cleveland Museum of Art on Sunday afternoon, October 15. His arresting program of music by Liszt, Piazzolla, Villa-Lobos, and Ginastera culminated in the premiere of his own solo arrangement of George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue. [Read more…]
by Jarrett Hoffman
On Sunday, November 19 at 2:00 pm at the Cleveland Museum of Art’s Gartner Auditorium, the Tri-C Classical Piano Series presents Awadagin Pratt in a free concert of works by Brahms, Beethoven, J.S. Bach, Lera Auerbach, and Franck.
Winner of the Naumburg International Piano Competition in 1992 and an Avery Fisher Career Grant two years later, Awadagin Pratt has given recitals at Lincoln Center, performed with the New York Philharmonic, and has taught piano at the College-Conservatory of Music at the University of Cincinnati since 2004.
He’s also familiar with both Pennsylvania Avenue and Sesame Street: he played at the White House three times across the Clinton and Obama years and appeared on that PBS favorite in 1998 to share a piano with an eight-foot, two-inch yellow canary. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
After Roberto Plano won the Cleveland International Piano Competition in 2001, he returned to his native Italy to teach and concertize. On Sunday, October 15 at 2:00 pm, Plano will revisit Cleveland to open this year’s Tri-C Classical Piano Series in Gartner Auditorium at the Cleveland Museum of Art with a free concert of music by Liszt, Villa-Lobos, Ginastera, and Gershwin.
A year ago, Plano accepted a position at Boston University, and he and his wife and three daughters moved to the United States. In a telephone interview from Boston, Plano noted that the transition has been both difficult and rewarding. “I knew the United States very well, but I never lived here for more than a couple of weeks at a time,” he said.
by Daniel Hathaway
Last heard in Cleveland in September as one-third of the Montrose Piano Trio, pianist Jon Kimura Parker returned for a solo recital on Sunday, April 9 in Gartner Auditorium of the Cleveland Museum of Art. His unusual, brilliantly played program, “Passion and Pictures,” concluded the tenth season of Tri-C’s Classical Piano Series. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Granville, OH native Gavin George first appeared on the Tri-C Classical Piano Series in November of 2014 at the age of eleven. He returned to Gartner Auditorium at the Cleveland Museum of Art on Sunday afternoon, February 12, now thirteen, several inches taller, and even more mature and nuanced in his playing than before — and before was jaw-droppingly impressive. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Tri-C’s excellent Classical Piano Series brought 2013 Cleveland International Piano Competition gold medalist Stanislav Khristenko back to Cleveland for the 3rd and final recital of its 9th season. His captivating program of music by Sergei Rachmaninoff, Samuel Barber, Ernest Bloch, and Igor Stravinsky drew a sizeable crowd to Gartner Auditorium on Sunday afternoon, March 6. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
In his first local, full-length recital in a decade, Cleveland pianist Zsolt Bognár opted for musical intelligence and deep emotional content over keyboard pyrotechnics. On Sunday afternoon, February 7 in Gartner Auditorium at the Cleveland Museum of Art, Bognár gave probing performances of music by Franz Schubert, Edvard Grieg, and Franz Liszt to a good-sized audience that obviously included many of his local fans. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Cleveland’s own Zsolt Bognár will appear on the next Tri-C Classical Piano Series event on Sunday, February 7 at 2:00 pm in Gartner Auditorium at the Cleveland Museum of Art. “This is a program that has been very close to me,” he said in a Skype conversation yesterday. “I’ve performed it a lot privately, but never publicly here in Cleveland. It includes works that I recorded on my debut album.” The concert is free.
That CD, entitled Franz and Franz, highlighting music by Schubert and Liszt, was recorded in Berlin and released in 2013 on the Con Brio label. On Sunday, Bognár will add a set of pieces by Edvard Grieg to round out his program of 19th-century Romantic music.
The pianist will begin with four pieces by Schubert: an Impromptu in A-flat, then the Drei Klavierstücke, D. 946, “a set of three posthumous impromptus never performed during the composer’s lifetime,” he said. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Continuing Cuyahoga Community College’s distinguished Classical Piano Series, Italian pianist Orazio Maione played an intriguing program of works by Sergei Prokofiev and Frédéric Chopin in Gartner Auditorium at the Cleveland Museum of Art on Sunday afternoon, November 22. This concert was sponsored by the Northern Ohio Italian American Foundation. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
In curating the 2014-2015 Tri-C Classical Piano Series, Emanuela Friscioni chose to showcase three young pianists from three different countries. This season’s performers have ranged in age from 11 (Gavin George of Granville, OH) to 23 (Beatrice Rana of Italy). The last of the three was 19-year-old Israeli pianist Adi Neuhaus, who played Bach, Beethoven, Chopin, Scriabin and Liszt for a large audience in Gartner Auditorium of the Cleveland Museum of Art on Sunday afternoon, March 22. [Read more…]