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The Cleveland International Piano Competition:
Week Two and beyond

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by Mike Telin

After a three-day break, Competition first-round performances will continue on Thursday, July 15 at 7:00 pm. Audiences can also experience that evening’s session by attending the Watch Party at the Beachwood Community Center. Pack a picnic and bring your chairs to watch performances under the stars and on the big screen. Click here to register for the free event.

New at this year’s competition is the Trivia Night/Watch Party on Thursday, July 22 at 7:00 pm at the The Music Box Supper Club. Hosts Yaron Kohlberg and Zsolt Bognár (pictured) have created questions that are designed to engage every level of piano and classical music enthusiast. Teams can be up to six people, so bring your friends (or make new ones) and enjoy great music and a chance to win a Cleveland musical prize package.

The ticketed event will include the buffet-style menu on the Music Box’s website. The first drink is on CIPC, but after that, for the rest of the evening you can purchase your favorite beverage at the cash bar. Click here to purchase tickets online or call 216.242.1250. [Read more…]

Music From The Western Reserve: Pianist Yaron Kohlberg at Steinway Gallery

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by Daniel Hathaway

Many pianists win prizes in international piano competitions but few return to the scenes of their triumphs to run them.

Make an exception for Yaron Kohlberg, the Israeli keyboardist who came in second in the 2007 Cleveland International Piano Competition at the age of 24, and became President of Piano Cleveland in 2018, just in time to have to cancel the 2020 competition due to the pandemic. (As a placeholder, he invented Virtu(al)oso, an online competition that increased the organization’s global audience.)

On Sunday, June 6, Cleveland piano fans got an opportunity to hear Kohlberg himself in a short solo recital that formed the coda to Music From The Western Reserve’s online concert series. [Read more…]

Piano Cleveland announces plans for 2021 International Piano Competition

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by Mike Telin

Piano Cleveland has announced that after a year-long postponement due to the challenges presented by the pandemic, the organization’s signature event — the Cleveland International Piano Competition (CIPC) — will take place from July 8 through August 11, 2021. (Above: Nikita Mndoyants, 2016 first place winner, with Bramwell Tovey.)

The competition has been reimagined as a hybrid event with pre-recorded First and Second Rounds — Semi-Final and Final Rounds will take place in Cleveland. Twenty-eight contestants who were chosen for the 2020 competition will compete for an opportunity to perform with The Cleveland Orchestra and to win the Mixon First Prize of $75,000, a New York performance debut, management services, and a recording on the Steinway & Sons label. Click here for a full competition schedule and here for ticket information.

Creating the plan — a logistical jigsaw puzzle 

Piano Cleveland president Yaron Kohlberg said in a Zoom conversation that all the decisions during the planning process were made with the best interests of the contestants in mind. [Read more…]

Piano Cleveland announces summer Virtu(al)oso Competition

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by Daniel Hathaway

Having postponed its Cleveland International Piano Competition until 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Piano Cleveland has come up with a clever placeholder for the summer of 2020 that will allow 30 pianists, ages 18-30, to compete in a worldwide virtual contest while providing participants with across-the-board financial support.

In a recent telephone conversation, Piano Cleveland CEO Yaron Kohlberg said the idea for Virtu(al)oso grew out of the success of their Quarantine Concerts, a quickly-organized series of eight Thursday evening performances that came together only a few days after Governor DeWine’s stay-at-home order went into effect. Streamed from Steinway Piano Gallery Cleveland between March 19 and May 7, the concerts featured local artists and gave viewers the opportunity to contribute to a Musicians’ Fund.

“It surpassed our goals,” Kohlberg said. “We went into the series not knowing really what to expect. We just knew that we wanted to react as quickly as possible and try to support our musicians. People were so kind and generous, and responded so well.” [Read more…]

Live streaming: a roundtable discussion and Q&A’s with recent performers

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by Daniel Hathaway, Jarrett Hoffman, and Mike Telin

With the recent spread of COVID-19, the opportunity to attend live classical music performances has come to a complete halt and will likely remain that way for the foreseeable future. Many organizations and individual artists are seeking to fill that void through online streaming.

On Thursday, March 19, two area institutions presented the first of what will likely be many live-streamed concerts. At 4:30 pm in Oberlin Conservatory’s Stull Recital Hall, Flute Professor Alexa Still and Faculty Collaborative Pianist Evan Hines presented a program of works by Koechlin, Chopin, Coleman, and Debussy.

On the same day at 7:30 pm in Steinway Piano Gallery Cleveland, Piano Cleveland presented the first of its Quarantine Concerts. Pianist Yaron Kohlberg played selections by Schumann and Grieg, and duo pianists Irwin Shung and Natsumi Shibagaki played works by Bach, Rachmaninoff, and Gershwin.

Remotely streamed concerts raise an interesting question for journalists: is it possible to critically evaluate live performances when you’re not in the same room? Three of ClevelandClassical’s writers attempted to answer that and other questions about covering virtual performances.

[Read more…]

CIPC Concert Series:
15 minutes with Shai Wosner

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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…]

Music in the Circle Series debuts at Mixon & Gartner (July 11 & 14)

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by David Kulma

Classical music concerts in Cleveland usually thin out in July as festivals outside the city get under way, most notably The Cleveland Orchestra’s Blossom season. So it is a welcome turn of events to see a new international summer festival supported by University Circle institutions arrive for two weeks in mid-July. I attended the first weekend of Music in the Circle concerts that brought musicians from around the world to the Cleveland Institute of Music’s Mixon Hall on Friday, July 11 and to the Cleveland Museum of Art’s Gartner Auditorium on Sunday, July 14. [Read more…]

Music from The Western Reserve enters a new era under Bognár

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by Mike Telin

For 36 seasons, Music from The Western Reserve has presented chamber music concerts of a variety of genres performed by Northeast Ohio’s brightest talent. The organization is now entering a new era as it embarks on season number 37 with a new general manager, and a new lineup of performances.

After Elisabeth Hugh made the decision to retire following over a decade of leadership, Music from The Western Reserve and its board of directors recently announced that Zsolt Bognár, pianist and host of the award-winning film series Living the Classical Life, would succeed Hugh as Artistic Director and General Manager.

In a press release, Chair of the search committee Linda McDonald said that “Zsolt brings energy and passion to his work. We interviewed so many talented people for the position, but Zsolt’s skills and experience were the best fit as the organization moves to its next stage.” [Read more…]

Cleveland International Piano Competition kicks off 2019 Concert Series with Jeremy Denk

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by Mike Telin

If you’ve ever wondered what the Cleveland International Piano Competition does during the gap years between its signature event, the answer is a lot. Last spring CIPC hosted its Young Artist Competition, and from January through May will present five free concerts at the Beachwood Community Center. And on Saturday, January 19 the Competition will kick off the 2019 Concert Series with an 8:00 pm recital by Jeremy Denk at the Cleveland Institute of Music’s Mixon Hall.

Denk, an Oberlin alum and winner of a MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship, will perform Beethoven’s Five Variations on “Rule Britannia” in D and An die ferne Geliebte, Op. 98/S. 469 (transc. Liszt), Adams’ I Still Play, Bizet’s Variations chromatiques, Mendelssohn’s Variations sérieuses in d, Op. 54, and Schumann’s Fantasy in C, Op. 1. Tickets are available online.

“We’re very happy Jeremy is coming,” CIPC President & CEO Yaron Kohlberg said during a telephone conversation. “He’s one of the major pianists in the United States right now. He’ll be presenting a wonderful program and I look forward to a beautiful concert.”

This Saturday’s concert also marks one of Kohlberg’s first public events since he began his tenure with the Competition this past fall. Kohlberg, the second prize winner at the 2007 CIPC, is uniquely qualified for the job. [Read more…]

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