by Mike Telin
“This summer is going to be a full-immersion experience for our audiences,” Pierre van der Westhuizen (left), President and CEO of the Cleveland International Piano Competition, exclaimed during a recent telephone conversation. “They can attend something in the morning, afternoon, and evening, with lunch and dinner in between.”
When the 2016 Cleveland International Piano Competition and Festival gets underway on July 24 at the Cleveland Museum of Art, patrons will discover that CIPC is a true destination event. [Read more…]
Electrifying keyboard playing opened and closed Saturday evening’s Cleveland Orchestra concert at Severance Hall (February 21). At the outset, organist Paul Jacobs treated the large audience to an alluring taste of the organ music of Johannes Brahms, plus a thrilling performance of one of Johann Sebastian Bach’s most handsomely-constructed preludes and fugues. At the end, pianist Yefim Bronfman joined Franz Welser-Möst and the Orchestra in a reading of Brahms’s first concerto so magisterial that future pianists probably need not apply. 
The program notes mentioned that Johannes Brahms and Hans von Bülow enjoyed programming Brahms’s piano concertos, deciding at the last moment who would conduct and who would play piano. Some feat that, but Yefim Bronfman may top it this weekend when he plays both concertos in pairs of concerts over four days with Franz Welser-Möst and The Cleveland Orchestra. 
Brahms lovers (unless they particularly dote on his symphonies) will be ecstatic about what The Cleveland Orchestra is offering this weekend: two sets of concerts, each featuring the powerhouse pianist Yefim Bronfman in one of the two concertos, supplemented with other works by the celebrated nineteenth-century composer.