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by Mike Telin
Cleveland composer Margi Griebling-Haigh has written a new piece on commission from Cleveland Orchestra assistant principal bassoonist Barrick Stees. Sortilège will have its premiere on Mr. Stees concert, “Instrument of Enchantment: the Supernatural Bassoon” in Tucker Hall of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Cleveland Heights on Friday, May 6 at 7:30 pm.
Ms. Griebling-Haigh comes from a family which boasts three generations of composers, including her father, her mother, her sister and her daughter.
A native of Akron, she began music study with her parents and before graduating from high school, had already won awards for her compositions from BMI and the National Federation of Music Clubs. An oboist, she took her Bachelor’s degree from Eastman, studying with Robert Sprenkle, and Master’s degree from the San Francisco Conservatory, studying with Marc Lifschey.
In addition to the commission from Barrick Stees, she has been asked to compose for other Cleveland Orchestra soloists, including principal hornist Richard King and the late principal oboist, John Mack. Other commissions have come from organist Karel Paukert, the Schenectady Symphony, the Greater Akron Music Association and the Cleveland area chamber ensemble Panorámicos.
Her daughter Gabrielle (Gabby) is following in the tradition. Currently training to be a classicist at Clare College, Cambridge, where she sings soprano in the Chapel Choir, her Symphony No. 1 was premiered recently by the Monterey Symphony Orchestra.
We spoke with Margi Griebling-Haigh by telephone to talk about her career as a composer, her remarkable family and about the new work she has written for Barrick Stees.
by Brittany Brahn
Brittany Brahn is an Oberlin student who participated in the Winter Term course in Digital Musical Journalism co-sponsored by ClevelandClassical.
The tradition of the Cleveland Orchestra performing at Oberlin College is a long and well-loved one, which began in 1919 only six months after the orchestra was first formed. Since that initial concert, the Cleveland Orchestra has performed at Oberlin 209 times through the college’s Artist Recital Series, which is incidentally one of the oldest continuing concert series in the United States. In addition to the Cleveland Orchestra, the Artist Recital Series has also brought musicians such as Joshua Bell, Yo-Yo Ma, Denyce Graves and Juan Diego Flóres to the campus, much to the delight of the students and residents of Oberlin.
The Cleveland Orchestra’s latest return to Oberlin was on the evening of Friday, February 25th in Finney Chapel under the direction of Russian conductor Andrey Boreyko. The program, Boreyko’s debut with the Cleveland Orchestra, showcased a refreshing array of Eastern European works that complemented each other well, including Stravinsky’s Divertimento from the ballet Le Baiser de la fée, Peteris Vasks’s English horn Concerto, and Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 5 in B-flat Major. The sweetness of the Divertimento provided an enjoyable juxtaposition to the full-bodied, fiery drama of the Symphony.
Vasks is a Latvian composer who is less familiar to Western audiences than Stravinsky or Prokofiev, yet his English horn concerto proved to be an ambitious and highly successful addition to the repertoire. By the time Vasks had written the piece in 1989, he had spent the majority of his compositional life overshadowed by the rigid policies of the Soviet Union. Two years prior to Latvia’s independence, the English horn concerto was commissioned by the American musician Thomas Stacy and the Stamford Chamber Orchestra. Read the rest of this entry »
by Mike Telin
To read Cleveland Orchestra solo English horn player Robert Walter’s resume, one could easily assume that he has not had a lot of time for anything other than music. Prior to joining the Orchestra in 2004, he served as solo English horn and oboe player with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. Prior to those positions, Mr. Walters performed with the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, the American Ballet Theatre, the American Symphony Orchestra, the Brooklyn Philharmonic, and the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. He also was a frequent performer with James Levine and the MET Chamber Ensemble at Carnegie Hall. As a soloist, Mr. Walters has appeared with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, the Beijing Radio Symphony, the New York Chamber Soloists, and the Concerto Soloists of Philadelphia.
The passing down of musical traditions to young players is something that brings him great joy. He is a faculty member at the Aspen Music Festival as well as professor of oboe and English horn at the Oberlin Conservatory. But when we telephoned Mr. Walters last week to talk about his upcoming performance of Latvian composer Peteris Vasks’ English horn concerto with The Cleveland Orchestra under the direction of Andrey Boreyko, we discovered that his artistic interests and talents extend far beyond the concert stage.
Mike Telin: How did you discover the Vasks concerto?
Robert Walters: Actually it was through Andrey Boreyko, who is conducting the concert. I was playing in Aspen a few summers ago where he was conducting. He asked me if I knew this concerto, at which point I didn’t. I heard some of it on the radio once, and I remember thinking that it was intriguing, so with his prompting, I did some research, and discovered that it has been recorded twice — which is interesting for an English horn concerto — but even more interesting is that it was recorded by the same person. Read the rest of this entry »
by Daniel Hathaway
Alban Gerhardt at Dave's (photo: Dave's Supermarket)
41-year old German cellist Alban Gerhardt is in town to perform Matthias Pintscher’s Cello Concerto with the Cleveland Orchestra, but he made his first public appearance on Wednesday evening in the fruit and vegetable section of Dave’s Supermarket in Ohio City, playing Bach unaccompanied cello suites for a group of onlookers and listeners that swelled to about a hundred adults and children during his 5:30, hour-long performance.
Alban got the idea of doing impromptu solo performances in unexpected places from his experience last July playing all six of Bach’s solo suites in the Radialsystem, an experimental venue in Berlin. As he writes in his blog, “I thought the Bach suites were a bit too complex and not exciting enough for an ‘untrained listener’”, but “a friend of mine attended the concert together with a gentleman who had never listened to classical music in concert before and who was so taken by the beauty of Bach’s music that he didn’t mind sitting relatively still for almost three hours”.
Mental wheels began turning, and Alban and his friend imagined other ways of delivering this music to people who didn’t know it belonged to them. They recalled an MTV experiment in the 90′s in which pop groups would appear in the morning on German radio stations and reveal their intentions to perform that night, asking the audience to suggest places where the concert could take place.
Alban’s version was “a little spontanenous radio-tour with Bach in Northern Germany” which produced solo appearances in a wine cellar, in a maternity ward for a new-born baby, after a youth orchestra rehearsal, for a dozen teenaged girls before a musical theatre company rehearsal, at a gym, for a group of anti-nuclear-waste activists at an alternative coffee house and in the music salon of a Cuban cellist. Read the rest of this entry »
by Daniel Hathway
The Cleveland Cello Society will begin its new season with Mark Kosower’s Cleveland debut recital. The new principal cellist of the Cleveland Orchestra made his first solo appearance with the Orchestra in Tchaikovsky’s Rococo Variations with the Joffrey Ballet at Blossom earlier in September. On Monday, September 27, Kosower will be joined by his wife, pianist Jee-Won Oh in music by J.S. Bach, Tcherepnin, Poulenc and Mendelssohn in an 8 pm performance in Harkness Chapel on the campus of Case Western Reserve University.
Mark Kosower was born into a family of cellists in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. After studying with János Starker at Indiana University and Joel Krosnick at Juilliard, he taught cello and chamber music at the San Francisco Conservatory before being named solo cellist with the Bamberg Symphony in Germany in 2006. We spoke with him by phone at his new home over Labor Day weekend.
Daniel Hathaway: First of all, I loved the Tchaikovsky Rococo Variations with the Joffrey Ballet on Saturday evening. That must have been a new experience.
Mark Kosower: Thank you. It was a new experience. I hadn’t played for a dance company before.
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Cleveland, OH, August 2, 2010
Dean David Stull of the Oberlin Conservatory and donor Thomas Cooper present 1st, 2nd and 3rd prizes to George Li, John Chen and Kate Liu (photo: Roger Mastroianni)
by Daniel Hathaway & Nicholas Jones
In the debut of the Thomas and Evon Cooper International Piano Competition at the Oberlin Conservatory last week, first there were forty-three contestants, then after the first round, twenty-three. Eleven were chosen for the concerto with piano round, then six for the solo finals. On Friday evening, three young pianists, one 14 and two 16 years old, competed in the final round in Severance Hall with Jahja Ling and The Cleveland Orchestra for several thousand dollars in prize money (they already had won four-year, full tuition scholarships to the Oberlin Conservatory). The top winner would go on to play engagements with professional orchestras in Beijing and Shanghai.
It must have been a heady week for the more than forty contestants, who ranged in age from 13 to 18, and who were as finely tuned up as young tennis players for this demanding week of elimination rounds, in this case in front of an international jury of distinguished judges.
Out of deference to the age and comparative inexperience of some of the younger competitors, we began our coverage of the Cooper Competition with the Tuesday concerto round, when eleven pianists made their first appearances on the Warner Hall stage at Oberlin as interactive soloists.
Cleveland, OH, July 31, 2010
The winners (l-r): George Li (first prize), John Chen (second prize), Kate Liu (third prize). Photo: Roger Mastroianni
The three winners of the 2010 Cooper International Piano Competition are:
First Place: George Li (14, Lexington, MA)
Second Place: John Chen (16, Leesburg, VA)
Third Place: Kate Liu (16, Chicago, IL)
The awards, announced by donor Thomas Cooper after the young pianists played concerti by Chopin, Tchaikovsky and Prokofiev with Jahja Ling and The Cleveland Orchestra in Severance Hall on Friday evening, include four-year, full tuition scholarships to The Oberlin Conservatory and cash prizes of $10,000, $6,000 and $3,000, respectively. Mr. Li will also play concerts with orchestras in Shanghai and Beijing.
ClevelandClassical.com’s reports on the semifinalists’ concert in Reinberger Chamber Hall on Friday afternoon and the finals on Friday evening will be posted later this weekend.
Cleveland, OH, July 30, 2010
The order of performance for tonight’s finals with Jahja Ling and the Cleveland Orchestra:
George Li — Chopin’s Concerto No. 1
Kate Liu — Prokofiev’s Concerto No. 3
Intermission
John Chen — Tchaikovsky’s Concerto No. 1
The concert will be broadcast live at 8:00 pm EDT over WCLV, 104.9 FM and streamed via the Internet at wclv.com.
Oberlin, OH, July 29, 2010
The finalists (l-r): George Li, John Chen, Kate Liu (photo: Roger Mastroianni)
Following the solo rounds in Warner Concert Hall at the Oberlin Conservatory on Wednesday evening, July 28, WCLV president Robert Conrad announced the audience favorite, 4th, 5th and 6th place winners and the three finalists in the 2010 Cooper International Piano Competition. Here is the list with prize money indicated:
Audience Favorite ($500)
Tristan Teo (13, Canada)
6th Place ($1,000)
Tristan Teo (13, Canada)
5th Place ($1,000)
Anna Han (14, Arizona, USA)
4th Place ($1,000)
Sahun Hong (16, Texas, USA)
Finalists
The following contestants (listed here in alphabetical order) will play concertos in the finals with Jahja Ling and The Cleveland Orchestra on Friday evening at 8 in Severance Hall in a concert to be broadcast live over WCLV, 104.9 FM (and streamed on the Internet):
John Chen (16, Virginia, USA) — Tchaikovsky Concerto No. 1
George Li (14, Massachusetts, USA) — Chopin, Concerto No. 1
Kate Liu (16, Illinois, USA) — Prokofiev, Concerto No. 3
Tickets for the Severance Hall finals may be ordered through the box office at 216.231.1111.
by Daniel Hathaway
An earlier group of winners
This Thursday afternoon, more than forty young pianists from seven countries will arrive in Oberlin to compete in a new and much enhanced version of the Oberlin International Piano Competition. Launched in 1995 by Oberlin Conservatory piano professor Robert Shannon, that competition for 13-18 year old pianists continued annually through 2008, when Warner Concert Hall was closed for renovations.
Reborn in 2010 as the Thomas and Evon Cooper International Competition, the contest will now alternate each year between pianists and violinists, with pianists up in 2010 and violinists in 2011. Cash prizes of more than $20,000 and Oberlin scholarships will be distributed among the winners, and the first prize winner will have the opportunity to perform with professional orchestras in Beijing and Shanghai. And in another big leap forward for its inaugural year, the Competition has made arrangements for the three finalists to play their concertos in Severance Hall with the Cleveland Orchestra under Jahja Ling.
We spoke with Robert Shannon by phone in his office at the Oberlin Conservatory to ask how this all came about.
“Before 1995, we had had a summer piano festival that had no age requirements and no focus at all. You’d come and you’d take some lessons, and you’d go to a lecture or two. We had lawyers from San Francisco who had never played the piano before! We wanted to upgrade this, and establish an age group of 13-18 — which is of course the group of people we either want to get excited about Oberlin or recruit from. There are many youth competitions now, but in 1995 that wasn’t really true. We thought we could combine having a competition with more educational programs so people would come here for a about a week and nobody would really lose because they could all learn something while they were here. That’s always been my dream”.
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