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by Daniel Hathaway
Citing a particularly strong set of applicants, the Cleveland International Piano Competition has invited two extra contestants to compete in the 2013 contest, which will begin at Gartner Auditorium of the Cleveland Museum of Art on July 30 and move to Severance Hall for the final round with The Cleveland Orchestra under Stefan Sanderling on August 9 & 10, with the award ceremony on August 11.
The thirty-two pianists come from seventeen different countries. The largest group is from China (6 contestants), followed by Russia (5) and the United States (4). Poland and Taiwan are represented by two contestants each, and the rest hail from Australia, Belarus, France, Georgia, Germany, Italy, Latvia, South Africa, South Korea, Switzerland, Ukraine and Vietnam.
Contestants’ ages run from 18 to 30 (the whole range of eligibility), with twelve between 18 and 25, eight between 26 and 27, and another dozen between 28 and 30. This year, men are in the ascendency (twenty-four to eight women). To view photos and learn more about the individual participants, visit CIPC’s contestants page. Read the rest of this entry »
Christian Labhart’s film “Apassionata” tells the story of a Ukrainian-Swiss concert pianist who returns to her homeland to deliver a concert grand piano to her first music school, visits her parents and music teachers and hears ghostly refrains from the past. “Apassionata” will be shown at the Cleveland International Film Festival on April 8 at 2:10 pm, April 9 at 4 pm and April 10 at 8:40 pm in cooperation with the Cleveland International Piano Competition, whose members and friends will receive a $2 discount on tickets. (Purchase online and use the code PIANO).
By Daniel Hathaway
Cleveland, OH — August 8, 2011
L-R: Kyu Yeon Kim, Eric Zuber, Alexey Chernov, Alexander Schimpf. Photo by Roger Mastroianni
The Cleveland International Piano Competition awarded $116,000 in prizes and another $26,000 in consolation prizes during the final event of the 2011 Competition in Severance Hall on Sunday afternoon, August 7.
After remarks from host Robert Conrad of WCLV, Dr. James Gibbs, President of the Piano International Association of Northeast Ohio, Karen Knowlton, Executive Director of CIPC, and a nod from jury chair Peter Frankl, who declined to speak (Conrad passed along Frankl’s opinion that he’d talked enough in the last ten days!), the following special prizes were awarded: Read the rest of this entry »
By Daniel Hathaway
Cleveland, OH — August 7, 2011
Alexander Schimpf playing Beethoven's 4th Concerto. Photo by Rober Mastroianni
By the time the Severance Hall concerto finals began on Friday evening, the four finalists in the Cleveland International Piano Competition had each played two hours’ worth of solo repertory in the previous three rounds. Now we had the opportunity to hear how well they played with others, the others of course being The Cleveland Orchestra under the Competition’s new conductor, Christopher Wilkins. There was a lot of cash attached to the outcomes, but winning the opportunity to perform with an orchestra of this stature was a prize all to itself.
Maestro Wilkins might have had to prepare four different concertos, had the results of the semifinals been different, but two finalists chose Brahms’ first concerto. 25-year old Korean pianist Kyu Yeong Kim opened with that work on Friday, while 28-year old Russian pianist Alexey Chernov played it during the first half of Saturday evening’s round. It’s a work with a tortured history, having started out to be Brahms’ first symphony, was then reworked into a piece for two pianos and finally (with new second and third movements) into a concerto for piano and orchestra. Even in its final shape, it shows signs of the composer’s inexperience as an orchestrator.
Read the rest of this entry »
Cleveland, OH — August 6, 2011
The winners of the 2011 Cleveland International Piano Competition were announced tonight following the second concerto round with The Cleveland Orchestra at Severance Hall:
First Prize: Alexander Schimpf (right, 29, Germany)
Second Prize: Alexey Chernov (second from right, 28, Russia)
Third Prize: Eric Zuber (second from left, 26, USA)
Fourth Prize: Kyu Yeon Kim (left, 26, Korea)
The prize ceremony (including the awarding of other prizes and a winners’ recital) will be held on Sunday, August 7 at 3 pm at Severance Hall (live broadcast over WCLV, 104.9 FM).
Our review of the concerto round will be posted here on Sunday afternoon.
by Daniel Hathaway
L-R: Kyu Yeon Kim, Eric Zuber, Alexander Schimpf, Alexey Chernov (photo: DH)
By Wednesday evening, when the Semifinal Round ended, we had gotten to know a lot about the pianistic personalities of twenty-six musicians, but we were eager to learn more about the four Finalists. The Competition kindly provided the opportunity to chat with them in pairs in Reinberger Chamber Music Hall just before their individual séances with conductor Christopher Wilkins at Severance Hall on Thursday, when each would talk through their chosen concerto for the Final Round on Friday and Saturday with The Cleveland Orchestra.
First, we wanted to know how the four came to the piano in the first place, and when the magic moment arrived when each decided to pursue a professional career. For three of the players, there were already professional musicians in the family who facilitated their early discovery of music. Read the rest of this entry »
Cleveland, OH — August 3, 2011
The four finalists, who will play concertos with The Cleveland Orchestra at Severance Hall under maestro Christopher Wilkins, were announced late Wednesday evening at the Cleveland Play House (photos left to right in performance order). The performances will be broadcast live over WCLV, 104.9 FM but will not be available on the Web. For tickets, call the Severance Hall Box Office, 216.231.1111 or order online. The winners will be announced at the end of Saturday’s performance, and the four finalists will give encore performances of solo repertory on Sunday at 3 during the Awards Ceremony in Severance Hall (tickets required).
Friday, August 5 at 8 pm
Kyu Yeon Kim (Brahms, Concerto No. 1)
Eric Zuber (Rachmaninoff, Concerto No. 2)
Saturday, August 6 at 8 pm
Alexey Chernov (Brahms, Concerto No. 1)
Alexander Schimpf (Beethoven, Concerto No. 4)
by Daniel Hathaway
Cleveland, OH — August 3, 2011
Alexander Schimpf
Alexander Schimpf (29, Germany) and Mateusz Borowiak (23, UK/Poland) closed out the Semifinal Round on Wednesday evening at the Cleveland Play House’s Bolton Theater — and marked the end of the Cleveland International Piano Competition’s occupancy there. The buildings have been sold to the Cleveland Clinic, and the Play House is moving to new digs in Playhouse Square.
Mr. Schimpf began with a single Debussy Prelude, moved on to one of Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsodies and concluded with Schubert’s last Sonata. The lone Debussy Prelude (La terrasse des audiences du clair de lune from Book Two) made for a strange opening gesture and was really too brief to make much of an impression. Mr. Schimpf’s Liszt, the Hungarian Rhapsody No. 12 in c-sharp, was spirited, but not very digitally tidy (lots of nicked notes), and contrasted murky low-lying chords with crystalline Hungarian dance tunes at the treble end of the keyboard. Read the rest of this entry »
By Daniel Hathaway
Cleveland, OH — August 3, 2011
Eric Zuber
Apollo returned to watch over the Cleveland International Piano Competition on Tuesday afternoon, having taken Monday off and left the proceedings in the hands of Dionysius, who was up to his usual mischief. In sequential, one hour recitals, Eric Zuber (26, USA) and Alexey Chernov (28, Russia) restored our musical equilibrium with beautiful performances of Schumann, Debussy, Liszt, Beethoven and Ravel.
Mr. Zuber led off with Schumann’s Scenes from Childhood, op. 15, a baker’s dozen of short reminiscences of the composer’s own childhood. The original title was “Easy Pieces”, which might make one wonder why a pianist would choose these over more virtuosic repertory for the penultimate round of a big competition. The answer is that each one is an exquisite stanza or two of poetry that allows the performer to explore different affects and colors — exactly what Mr. Zuber skillfully did with them. Read the rest of this entry »
By Daniel Hathaway
Cleveland, OH — August 2, 2011
Mr. Jae-Weon Huh (25, Korea), a tall, lanky pianist with long fingers, took the stage first on Tuesday evening for his Semifinal round of pieces by Schumann, Ravel and Rachmaninoff. Schumann’s Kreisleriana began promisingly, well-paced and logical, then veered out of control soon after. Mr. Huh found his balance again, producing lovely, dreamy, poetic colors in soft, slow episodes but often went over the top in fast and furious movement, where he tended toward harshness of touch. Ravel’s Ondine from Gaspard de la nuit had fine moments of nervous tremolos and big climaxes which contrasted with diaphanous timbres and more bursts of energy. But what was up with his Rachmaninoff (the second Sonata, op. 36, revised version)? After big, splashy opening gestures, the piece ballooned into a superscaled essay in sheer pianism that its composer might not have conceived even in his most extroverted moments. Sure, there were colorful, poetic moments, adroit layerings of lines and some brilliant ringing climaxes, but what we’ll take away from this performance is the huge, noisy finale during which the Steinway seemed to cry out in pain, so thoroughly did Mr. Huh pummel its keys. Like Ms. Kim who preceded him in the afternoon, he did some heavy breathing of his own during his set. Read the rest of this entry »
By Daniel Hathaway
Cleveland, OH — August 2, 2011
After Monday evening’s jury decision that took eighteen pianists out of the running — among them, perplexingly, at least three superb musicians who had played some of the most shapely, intelligent and coherent performances of anyone in the first two rounds — the Semifinal Round should demand that the eight remaining contestants be held to extremely high standards of interpretation. Everyone who has marched up to the Steinway this week has demonstrated extraordinary and reliable technique, but not everyone has proved that they have the analytical skills to put that technique to use in shaping cogent performances of the repertory they’ve chosen to play.
The strange patterns that can result from intentional randomness lined up four Asian contestants for the two sessions on Tuesday. Read the rest of this entry »
By Daniel Hathaway
Cleveland, OH — August 1, 2011
Contestants 23 through 26 stepped up to the Hamburg Steinway on Monday evening to conclude the second round, after which eight pianists would be tapped to advance to the Semifinals.
Ms. Soo-Yeon Ham (25, Korea) chose Chopin’s Twelve Etudes of op. 25 for her second time at bat. She was consistently impressive in her technique, touch and articulation, but underwhelming in her range of dynamics and sense of drama. The tenth piece, the “Octave” Etude began softly with much rubato and pedal and achived the highest dynamic level so far. Her “Winter Wind” (No. 11) was surprisingly gentle. Overall, her playing was cheerful, pretty, polite and polished.
By Mike Telin
Cleveland, OH — August 1, 2011
Steinway Piano model d
Five pianists played in the penultimate session of the second round on Monday afternoon.
Marina Baranova (30, Ukraine/Germany) gave sensitive and stylish readings of Scarlatti’s Sonatas in C Major (K.159) and f minor (k.466). Her discrete use of pedal and clear articulations, combined with some nice ornamentation, made for pleasurable listening. Continuing with two works of Schumann, the ABEGG Variations, Op. 1 and Faschingsschwank aus Wien, Op. 26 Ms. Baranova once again showed her technical command of the instrument, and made easy and clean work of the numerous rapid scale passages in both pieces. In general she approached the ABEGG Variations from an introspective point of view, creating some beautiful phrasing and lovely articulations. These fine qualities also featured in her performance of Faschingsschwank aus Wien, along with grand fortissimos. Read the rest of this entry »
by Daniel Hathaway
Cleveland, OH — July 31, 2011
Two Russian pianists simply ran away with Sunday evening’s session at the Cleveland Play House. Mr. Alexey Chernov (28) and Mr. Denis Evstuhin (30), third and fourth in the evening’s lineup, pulled off stunning back-to-back performances which inspired multiple “bravos” from the audience.
Mr. Chernov, who crafted a memorable Mozart Sonata on Thursday evening, wowed us with his interpretation of Schumann’s Symphonic Etudes tonight. The piece has a complicated history and can provide pianists with a real storytelling challenge, but Mr. Chernov made it seem like Schumann’s own Pictures at an Exhibition, so neatly did he frame each of its movements, infusing them with individual character and giving us a moment to admire each of them before moving on to the next. He miraculously achieved dark colors and clear textures at once, expertly layered voices, suspended time now and again, voiced chords dryly but still gave them weight and hue, treated multiple repetitions of chords with individual inflections and spun delicate poetry that Schumann would surely have admired. His sense of pacing was infallable, and when he elasticized the tempo, it was done for expressive purposes. He began with Ligeti’s Automne à Varsovie in a performance so intense he nearly fell off the piano bench at the end. Read the rest of this entry »
by Daniel Hathaway
Cleveland, OH — July 31, 2011
Second impressions lifted a few of this afternoon’s contestants higher — in our humble opinion.
Mr. Scipione Sangiovanni (23, Italy) began with a big Schumann piece, the Fantasie in C, op. 17, then tossed off a Chopin Etude (A-flat, op. 10, no. 10) for dessert. His thoughtful reading of the Schumann brought out the essential, brooding moodinesss of the score. He accomplished fine transitions and made good dynamic and color changes in the first movement. His grand approach to the second paid off; sometimes the musical line became attenuated, but he brought this section to a conclusion with flair. In the rhapsodic third movement, he applied poetic voicing to his graceful rendition of Schumann’s beautiful and solemn melodies. The audience wanted to applaud at the end of no. 2 (and did), but Mr. Sangiovanni’s body language shied them away from expressing their appreciation at the end. His brief Chopin add-on was nicely spirited: he swept across the keyboard with appropriate grandeur. Read the rest of this entry »
by Daniel Hathaway
Cleveland, OH — July 30, 2011
We went into this evening’s session eager to hear four pianists build on their achievements in the first round. We came away wondering what on earth had possessed them to attack their repertory so heavy-handedly.
Mr. Shinnosuke Inugai (29, Japan) led off with a promising and energetic A-Flat Prelude and Fugue (WTC I) with good cadential gestures in the prelude and clear counterpoint in the fugue. The two Chopin Scherzos (op. 39 and 54) that followed were curiously muscular rather than humorous and poetic. There were some nice touches (clear textures, poignant middle sections in the second and fine right hand passage work) but erratic tempos and aggressive drives toward climaxes obscured the architecture of the pieces. Atsuhiko Gondai’s Transient Bell (2009) was full of metallic effects and crystalline meanderings in the extreme treble as well as gratuitous piano tricks (too many full keyboard glissandi). Mr. Inugai played it enthusiastically, but the sonic effect was numbing. Read the rest of this entry »
by Daniel Hathaway
Cleveland, OH — July 30, 2011
Anna Fedorova draws No. 1
The Cleveland Competition gives every player the opportunity to perform again in the second round — a fine way to build on what you revealed about yourself in your first appearance on the Bolton Theater stage. This afternoon’s quartet of pianists produced no major surprises upon a second hearing, but there were more favorable impressions to be made in most cases.
Ms. Anna Fedorova (21, Ukraine) should be proud of her two performances in her unenviable position of being No. 1 in the draw. She began on Saturday afternoon with two Scarlatti Sonatas (in b, K. 87 and E, K. 20). The b minor piece has already received several airings; her sensitive version moved right along with subtle ebbs and flows of tempo (and perhaps too many rubatos to point up too many special moments). Read the rest of this entry »
by Daniel Hathaway
Cleveland, OH — July 29, 2011
By the end of Friday evening’s session, all twenty-six competitors had been heard for the first time. Here’s our impression of the final four.
Ms. Soo-Yeon Ham (25, Korea) competed in Cleveland in 2009, when she won the Chopin Prize. Tonight, she began with two Scarlatti Sonatas, both in A major, went on to Haydn’s C Major Sonata No. 60 and finished off with Shostakovich’s Prelude & Fugue in d, no. 24. The first Scarlatti was a slow aria, the second a bouncy, fun piece based on a theme that played with octaves. Both these and the Haydn Sonata seemed to suit her proclivity for light, elegant textures. The Haydn was full of persistent motives and surprising harmonic turns, all of which she pointed up nicely, though she allowed herself some liberties with rhythm. The Shostakovich seemed an odd choice for the first round. It’s a bleak piece that wears many shades of grey, but eventually ends triumphantly. Ms. Ham found appropriate metallic sonorities for the beginning of the prelude and dialed up her digital intensity as the fugue gained momentum. But she really seemed most at home in the first three pieces. Read the rest of this entry »
by Daniel Hathaway
Cleveland, OH — July 29, 2011
Steinway Piano model d
Friday afternoon brought new faces and some fresh repertory to the penultimate session of the first round.
Ms. Marina Baranova (30, Ukraine/Germany) began the session with the first Beethoven “Waldstein” Sonata to appear in the playlist thus far, closely followed (with hardly any pauses) by Ligeti and Chopin. She took a businesslike approach to the first movement of the Beethoven. There were some tangles in scalar passages and an infelicitous plunge into the recapitulation. She paid more attention to voicing in the slow, second movement, with fine results. She did an intereresting thing at the beginning of the finale — starting it very slowly and softly as though the main theme were emerging from a haze, then making a huge crescendo into the restatement of the tune. Throughout, dynamics seemed to hover at both extremes with not much middle ground, but her soft playing was lovely. In her Ligeti, Fanfares (Etudes: Book 1, No. 4), she stylishly played sassy chords against a nonstop running line that alternated between hands. In her Chopin, the “Winter Wind” Etude, she demonstrated some sensitive phrasing, especially in the transitions. Read the rest of this entry »
by Daniel Hathaway
Cleveland, OH — July 28, 2011
Thursday evening’s session introduced four more pianists to the audience at the Cleveland Play House and those listening in or watching the proceedings over the airwaves or through the Internet.
Mr. Pavel Gintov (27, Ukraine) took the risky decision to play a single, long work for his first round: Schumann’s Kreisleriana, op. 16. In many ways, he pulled it off and did so with flair. There were many admirable moments in his interpretation as Schumann’s music moved between stormily dramatic and dreamily lyrical moods, but his sense of pacing sometimes went awry as he moved from section to section (and recapitulated earlier material) and sometimes he didn’t leave the music quite enough space to breathe. There were episodes of sheer power that became left-hand heavy and a few moments when we wondered if Mr. Gintov might push the Hamburg Steinway into the red zone. Read the rest of this entry »
by Daniel Hathaway
Cleveland, OH — July 28, 2011
Thursday afternoon’s session gave us the first general impressions of five more pianists, and revealed some personality traits which will be interesting to revisit when the second round begins.
Mr. Scipione Sangiovanni (23, Italy) was by far the most idiomatic player we’ve heard so far. He began with a stylized performance of Handel’s Suite in d featuring extravagantly decorated repeats, extremely staccato bass lines and rather capricious dynamics changes that sometimes seemed at odds with the structure of the piece. The famous Chaconne was less a continuous set of divisions than a chain of isolated variations (the last ended so abruptly that the audience missed its cue to applaud). But he brought beautiful colors, clear articulations and fine finger dexterity to the task, even if the overall interpretation was a bit off the beaten path. His second piece, Croatian composer Ivo Josipovic’s Jubulus (2010), sounded like a mashup of borrowed musical references and styles with stock piano effects (black note glissandi, chord clusters and sheer noise) interleaved with toccatalike gestures, a triumphant chordal paean and even a passage that suggested balalaikas. Mr. Sangiovanni went at the piece with power, enthusiasm and great seriousness of purpose. He topped off his set with Haydn’s Sonata in E-flat, Hob. XVI:52, a performance distinguished by dark colors, fluent runs and a good sense of the whole range of dynamic possibilities. Some of his playing here was mannered, with oddly calculated phrasing and unmetrical pauses. Read the rest of this entry »
By Daniel Hathaway
Cleveland, OH — July 27, 2011
Four more pianists gave us first examples of their playing this evening — two of whom actually updated our impressions from when we first heard them in 2009.
Mr. Shinnosuke Inugai (29, Japan) immediately seized our attention with a dramatic and highly profiled performance of Beethoven’s “Appassionata” Sonata, op. 57. Violent contrasts, explosive gestures and unrelenting — well, passion — marked the first movement and inspired applause from an audience that knew they shouldn’t clap then but wanted to anyway. In the second movement, Mr. Inugai relieved the tension with playful dotted rhythms that sounded almost frivolous after what had gone before. His fleet fingerwork and skillful layering of material brought the finale to a resounding conclusion. Perhaps his reading of Chopin’s Etude in A-flat, op. 10, no. 10 was more articulate than dreamy and poetic, but the Beethoven was still in our ears and the second piece seemed almost unnecessary. Read the rest of this entry »
by Daniel Hathaway
Cleveland, OH — July 27, 2011
As Round One of the 2011 Cleveland International Piano Competition got underway at the Cleveland Play House’s Bolton Theater this afternoon, it was time to get to know an almost entirely new group of musicians.
Twenty-six pianists will have 25-30 minutes each over the next three days to seize our attention and tell us — through their choice of repertory and its execution — who they are as musicians.
Ms. Anna Fedorova (21, Ukraine) drew the first of this afternoon’s four slots, and began with a big, bravura performance of Beethoven’s early Sonata in A, op. 2, no. 2. She impressed us with her strength and the extreme range of dynamic contrasts she drew from the piano, though apparent nervousness made for some uneven runs and dropped notes. She followed Beethoven with the famous Chopin Etude in a, op. 25, no. 11, “Winter Wind”, a piece that begins with a few bars of introspection and suddenly turns into a maelstrom. Ms. Fedorova’s performance ebbed and flowed like an ocean.
Read the rest of this entry »
by Daniel Hathaway
When the contestants for the 2011 Cleveland International Piano Competion assemble for the first time on Tuesday, July 26 to draw lots for their performance order, they’ll represent a slightly smaller pool of talent than in 2009 (26 now, 33 then) but they’ll also be slightly older and more experienced.
CIPC is open to pianists between the age of 18 and 30 by a certain cutoff date. Two years ago, Martina Filjak of Croatia and Dmitri Levkovich of Canada (pictured front and right) had both turned thirty when the contest began. Experience must count, as the two eventually won first and second place once all those thousands of notes had faded away.
Two years ago, the youngest pianist was 19. There were five 20-year olds, four each were 25 and 26, three each were 21, 22 and 24, and pairs of competitors were 23, 27, 28 and 29. Read the rest of this entry »
by Daniel Hathaway
On Tuesday, July 26, twenty-seven young pianists will draw for positions in the 2011 Cleveland International Piano Competition, and begin a ten-day journey which — for the last four pianists left standing — will end with two days of final concerto rounds at Severance Hall with The Cleveland Orchestra followed by the crowning of winners.
The stakes are high: the top award, the Mixon First Prize, comes with $50,000 in cash, a New York debut recital at Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall, and two years of management services. Second, third and fourth prizes of $25,000, $15,000 and $10,000 will also be awarded at the end of the second Severance Hall round on Saturday, August 6, and there are a slew of boutique awards for excellence in the performance of Baroque, contemporary, American and Russian music, and the compositions of Beethoven, Chopin and Mozart. The audience gets to vote as well: an audience prize will be given to the popular favorite in the final round, and the junior jury chooses its own prize winner. Read the rest of this entry »
