Cleveland International Piano Competition: Award Ceremony and Winners Recital

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:

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Filjak and Youn in the last Concertos at Severance: Final Round, Part II

Inevitable comparisons: in a competition, you want to listen to every performance as if you’re hearing both the piece and the performer for the first time, but with two versions of Rachmaninoff’s second concerto scheduled on two adjacent nights, what’s a listener to do but think about each of them in relation to the other. Both are still ringing in the ears.

Croatian pianist Martina Filjak made an immediate impression with her carefully wrought crescendo and intensifying coloration of the famous opening chords and bass punctuation that begin Rach 2. Same conductor, same orchestra, but when the other hundred or so musicians on the stage joined Filjak in her musical odessey through this engaging score, it was clear that the soloist was seeing it through a different lens.

Arrival Day: They’re here!

When thirteen is your lucky number. Evgeny Brakhman (Russia) gets to put off his first round performance until Wednesday afternoon. Behind (L-R) WCLV's president, Robert Conrad, CIPC board president Rand Curtiss, jury chairman Peter Frankl and CIM president Joel Smirnoff. Photo: Sam Hubish

CIPC executive director Karen Knowlton looked relieved a few minutes after five o’clock on Monday when thirty-two of the thirty-three contestants were neatly arranged on chairs on the Mixon Hall stage at CIM, ready to draw for their slots in the competition schedule.