Forbes: Isaac Stern's Pioneering Spirit Lives On Via Shanghai Event, $100,000 Prize

Forbes
Russell Flannery

American violinist Isaac Stern found friends and fans in China when he made pioneering visits to the country in its early reform days in the 1970s and 1980s. Though he died at age 81 in 2001, his spirit lives on in the Shanghai Isaac Stern International Violin Competition, a bi-annual international violin competition to be held starting Aug. 10 with winners to be announced on Sept. 1. The $100,000 first prize is the largest in the world for a violin competition.

The event, which is being organized by the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra, will be held against a backdrop of growing interest in classical music in China, according to Long Yu, the event president and a top China maestro.

Read more here.

China Daily: Young Virtuosos from Shanghai Orchestra Academy to Play in Parks

China Daily
Hong Xiao

Yu Renchao (third from left), from Shanghai, at a rehearsal with the New York Philharmonic on Monday at Lincoln Center. [Photo by Hong Xiao/CHINA DAILY]

Five young musicians from the Shanghai Orchestra Academy (SOA) are taking part in a special residency with the New York Philharmonic preparing for the philharmonic's concerts in the parks this week.

The five musicians - violinist Yu Renchao, violist Liu Kuan, flautist Huang Fangyu, clarinetist Chiu Yanru and bassoonist Zhao Sihong - were selected from about 20 candidates after rounds of auditions by a panel of New York Philharmonic musicians held at the SOA in March.

The finalists are Zarin Mehta Fellows, who won the chance to participate in the New York Philharmonic Global Academy Fellowship Program, where they take lessons with philharmonic musicians and perform with the orchestra.

Yu, who is not a stranger to the NY Philharmonic, sat for an interview during a break in rehearsals at Lincoln Center on Monday. They were preparing for the four upcoming big events - performing Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade under the baton of James Gaffigan in Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx on Tuesday, in Central Park on Wednesday Cunningham Park in Queens on Thursday and Prospect Park in Brooklyn on Friday.

Read more here.

Strings Magazine: Tour Diary – Shanghai Quartet Brings Beethoven to China for 35th Anniversary Season

Strings

Tour Diary: Shanghai Quartet Brings Beethoven to China for 35^th Anniversary Season

June 11, 2018

April 9, 2018: Weigang (first violin), showing us the lounge life, getting ready for our 35th anniversary Beethoven Quartet Cycle in Beijing, Tianjin, Wuhan, and Changsha. Scotch is the quartet’s drink of choice when traveling, as you can see here with soda water.

April 11, 2018: We had a lovely dinner upon our arrival to Beijing for our 35th anniversary Beethoven Cycle tour with maestro Long Yu, David Stern, and Cheng Zen, concertmaster of the China Philharmonic. Such good friends always meet over great food and, thanks to classmate and Shanghai neighbor maestro Long Yu, good wine, too!

April 12, 2018: The 35th anniversary Beethoven Cycle began with Op. 127 at the Forbidden City Concert Hall in Beijing. This was the first of 24 concerts performing the 4 cycles across China. The excitement in the hall was palpable on the stage and in the house for opening night.

April 13, 2018: Second violinist Yi-Wen with Steven Smith, director of J & A Beare, after our second Beethoven cycle performance in Beijing. Beare’s International Violin Society graciously loaned the Shanghai Quartet four instruments for our 35th anniversary season, including two Stradivari, one Guarneri del Gesù, and a Goffriller. We are so grateful for the generosity of the violin society, and for the loans of these truly spectacular instruments.

April 13, 2018: Often our tours have CD signing sessions directly following performances. In Tianjin following the first of two concerts at the Grand Theatre—we sold quite a few CDs to even the youngest of our audience members! And what is nice is that audience members are actually buying physical CDs. It’s also super helpful that we are selling recordings of the very pieces that we played that evening. (We’ve recorded the entire Beethoven quartet cycle on the Japanese label Camerata.)

April 14, 2018: Sometimes things get out of control on empty buses when going to and from the airports and train stations. We try to keep it civil, but all too often things get out of hand and someone gets hurt either physically or emotionally. Yi-Wen had just listened to our playback from the last night’s concert and let us know how he felt about the recording. We thought he was kidding, but he was not and it was emotionally hurting. Not to worry however, we hugged it out at the airport later that afternoon.

April 15, 2018: We were invited to appear on the CCTV show Life in Music, a one-hour long show that will air in August and be seen by more than 10 million viewers. We did our best not to look too stiff, but kept it string-quartet stylish with our signature bow ties!

For the full tour diary, click here.

Strings: Yuga Cohler on Forging a Career as a Conductor in Classical Music

Strings
Whitney Phaneuf

Yuga Cohler is on a mission to disrupt the classical-music establishment. And he already has its attention. The 28-year-old conductor, who debuts as the music director at Ridgefield Symphony Orchestra (RSO) on May 5, gained international prominence last year with his project Yeethoven, an orchestral concert comparing the works of Beethoven and Kanye West that culminated in a sold-out show at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall in January.

Cohler recognizes that his new post at RSO will require a different approach than his recent success with Yeethoven, which played in Los Angeles and New York, but he’s not deterred from taking risks altogether.

“Becoming a professional music director is a milestone in the path of a conductor. But I am interested in how to incrementally push the consciousness, to push the public relevance of the orchestra and classical music as an institution within a vibrant community,” Cohler says, by phone from his home in Boston. “To make the value and the worth of classical music relevant and abundantly clear to the community you’re serving, and to allow people to enrich themselves through classical music—not in a forceful way, not a neocolonialist way, but like, ‘Hey, you like this? Maybe you’ll like this, too’—is the conductor’s number one job, at least now in America, and that is what I’m looking forward to doing there.”

Read more from Yuga's interview here.

Yale School of Music Graduate Student Ji Su Jung Wins Houston Symphony Ima Hogg Competition

Ji Su Jung, member of The Percussion Collective

Congratulations to The Percussion Collective member Ji Su Jung!

Performing E. Séjourné’s Concerto for Marimba and Strings, marimbist Ji Su Jung won the 43rd annual Houston Symphony Ima Hogg Competition, which earned her a gold medal, a $25,000 prize and a solo performance at Jones Hall with the Houston Symphony at the Donor and Subscriber Appreciation Concert on Wednesday, July 11 at 7:30 p.m. under the direction of Associate Conductor Robert Franz.

The Grace Woodson Memorial Award was presented to Jung on Saturday, June 2, in Stude Hall at Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music by Honorary Chair, John Neighbors. In addition to the cash prize and solo performance with the Houston Symphony, Jung will participate in a week-long Education and Community Engagement Residency that will provide her with essential training to help her succeed in their field and contribute to the communities in which she lives and works.

Additionally, Jung was the recipient of The Hermann Shoss Audience Choice Award, an award casted by members of the audience. Jung is currently a graduate student at the Yale School of Music and is an active soloist and chamber musician. She has performed in prestigious halls and festivals around the country, including the Kennedy Center and Yellow Barn Chamber Music Festival. Through her endorsement with Vic Firth mallet and drumstick company, she made numerous performance videos that have garnered a quarter of a million views on their website.

Read more about the competition on Houston Symphony's website here.

Gramophone: DG signs Long Yu and the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra

Gramophone
Martin Cullingford

First album, due next year, to feature Chinese and Russian repertoire
Long Yu and the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra sign to DG (credit: Leilei Cai)

Deutsche Grammophon has just announced an exclusive contract with the high-profile Chinese conductor Long Yu and the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra.  

In recent years China has experienced a massively expanding audience for classical music, while a number of its leading young soloists have achieved immense international prominence, not least the pianists Lang Lang, Yundi Li and Yuja Wang - all also DG artists. This new signing should help further reinforce DG's place in China's classical music scene.

Their first album under the new partnership, due for release next year to mark the orchestra’s 140th anniversary, will feature both Chinese and Russian repertoires.

Click here to read more.

San Francisco Chronicle: Classical Music Picks, June 3

San Francisco Chronicle
Joshua Kosman

Anderson and Roe: The energetic and increasingly popular piano duo performs a program of music by Rachmaninoff, Bizet, Mozart and more. 3 p.m. Sunday, June 3, Del Valle Theatre, 1963 Tice Valley Blvd., Walnut Creek; 7:30 p.m. Monday, June 4, Oshman Family JCC, 3921 Fabian Way, Palo Alto; 8 p.m. Tuesday, June 5, Herbst Theatre, 401 Van Ness Ave., S.F. www.chambermusicsf.org

For the full week's listings, click here.

Blogcritics: Concert Review with Julian Schwarz and Marika Bournaki

Blogcritics
Jon Sobel

Cellist Julian Schwarz and pianist Marika Bournaki presented an eye-opening survey of a fascinating and mostly neglected 20th-century musical movement at the Center for Jewish History on May 22. With contributions from violinist Avi Nagin and clarinetist Alec Manasse, the pair gave us a powerful representative sample of concert music from the New Jewish National School, and especially by cellist-composer Joachim Stutschewsky (1891-1982), with musicianship of the highest order...

Schwarz’s velvety, singing tone and Stutschewsky’s creative strength were both immediately on display in the folk-dance-influenced “Legend” at the top of the program. Gentle dissonances from the piano set the 20th-century scene as Schwarz showed brilliant dynamic control on the cello. Stutschewsky’s “Freylekhs: Improvisation” reworked Jewish folk songs into beautiful chamber music through the twin lenses, as I fancied I heard it, of Rachmaninoff and Gershwin.

Read the full review here.

The Strad Cover – June 2018

The Strad
Terry Borman

This is an extract from the second part of Terry Borman’s detailed examination of the ‘Vieuxtemps’ Guarneri ‘Del Gesù’, with contributions from experts in the latest technologies, investigating acoustics, dendrochronology, varnish analysis and plate thicknesses. Download the June issue on desktop computer, via the The Strad App, or buy the print edition

Two months before his death in June 1881, Henri Vieuxtemps was considering selling his beloved 1741 Guarneri ‘del Gesù’ violin. He was no longer able to play, having suffered a stroke, and in a letter dated 9 April 1881 he told his friend, cellist Joseph Van der Heyden, that the instrument would ‘cost the buyer a lot, but it will be well worth it because this violin is a unique pearl’.

In early January 2013 the world found out how prescient his comment was, as the newspapers were flooded with reports about the violin’s sale to an anonymous buyer for an undisclosed sum – stating only that it was in excess of $16 million (£9.8 million).

That made it, at the time and still five years later, the most expensive violin in the world. The news also stated that it was to be a lifetime loan to the US violinist Anne Akiko Meyers.

The ‘Vieuxtemps’ Guarneri ‘Del Gesù’
Photo: J. & A. Beare Ltd

Read the full excerpt here.

Watch:  Anne Akiko Meyers plays Saint-Saëns’ Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso on the ‘Vieuxtemps’ Guarneri

21CM: Gerard Schwarz Premiere

21CM

This concert features the world premiere of Gerard Schwarz’s latest duo for violin and cello alongside the New York premieres of his first two duos. These will be played by Schwarz’s son, cellist Julian, and Bargemusic’s president, violinist Mark Peskanov. Pianist Misha Dichter joins for a Schubert trio.

21CM Takeaway: Since stepping down from his post as music director of the Seattle Symphony, Gerard Schwarz has been able to focus more of his musical talents on composing. Between Schwarz’s music and its sublime players, this is a concert sure to satisfy.