Gramophone: Nancy Zhou Wins Shanghai Isaac Stern International Violin Competition
The winner of the Shanghai Isaac Stern International Violin Competition – which carries the highest monetary prize of any music competition of its type – has been won by American violinist Nancy Zhou.
Gramophone
Martin Cullingford
The winner of the Shanghai Isaac Stern International Violin Competition – which carries the highest monetary prize of any music competition of its type – has been won by American violinist Nancy Zhou.
Zhou, aged 25, receives US$100,000, as well as performance opportunities with a number of orchestras.
Second prize, and $50,000, went to Olga Šroubková from the Czech Republic, and third (worth $25,000) to Ukrainian Diana Tishchenko. Šroubková also won the prize for best performance of a Chinese work, Qigang Chen’s La joie de la souffrance. The jury included both performers and executives, including violinists Maxim Vengerov and Augustin Dumay, and artist manager Martin Campbell-White.
Read more here.
Nancy Zhou’s Final Round Performance with the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra led by Michael Stern
Violinist: Interview with Composer Qigang Chen: 'La Joie de la souffrance' Violin Concerto
"The violin's expressive capabilities have developed over centuries, with the accumulation of many very delicate techniques," Chen said, speaking with a group of reporters at his hotel in Shanghai about his new violin concerto, "La Joie de la souffrance" ("The Joy of Suffering.").
Violinist.com
Laurie Niles
Of all the instruments, the violin has perhaps the widest capacity to express human emotion, said France-based Chinese composer Qigang Chen.
"The violin's expressive capabilities have developed over centuries, with the accumulation of many very delicate techniques," Chen said, speaking with a group of reporters at his hotel in Shanghai about his new violin concerto, "La Joie de la souffrance" ("The Joy of Suffering.").
"No other instrument can compare," he said. "There are so many variations you can achieve with the violin that are difficult or impossible to achieve with the voice, or with brass and wind instruments."
Read more here.
Pizzicato: 35 Years of Shanghai Quartet: Beethoven forever
35 years ago, one of today's foremost chamber ensembles, the Shanghai Quartet, was formed at the Shanghai Conservatory. Since that year they have played around 3000 concerts and recorded 35 albums. Remy Franck met First violinist and founding member Weigang Li in his native Shanghai.
Pizzicato
Remy Franck
35 years ago, one of today's foremost chamber ensembles, the Shanghai Quartet, was formed at the Shanghai Conservatory. Since that year they have played around 3000 concerts and recorded 35 albums. Remy Franck met First violinist and founding member Weigang Li in his native Shanghai.
As many Chinese and, more generally, Asian violinists, you studied in the United States….
Yes, but I made the major part of my studies in China, if you don’t consider the fact that studying does never stop. I was born into a family of well-known musicians in Shanghai. Both of my parents were professional violinists and my maternal grand-father was also a violinist. He was born in 1908 and was one of the earliest professional classical violinists in China. I began studying the violin with my parents when I was five and went on to attend the Shanghai Conservatory at 14. Three years later, in 1981, when I was seventeen, I was chosen to go to study for one year at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music through a cultural exchange program between the sister cities of Shanghai and San Francisco. In 1985, I graduated from the Shanghai Conservatory and went on studying again – for my finishing touch – in the United States. But by then, we had already created the Quartet.
Your quartet played in the Stern competition, you having been replaced by a candidate. Was this important for your ensemble?
It is very important for the competition to have this chamber music round. For us it was enriching too. We had interesting ideas which were brought in by the contestants. For me, obviously, it was strange to sit in the Jury and not be part of the ensemble. It was even more astonishing, how flexible my colleagues were when one of the young candidates asked for something very unusual for us. I told myself: ‘Oh, they can do that’. And I am not sure, my colleagues would have agreed if I proposed such a point (laughs).
Read more here.
Anne Akiko Meyers Releases 37th Album, Mirror in Mirror, for Pre-Order
Anne Akiko Meyers will release Mirror in Mirror on Avie on September 7th. Now available for pre-order through Amazon and iTunes, this album features compositions written or arranged for Ms. Meyers by Jakub Ciupiński, John Corigliano, Philip Glass, Morten Lauridsen, and Arvo Pärt, and also includes Ravel’s Tzigane, in the original luthéal version.
Anne Akiko Meyers will release Mirror in Mirror on Avie on September 7th. Now available for pre-order through Amazon and iTunes, this album features compositions written or arranged for Ms. Meyers by Jakub Ciupiński, John Corigliano, Philip Glass, Morten Lauridsen, and Arvo Pärt, and also includes Ravel’s Tzigane, in the original luthéal version.
“Almost a decade in the making, Mirror in Mirror is in many ways my most personal recording,” Ms. Meyers stated. “With the exception of Ravel, I collaborated with all of the composers or arrangers on this album and have created several new masterpieces to add to the violin repertoire. The music on this release is reflective and spiritual and captures the exquisitely beautiful array of colors of the violin.”
The release includes Arvo Pärt’s iconic Spiegel im Spiegel (Mirror in Mirror), Philip Glass’s hauntingly beautiful Metamorphosis II in a new arrangement for violin and piano, John Corigliano’s Lullaby for Natalie (written for the birth of Anne’s first daughter), the Japanese traditional song, Edo Lullaby, arranged for violin and electronics by Jakub Ciupiński, and Morten Lauridsen’s spellbinding O Magnum Mysterium for violin and orchestra. Other works include the original luthéal version of Maurice Ravel’s Tzigane, Pärt’s mesmerizing Fratres, and Ciupiński’s Wreck of the Umbria for violin and electronics written in 2009 for Ms. Meyers.
Anne Akiko Meyers is one of today’s most popular performing and recording artists. Her recent recording of Rautavaara’s Fantasia was the only classical instrumental work to be selected on NPR’s 100 best songs of 2017. Meyers’ Vivaldi and American Masters albums topped the Billboard charts, making her the top-selling traditional classical instrumental soloist of 2014.
Highlights of Anne’s upcoming season include four performances celebrating the opening of the new Arvo Pärt Centre in Estonia this October and a Great Performances television broadcast of “Schindler’s List” in a special tribute which honors John Williams. These appearances are by exclusive special invitation of Maestros Pärt and Williams. In December, she plays the European premiere of Rautavaara’s Fantasia and Mason Bates’ Violin Concerto with the Helsinki Philharmonic in a worldwide live-streamed performance, and in 2019, Anne returns to Japan to premiere Rautavaara’s Fantasia and tours with guitarist, Jason Vieaux throughout the United States.
Please visit www.anneakikomeyers.com for more info.
Pizzicato: Ahead of SISIVC: Remembering Isaac Stern…
A few days before leaving for Shanghai to attend the final of the Isaac Stern Violin Competition, impossible for me to not remember the only and highly memorable concert with Isaac Stern in Luxembourg.
Pizzicato
Remy Franck
A few days before leaving for Shanghai to attend the final of the Isaac Stern Violin Competition, impossible for me to not remember the only and highly memorable concert with Isaac Stern in Luxembourg. It took place in the early Seventies at the Grand Theatre with Music Director Louis de Froment conducting the RTL Symphony Orchestra and Isaac Stern playing the Brahms Violin Concerto. I remember an extraordinary spontaneous and dynamic performance with great textures from the solo violin and all the meaning and intensity the music deserved. Stern’s playing not only showed a great depth of understanding of the composer but also a stunning ability to translate the composer’s most personal meaning to the audience.
In 2018, with the second edition of the The Shanghai Isaac Stern International Violin Competition (SISIVC) one of Stern’s most important abilities – besides his musicality – is continued: the support of young musicians.
It is widely known that he helped Itzhak Perlman, Pinchas Zukerman and Shlomo Mintz at the beginning of their career. As Peter Pastreich said in a tribute to Stern: « There were many other young music students who arrived in New York without friends or money who came to study with DeLay. Isaac found friends of his they could live with, sent them to his dentist at his expense, got them instruments and bows, and most important, listened to them play. Dorothy once said to me, ‘People know that when there’s any really talented kid, Isaac will want to know. He’ll always find time to listen. I love Isaac.' »
Read more here.
I Care If You Listen: 5 Questions to Yuga Cohler
Yuga Cohler has garnered attention as a conductor for brilliant performances and an organizer of highly inquisitive, and at times bold, performance projects. His membership in the Asia/America New Music Institute (AANMI) an organization dedicated “to promoting new music relationship between Asia and the Americas,” is yet another instantiation of these qualities.
I Care If You Listen
Jacob Kopcienski
Yuga Cohler has garnered attention as a conductor for brilliant performances and an organizer of highly inquisitive, and at times bold, performance projects. His membership in the Asia/America New Music Institute (AANMI) an organization dedicated “to promoting new music relationship between Asia and the Americas,” is yet another instantiation of these qualities.
Featuring the AANMI Los Angeles ensemble under Cohler’s direction, AANMI’s recent debut album, Transcendent, showcases works by member composers across Asia and North America performed by violinist Ryu Goto, bass-baritone Davóne Tines. We asked five questions to Cohler to discover more about this project as well as its place within the transcultural mission of the AANMI.
To read the interview, click here.
Classical Post: Mahler in the Mountains
President and CEO of Grand Teton Music Festival, Andrew Palmer Todd, writes of his music development from childhood and Mahler at GTMF.
Classical Post
Andrew Palmer Todd
I grew up in rural Ohio, surrounded by thousands upon thousands of acres of corn and soybeans. Fields vast enough that you could legitimately get lost as a young person, and sometimes I actually did. But from a very early age, boxed in by this bucolic Midwestern setting though I was, I dreamt of mountains. I happily remember drawing pictures of mountains for hours on end. My favorite TV show was that short-lived 1970s show set in the mountains, Grizzly Adams. I mean, I really thought everyone should grow up and have a pet grizzly bear named “Ben”!
There were no musicians in my family. The only thing remotely musical about my family was my grandfather’s 1914 silver Conn trombone. That said, music spoke to me from very early on. I remember being 6 or 7 years old and rushing up to the choir loft to watch the church organist play the postlude each Sunday. The sounds of the pipe organ. Those four manuals. The pedal board. All of those organ stops and buttons. It was mesmerizing.
Eventually, my parents did two things for their young son, captivated as I was by mountains and music. We embarked on the compulsory family vacation to Yellowstone, complete in a faux wood-paneled station Chrysler LeBaron station wagon towing a stylish Jayco camper to bask in the majesty of the mountains. And more importantly, they supported my dream to learn the piano.
Read more here.
The Strad: $100,000 Shanghai Isaac Stern Competition Enters Semi-finals
Twelve young violinists remain in contention for the biggest prize pot available in any competition, whittled down from the 36 invited to the live rounds.
The Strad
Twelve young violinists remain in contention for the biggest prize pot available in any competition, whittled down from the 36 invited to the live rounds.
Shanghai Isaac Stern Violin Competition 2018 semi-finalists and jury
The Shanghai Isaac Stern International Violin Competition has announced the 12 semi-finalists of its 2018 edition.
They are:
- Diana Tishchenko, Ukraine
- Alex Zhou, United States
- Arsenis Selalmazidis, Greece
- Chang Yuan Ting, Canada
- Nancy Zhou, United States
- Olga Šroubková, Czech Republic
- Quanshuai Li, China
- Jia Yi Chen, China
- Sophia Su, United States
- Yige Chen, China
- Yurina Arai, Japan
- Yun Tang, China
In total 36 candidates were invited to the live rounds, which started on 10 August, chosen by the pre-selection jury from 174 applicants.
The biennial competition, in its second edition, is offering a $100,000 top prize, $50,000 second prize and $25,000 third prize. A further $10,000 prize is offered for the best performance of a Chinese work – this year Qigang Chen’s La joie de la souffrance.
The first edition of the competition was won by Japanese violinist Mayu Kishima in 2016.
The semi-final round begins on Saturday 18 August with the string quartet session.
Watch: Mayu Kishima gives Shanghai Isaac Stern Violin Competition winning performance
2018 Shanghai Isaac Stern International Violin Competition Launches
The Organisation Committee held a press conference on August 8, 2018 to announce that the second edition of the Shanghai Isaac Stern International Violin Competition will take place from then until September 1 in Shanghai. In addition, there was also a draw for the order of the quarter finalists.
The success of the 2016 Shanghai Isaac Stern International Violin Competition raised worldwide coverage, and, for the first time, demonstrated that a Chinese music competition is just as sophisticated as any other at the global level. The Organisation Committee held a press conference on August 8, 2018 to announce that the second edition of the competition will take place from then until September 1 in Shanghai. In addition, there was also a draw for the order of the quarter finalists.
Stellar Judging Panel
The Jury Committee has been expanded from thirteen to fifteen members, and features a star-studded lineup of pedagogues, violinists, and industry leaders to fairly evaluate the contestants in a variety of ways including technique, interpretation, and performing experiences.
The jury – co-chaired by conductor David Stern, son of Isaac Stern, and Professor Vera Tsu Weiling who has sat on the judging panels of many leading international violin competitions – is comprised of internationally-acclaimed violinists Maxim Vengerov and Augustin Dumay; leading figures of China’s violin industry Lina Yu and Siqing Lu; the founding member and first violinist of Shanghai Quartet, Weigang Li; the founding member of Emerson Quartet, Philip Setzer; the former concertmaster of the New York Philharmonic, Glenn Dicterow; and concertmaster of Munich Philharmonic Sreten Krstic. The jury also includes world-renowned pedagogues Zakhar Bron, Dora Schwarzberg, and Daniel Heifetz; and two industry veterans, the founding member of the classical artists management company Askonas Holt, Martin Campbell-White, and the current programming director of Philharmonie de Paris, Emmanuel Hondré.
Renowned Collaborative Musicians to Help Improve Musical Quality
David Stern at the SISIVC 2018 Opening Press Conference
The repertoire of this edition provides a greater focus on interpreting and understanding the musical spirit rather than merely technique, aiming to evolve the candidates from ‘soloists’ to ‘musicians.’
Additionally, the works include more diversified music styles and forms of performances. Each contestant will perform four sets of works during the Quarter-Finals. Then, for comprehensive assessment, the Semi-Finals will include even more diversified repertoire and consist of three sections – the string quartet in which contestants will perform with Yi-Wen Jiang, Honggang Li, and Nicholas Tzavaras from the Shanghai Quartet; sonatas and Kreisler’s works in which contestants will collaborate with invited young pianists Zhen Chen, Yingjia Xue, and Qiuning Huang; and a Mozart Concerto with an originally-composed cadenza. In addition to including a concerto of choice, which is conventional in competitions, the Final Round will include the violin concerto, La Joie de la Souffrance, by the renowned Chinese composer Qigang Chen, which was commissioned by SISIVC, among others. The piece will be conducted by David Stern, Music Director of Kansas City Symphony Orchestra and son of Isaac Stern.
Quarter-Finalist Order is Set, Contestants Getting Ready
Starting from the announcement of this edition’s competition on September 9, 2017 until the application deadline on January 31, 2018, the number of applicants increased by a large margin compared to the first edition. Over 90% of the applicants have won prizes from top-level competitions and more than half are students or graduates from international top-class music schools. Twenty-seven contestants from eleven countries and regions will participate in the Quarter-Finals.
The 27 SISIVC 2018 Quarter-Finalists drew traditional fans to determine performance order
It is widely agreed that the first edition of the Competition has established extensive awareness and influence on the classical music world for its professional competition system, prominent judges, fair selection, innovative schedule, outstanding contestants, and distinctive features, which lays the foundation for this edition.
The 2018 competition will once again seek nominations for the Isaac Stern Award – Human Spirit Award, which provides recognition to any individual from around the world who has made an outstanding contribution to humanity through the medium of music.
From Competition to a Professional Career on Bigger Stages
Besides the USD $100,000 prize presented to the champion, the largest music monetary prize of any music competition in the world, the Competition puts great effort on helping soloists become musicians over the long term on their road to professional musicianship. The Competition also introduces the winners to world-class agencies, recording opportunities, and facilitates collaborations with top-level national and international orchestras such as the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra, China Philharmonic, Guangzhou Symphony, Melbourne Symphony, and Sydney Symphony, in order to open the door to a professional career and to provide them a bigger stage.
New Commission for the Final Round to Promote Chinese Music
This year’s competition will continue the tradition of spreading Chinese music, working together with China Pacific Insurance, the principal sponsor of the Stern Competition. La Joie de la Souffrance violin concerto by renowned Chinese composer Qigang Chen is a required work for the final round. It was specially planned by Shanghai Symphony Orchestra and is co-commissioned by Beijing Music Festival, Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse, and New Jersey Symphony Orchestra.
According to Chen, this work embraces both eastern and western cultures, dives in-depth into the meaning of life, and poses a great challenge to the performer’s ability to analyze and understand the music. By tapping into the global influence of the Competition, Chinese works such as this one have a chance to reach a wider audience - faster. Including a commission by a Chinese composer also embodies the concept of Chinese music as a more effective approach to communicating the Chinese culture with the rest of the world – the idea proposed by Long Yu, President of the Organization Committee, during the initial stages of the establishment of the competition.
To watch the #SISIVC2018 livestream, visit: http://shcompetition.amadeus.tv/ or https://www.facebook.com/shcompetition/
To learn more about the Shanghai Isaac Stern Violin Competition, visit: http://shcompetition.com/en/index.html
Violin Channel: Grand Teton Music Festival Insta Takeover
Violin Channel
The Violin Channel recently caught up with the Grand Teton Music Festival for a behind-the-scenes Instagram takeover – direct from Jackson Hole, Wyoming, United States, with conductor Donald Runnicles, composer Sean Shepherd and cellist Johannes Moser.
See more highlight posts here.