Musical America: Conductor Gerard Schwarz Pays Tribute to Benaroya Hall at 20

Musical America
Gerard Schwarz

On the 20th anniversary of the first concert at Benaroya Hall in Seattle, Maestro Schwarz reflects on the opening night concert among other events during the hall’s first few weeks. Read his reflection here.

International Piano: Nicolas Namoradze wins 2018 Honens Competition

International Piano
Lucy Thraves

Georgian pianist Nicolas Namoradze, 26, has won the top prize of $100,000 (CAD) at the 2018 Honens international piano competition.

Following his Honens win, Namoradze will have the opportunity to perform in some of the world’s leading concert houses with major orchestras. He will also have access to professional management and recording opportunities.

Read more here.

Gramophone: Nancy Zhou Wins Shanghai Isaac Stern International Violin Competition

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

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

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

Video Preview of Mirror in Mirror

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…

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

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

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

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