Photo credit: Janet Graham photo courtesy of the Fischoff Competition. Photo I.D. (L. to R.): Clarinetist Boris Allakhverdyan, pianist Anastasia Dedik, and violinist Farhad Hudiyev.

The Prima Trio has won the coveted 2007 Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition’s Grand Prize ($7,500) and the Gold Medal ($3,000) in the prestigious competition’s Senior String Division. The finals round and a grand-prize winner’s concert and reception were held in Leighton Concert Hall at the DeBartolo Performing Arts Center on the campus of the University of Notre Dame in Indiana. The competition was held May 11 -13, 2007.

The Prima Trio — Farhad Hudiyev ‘08 (violin), Boris Allakhverdyan ’08 (clarinet), and Anastasia Dedik AD ’06 (piano) — emerged from a competitive field of 47 ensembles from across the U.S. and around the world to capture the top prizes. Hudiyev, from Turkmenistan, studies with Professor of Violin Milan Vitek. Vitek also began coaching the ensemble in September 2006, and continued through May 2007. Allakhverdyan, of Russia, is a student of Associate Professor of Clarinet Richard Hawkins; Dedik, also from Russia, earned an artist diploma at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music following studies with Professor of Piano Sedmara Z. Rutstein.

In addition to prize money, the trio will participate in a winner’s tour of the Midwestern United States in October, and will participate in the Emilia Romagna Festival in Italy in 2008.

“We are extraordinarily proud of the Prima Trio and I’m very pleased to offer them my heartiest congratulations,” says Dean of the Conservatory David H. Stull.

The Prima Trio joins an exclusive rank of ensembles formed at Oberlin to have won the Fischoff Competition. Its predecessors are the acclaimed new-music sextet eighth blackbird, all of whom were Oberlin students when they formed their ensemble, and the Miró Quartet, whose first violinist and cellist were Oberlin students when the group was born. Past Fischoff winners whose personnel included Oberlin-trained musicians when they won are the Jupiter, Fry Street, and Pacifica quartets.

For the Fischoff’s senior quarterfinals in the string division, held on Friday, May 11, each of the 12 ensembles submitted a program at least 40 minutes in length. The quarterfinal jurors choose 20-minutes’ worth of select movements or segments from this repertoire for them to perform. The Prima Trio’s complete repertoire consisted of Aram Khachaturian’s Trio for Clarinet, Violin, and Piano; Darius Milhaud’s Suite for Clarinet, Violin, and Piano, Op. 157b; and Peter Schickele’s Serenade for Three.

After the trio advanced with five other ensembles to the semifinals round, held on Saturday, a new set of jurors repeated the process, albeit with a different combination of movements and segments. There were two ensembles left standing by Sunday’s finals. The Prima Trio was announced as winner of both the grand and gold prizes that afternoon, and performed their repertoire, in its entirety, at a grand-prize winner’s concert held that evening.

Jurors for the Senior Division were violist Heidi Castleman of the Juilliard School and the Perlman Music Program; cellist Norman Fischer ’71 of the Shepherd School of Music at Rice University and the Concord String Quartet; pianist Evelyne Brancart, Chair of the Piano Department at Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music; hornist Douglas Hill, Professor of Music at the University of Wisconsin; saxophonist Donald Sinta, Earl V. Moore Professor of Saxophone at the University of Michigan; and tubist Kathleen Aylsworth Brantigan of the Denver Brass.

The Fischoff Competition is the nation’s largest chamber music competition and attracts the finest young instrumentalists from across the country and around the world. Joseph E. Fischoff and the South Bend Chamber Music Society founded it in 1973 as a way of encouraging young people to pursue chamber music study and performance. Now in its 34th year, the competition has grown from 6 to 48 participating ensembles in both wind and string categories of three to six performers. An average of 22 different nationalities are represented each year by foreign nationals from South America, Asia, and Europe. Fischoff is the only national chamber music competition with both senior and junior divisions (age 18 and younger).