About the Oberlin Concerto Competition

Each fall, Conservatory students compete for a few hotly- contested performance spots on the Oberlin Orchestra and Oberlin Chamber Orchestra's season schedule. For the 2000-2001 competition, six winners--all seniors--were selected from 19 finalists. They are: pianist Angelina Gadeliya, born in the Republic of Georgia; violist Maiya Papach, from LaGrange, Illinois; pianist Fan Yang, from Huainan, in China's Anhui province; and, from Seoul, South Korea, violinist Sungmin Yoo; pianist Sungha Lee; and violinist Hee-Guen Song.

The jury for the competition represented one faculty member from each performance division, one faculty member from a non-performance division, and an outside adjudicator. This year's judges included Peter Slowik, professor of viola; Lorraine Manz, associate professor of singing; Paul Polivnick, music director of the Oberlin Conservatory Orchestras; Lydia Frumkin, professor of pianoforte; Claudia Macdonald, associate professor of musicology; and James Caldwell, professor of oboe. William Hebert, recently retired piccoloist with the Cleveland Orchestra, served as outside adjudicator.

"It was obvious to me why each of the 19 finalists had advanced from their rigorous competition in division preliminaries," says Slowik. "Each finalist performed with high technical achievement and a distinctive individual personality and flair."