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THE OBERLIN CONSERVATORY OF MUSIC ANNOUNCES NINTH ANNUAL INTERNATIONAL PIANO COMPETITION AND FESTIVAL JULY 20 – 27
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10, 2003--The ninth annual Oberlin International Piano Competition and
Festival, held on the campus of the Oberlin Conservatory of Music at Oberlin
College and directed by Oberlin Professor of Pianoforte Robert Shannon,
will take place Sunday, July 20, through Sunday, July 27, 2003. This year,
for the first time, audience members attending the final round of the
competition on Saturday, July 26, will be able to vote for their favorite
performer.
The festival faculty–composed of renowned professors from the Oberlin
Conservatory of Music and distinguished guest artists–will offer
private lessons, master classes, recitals, and lectures that will provide
teacher and student participants with intensive and in-depth opportunities
to expand their knowledge of music history, theory, and pedagogy, as well
as the vital connection of those three elements to on-stage performance.
The competition is for pianists between the ages of 13 and 18. Some events,
including all festival recitals and all rounds of the competition, are
free and open to the public.
Some 35 young musicians from cities throughout the United States and Asia
have been accepted for the competition following a preliminary taped audition
round. Of that group, 12 to 16 pianists will be selected from a first
performance round and will advance to the third round of competition.
Up to six pianists remaining after the third round will perform in the
finals, which will be broadcast live from Warner Concert Hall on WCLV
104.9 FM and wclv.com, Cleveland’s classical music radio station,
beginning at 7 p.m. Saturday, July 26. Robert Conrad, co-founder and president
of WCLV and host of the station's long-running national broadcasts of
The Cleveland Orchestra, will serve as host of the finals concert, which
is free and open to the public.
Guest judges for the final round of the competition and guest faculty
for the festival are Hans Boepple and Robert Sherman of the United States
and Ekaterina Murina of Russia. Final round judges from Oberlin are Professors
of Pianoforte Alvin Chow, Monique Duphil, and Sanford Margolis. The judges
expect to award cash prizes ranging from $4,000 for the first-prize winner
to $100 for the sixth-place competitor. In addition, audience members
attending the finals concert will cast their vote for the "Audience
Favorite," which carries a cash prize of $100.
More information about the competition and festival is available on Oberlin’s
web site (www.oberlin.edu/con) or by calling Anna Hoffmann at 440-775-8044.
The Oberlin Conservatory of Music, founded in 1865, is the oldest continuously
operating conservatory in the United States, and is renowned internationally
for the intensive professional training opportunities it provides to aspiring
professional musicians. Its students and alumni have won prizes in numerous
international piano competitions, including the Van Cliburn, the Fryderyk
Chopin, the Queen Elisabeth, the Arthur Rubinstein, the Walter W. Naumberg,
the University of Maryland, the Kosciuszko Foundation Chopin Piano Competition,
and the Concorsco Pianis-Otico Internazionale F. Busoni Competition. The
Conservatory’s collection of 1,700 period and modern musical instruments
includes 199 Steinway grand pianos.
Ninth Annual Oberlin International Piano Festival and Competition
Guest Faculty
Hans Boepple
Pianist Hans Boepple has appeared as guest soloist with many distinguished
American orchestras, among them the Denver, Long Beach, and Oakland symphonies,
the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Minnesota Orchestra, and the Metropolitan
Opera House Orchestra. Also active in solo recital for more than 30 years,
he has been listed on the Steinway International Artist Roster since 1982.
Awarded first prize in the J.S. Bach International Competition (Washington,
D.C.), Boepple’s other awards include six Coleman Chamber Music Awards
(Los Angeles), the Kosciuszko Chopin Competition, and the MTNA National
Collegiate Competition. National Public Radio and Voice of America have
broadcast his performances, and he has recorded the complete Bagatelles
by Beethoven for Orion Master Recordings. A former member of the piano
faculty at Indiana University, Boepple has been professor of music at
Santa Clara University since 1978 and chair of the music department since
1995. In demand as an adjudicator, lecturer, and master class clinician,
he continues to balance his performance activities with those of a dedicated
and successful teacher; his students have won more than 100 state, national,
and international awards.
Ekaterina Murina
Awarded the title "Honored Artist of Russia" in 1981, Ekaterina
Murina is chief professor and chair of piano at the St. Petersburg Conservatory,
the oldest musical institution of higher education in Russia. In a repertoire
that ranges from Bach to Rachmaninoff, her performances continue the traditions
of the St. Petersburg Conservatory, where she also studied. Her first
performance in St. Petersburg’s Large Philharmonic Hall took place
in 1954 with the orchestra of Yevgeny Mravinsky. In 1956, she left the
special music school of the Conservatory with a medal for excellent studies
and entered the piano faculty, where she studied with the outstanding
pianist P. Sirebryakov. In 1961, she graduated from the Conservatory and
became a winner of All-Russia and All-Soviet Union music competitions
(I and II awards). In 1959, she achieved III prize in the International
Piano Competition. In 1964, she completed the Conservatory’s postgraduate
course and was appointed as a teacher. During her many years at the St.
Petersburg Conservatory, Murina has taught a number of famous musicians,
laureates of international competitions, concert pianists, teachers at
conservatories, accompanists of theaters and operas, and soloists of philharmonic
societies. Her students have included Sergey Szhepkin, Veronica Reznikovskaya,
Ji Min Lee (South Korea), Stanislav Gallina (Czecholslovakia), Viktoria
Lakisova, Yuhan Langerpest (Finland), and Bian Men (China). Murina judges
music competitions in Russia and abroad and has given master classes at
conservatories in Russia, Germany, Finland, South Korea, and Scotland.
She gives open lessons for delegations of teachers in such countries as
the United States, Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Korea.
Guest Artists’ Bios . . .
Robert Sherman
Broadcaster, writer, teacher, and radio personality Robert Sherman is
probably best known for his work at WQXR, the classical music radio station
of The New York Times, where he has been program director and executive
producer and where he is currently senior consultant. For 23 years he
presided over the popular program The Listening Room. He continues
to present The McGraw-Hill Companies’ Young Artists Showcase
for the station, and has included on many recent occasions student performances
taped in concert at Oberlin. He has hosted the Avery Fisher Career Grant
Award presentations at Lincoln Center and the annual Martin Luther King
Jr. birthday specials from the Harlem School of the Arts since their inception.
His multiple award-winning folk series, Woody's Children, is heard
in New York on National Public Radio’s WFUV. On the faculties of
Fordham University, the Juilliard School, and the Manhattan School of
Music, Sherman has given seminars at Oberlin, Yale, the Eastman School,
the University of Arizona, and the Mannes College of Music, where he is
also a member of the board of directors. A former music critic for The
New York Times, Sherman continues to write music columns for the Westchester
and Connecticut sections of the paper. He published two books with Victor
Borge, is the co-author of The Complete Idiot's Guide to Classical
Music, and with his brother, Alexander Sherman, compiled a pictorial
biography of their mother, the renowned pianist Nadia Reisenberg. He is
on the advisory boards of many major cultural organizations and serves
them variously as pre-concert lecturer, competition judge, panel moderator,
and fund-raising emcee. Increasingly active as a concert narrator, he
has performed with such ensembles as the Canadian Brass, the United States
Military Academy (West Point) Band, the Hudson Valley Philharmonic and
Philharmonia Virtuosi. Among his many performances are the world premieres
of works written especially for him by Seymour Barab, William Mayer, Issachar
Miron, and Soong Fu-Yuan.
About the Oberlin
International Festival and Competition
This gathering of international members of the pianistic community has
at its core a fundamental premise: those who attend do so because they
care deeply about the piano, its repertoire, and the future of live piano
concerts in our culture. The festival – designed to bring educational
opportunities to young and old, students and private piano teachers alike
– features a week long banquet of lectures, master classes, private
instruction, and nightly concerts that complement the piano competition.
The director of the Oberlin International Piano Competition and Festival,
Robert Shannon, is professor of pianoforte at Oberlin, chair of the department,
and a member of the Oberlin faculty since 1976.
Since its inception nine years ago, the festival and competition has included
noted pedagogues and performers from around the world. Notable artists
and teachers who have judged and taught here include Soo-Jung Shin from
Seoul, Korea; Che Chen Wang from Shanghai; Menahem Pressler, Yoheved Kaplinsky,
Martin Canin, and Jerome Lowenthal. Prominent teachers of younger students,
such as Emilio del Rosario, Gary Amano, and John Weems, are also invited
to lecture and judge.
This year, 35 invited competitors from Asia and North America ranging
in age from 13 to 18 will spend an intensive week performing works by
Beethoven, Haydn, Mendelssohn, Mozart, and Schubert in the preliminary
rounds of the Piano Competition. Of these 35 young pianists, no more than
six will survive the grueling examination. They will play for judges who
have selected winners from some of the most prestigious piano competitions
in the world – members of the piano faculty at the Oberlin Conservatory
of Music at Oberlin College and distinguished visiting artists and pedagogues
from New York, California, and Russia.
Concert Schedule
Programs and artists are subject to change.
Faculty Recital
Monique Duphil
Sunday, July 20
8 p.m. Warner Concert Hall
Works by Beethoven and Aram Khachaturian
Faculty Recital
Peter Takács
Monday, July 21
8 p.m. Warner Concert Hall
Works by Beethoven
Faculty Recital
Robert Shannon and Haewon Song
Tuesday, July 22
8 p.m. Warner Concert Hall
Works by George Crumb, Liszt, and Ravel
Faculty Recital
David Breitman
Wednesday, July 23
8:30 p.m. Kulas Recital Hall
Works by Schubert
Guest Recital
Representatives of Yamaha Pianos
Thursday, July 24
6:30 p.m. Kulas Recital Hall
Program tba
Faculty Recital
Sedmara Zakarian
Thursday, July 24
8:30 p.m. Warner Concert Hall
Works by Chopin
Semifinalists’ Concert
Friday, July 25
6:30 p.m. Warner Concert Hall
Guest Recital
Ekaterina Murina
Friday, July 25
8:30 p.m. Warner Concert Hall
Works by Rachmaninoff, Tchaikovsky,
Prokofiev, Beethoven, and Chopin
Competition Finals Concert
Saturday, July 26
7 p.m. Warner Concert Hall
This concert will be broadcast live on WCLV 104.9 FM and on wclv.com.
Media Contact: Marci Janas
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