The Well-Tempered Ear
15-year-old South Korean pianist wins the Cliburn Junior
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NOTE: More on the unpopular move by the UW-Madison Mead Witter of Music to kill off the 130-year-old, campus-community Choral Union will be coming shortly. The Ear as received some very interesting replies and information.
By Jacob Stockinger
Boy, are the kids ever good — and getting better!
A 15-year-old Korean boy — Seokyoung Hong (below) — has won the 2023 Cliburn International Junior Piano Competition.
He won the demanding contest with an outstanding performance of “Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini,” the technically challenging concerto by Sergei Rachmaninoff.
When out comes to pianists, South Korea is on a roll.
Hong’s triumph follows the impressive win by his fellow South Korean Yunchan Lim, 18, in the senior competition last year. He is the youngest ever pianist to win the prestigious competition.
Here is a link to the story on the British website Classical FM, with a sample of his playing in the finale of the concerto performance with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra:
https://www.classicfm.com/discover-music/instruments/piano/rachmaninov-2023-cliburn-junior-winner/
And in the YouTube video at the bottom you can hear Hong play his quarter-round solo recital of Rachmaninoff, Haydn, Chopin and Dutilleux.
The 14-year-old Chinese pianist Yufan Wu placed second. In third place was Jan Schulmeister, 16, of Czechs (Czech Republic).
And 21 of the 23 competitors, chosen out of 248 applicants from 44 countries, were Asian. Click on the profile to see their biographies and personal statements.
Asian players keep racking up wins in international music competitions. Here is a link to a recent blog post about why Asian musicians seem to dominate Western classical music right now:
You can hear other competitors in many rounds of recitals and concertos on YouTube if you put “Cliburn Junior 2023” in the search engine.
Check them out at all stages of the competition.
The Ear promises: You will be impressed.
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Classical music: Why couldn’t the New York Philharmonic find an American conductor? Meet Dutchman Jaap van Sweden, its next music director. Plus, Sunday Afternoon Live From the Chazen, is NEXT SUNDAY — NOT TODAY — and tonight’s concert of new music by UW-Madison professor Les Thimmig has been CANCELLED
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ALERT 1: The Sunday Afternoon Live performance by the Wisconsin Brass Quintet at the Chazen Museum of Art is NEXT SUNDAY, NOT TODAY. The Ear apologizes for the mistake.
ALERT 2: Tonight’s concert of new music for woodwinds and piano by UW-Madison professor Les Thimmig and pianist Jessica Johnson has been CANCELLED.
By Jacob Stockinger
This week the New York Philharmonic announced its next music director and conductor who will succeed Alan Gilbert, starting in 2018.
He is Jaap van Sweden (below, in a photo by Todd Heiser for The New York Times , a 55-year-old Dutchman, acclaimed for his technical prowess, who now is the music director of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra and the Hong Kong Philharmonic.
There are a lot of stories The Ear could link to.
Here is a short summary from NPR (National Public Radio) with audio clips of his conducting:
But he found the coverage by the New York Times quite comprehensive and, on balance, fair.
It featured a main news story with some important feature elements, including the critical acclaim van Sweden received for conducting music by Gustav Mahler and Ludwig van Beethoven. (Below, you can see van Sweden conducting the New York Philharmonic in 2014 in a photo by Hiroyuki Ito for The New York Times).
And it also featured a column or commentary by senior classical music critic Anthony Tommasini, who spoke in Madison on the occasion of the centennial of the Pro Arte Quartet that was held at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Music.
Overall, Tommasini’s notebook entry is a fine and insightful piece, even if it gets tiring to hear Tommasini climb up on his high horse and whine yet again about the neglect of new music and contemporary composers – which does not seem fully justified based on the record of this particular conductor.
Tommasini – who himself was trained as a composer — clearly would have preferred former Los Angeles Philharmonic conductor and composer Esa-Pekka Salonen (below) as the new music director and conductor. Hmmm – could they be friends?
For his part, it may sound provincial but The Ear is more concerned that the very same symphony orchestra that made history in American culture for hiring the first American-born and American-trained maestro – Leonard Bernstein (below), who also just happened to put Jaap van Sweden on the path to a conducting career – is once again turning to Europe rather to the many fine conducting talents in this country.
Why was no American conductor chosen. One who comes to mind is Marin Alsop of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra (below top) and the Sao Paulo State Symphony Orchestra in Brazil who is also a Bernstein protege. And then there is David Robertson of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and chief conductor of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra in Australia(below bottom).
Seems odd that Marin Alsop is good enough for Brazil and David Robertson is good enough for Australia — but not for New York?
The Ear wants to ask the Philharmonic’s board of directors: Do you really find all American conductors to be that inferior to Jaap van Sweden?
Maybe there were practical considerations — salary, contracts, availability, refusals — that made hiring an American conductor impossible. But the stories suggest that the choice of van Sweden was made early on and the fix seemed in. Too bad. It still seems like a great opportunity that was lost.
You can decide for yourself.
Here is the news story by Michael Cooper:
And here is Tommasini’s column:
Do you know the work of Jaap van Sweden?
Have you heard him in live or recorded performances?
What do you think?
Here is a sample of Jaap van Sweden conducting Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7 in a YouTube video at the bottom.
Leave your opinion in the COMMENT section.
The Ear wants to hear.
Tags: Alan Gilbert (conductor), Arts, Australia, Baltimore, Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, Beethoven, Brazil, China, Classical music, Dallas, Dallas Symphony Orchestra, David Robertson, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Gustav Mahler, Hong Kong, Hong Kong Philharmonic, Jaap van Sweden, Jacob Stockinger, Leonard Bernstein, Los Angeles, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Ludwig van Beethoven, Madison, Marin Alsop, Music, National Public Radio, New Music, New York City, New York Times, NPR, Orchestra, Pro Arte Quartet, Sao Paulo, Sao Paulo State Symphony Orchetsra, St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, Sydney, Sydney Symphony Orchestra, Symphony No. 5 (Beethoven), Symphony No. 7, Texas, The New York Times, United States, University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Music, University of Wisconsin–Madison, Wisconsin, YouTube
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The Well-Tempered Ear 
New York Times critics choose 10 online classical music concerts to stream in February, starting this Thursday
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PLEASE HELP THE EAR. IF YOU LIKE A CERTAIN BLOG POST, SPREAD THE WORD. FORWARD A LINK TO IT OR, SHARE IT or TAG IT (not just “Like” it) ON FACEBOOK. Performers can use the extra exposure to draw potential audience members to an event. And you might even attract new readers and subscribers to the blog.
By Jacob Stockinger
As they have done for previous months during the coronavirus pandemic, the classical music critics for The New York Times have named their top 10 choices of online concerts to stream in February, which is also Black History Month, starting this Thursday, Feb. 4.
Also predictably, they focus on new music – including a world premiere — new conductors and new composers, although “new” doesn’t necessarily mean young in this context.
For example, the conductor Fabio Luisi (below) is well known to fans of Richard Wagner and the Metropolitan Opera. But he is new to the degree that just last season he became the new conductor of Dallas Symphony Orchestra and its digital concert series.
Similarly, the Finnish composer Magnus Lindberg (below top, in a photo by Saara Vuorjoki) and the American composer Caroline Shaw (below bottom, in a photo by Kait Moreno), who has won a Pulitzer Prize, have both developed reputations for reliable originality.
But chances are good that you have not yet heard of the young avant-garde cellist Mariel Roberts (below top) or the conductor Jonathon Heyward (below bottom).
Nor, The Ear suspects, have you probably heard the names and music of composers Angélica Negrón (below top), who uses found sounds and Tyshawn Sorey (below bottom). (You can sample Negrón’s unusual music in the YouTube video at the bottom.)
Of course, you will also find offerings by well-known figures such as the Berlin Philharmonic and its Kurt Weill festival; conductor Alan Gilbert; pianists Daniil Trifonov and Steven Osborne; violinist Leonidas Kavakos; and the JACK Quartet.
Tried-and-true composers are also featured, including music by Beethoven, Schnittke, Weber, Ravel and Prokofiev. But where are Bach, Vivaldi, Telemann and Handel? No one seems to like Baroque music.
Here is a link to the events with links and descriptions. All times are Eastern: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/28/arts/music/classical-music-streaming.html
Do you have other virtual and online concerts to suggest? Please leave details in the Comment sections.
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