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| Challenging Performances in Cincinnati |
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| LOCATION: 460 Fleming Road, Cincinnati, OH 45231 Concerts are at 3 pm on Sundays For more info contact: Darijus Spakauskas: (416) 886-6027 darijuss@yahoo.com Shiau-uen Ding: (513) 207-0945 ssding@yahoo.com Joan Wolking: (513) 825-6052 vla@fuse.net FEATURING ARTISTS 2008-2009: October 5, 2008 - Oyvind Sundsvalen, piano November 2 - Joe Backer, piano December 7 - Sonia Rodrigues, soprano, Moises Ruiz de Gauna, piano January 13, 2009 - Haeri Suh, piano February 8 - CCM Guitar Ensemble, Clare Callahan, Director March 1 - Meng-Chun Lin, soprano April 5 - Arturo Araya, cello May 3 - Wesley Lawrence, tenor |
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| Everett N. Jones, III, Piano Soloist at Challenging Performances Concert, November 3 Everett Jones was born in West Philadelphia and showed musical talent and interest at three. His grandmother pushed his early training. With help from Charles Petteway, he undertook studies at Rowan University which led to Bachelor and Master of Music degrees. He is in Cincinnati at CCM working on a Doctorate in piano performance with the Pridinoffs. Several awards have come his way. Jones has a muscular, percussive piano technique. Jones chose a program of various shorter works. He started with two of Johann S. Bach?s teaching pieces written for his children; the Little Prelude in C, BWV 924 from the Little Clavier Book for Wilhelm Friedman Bach, and the Little Prelude in a minor BWV 942, from the Second Little Clavier Book for Anna Magdalena Bach He moved next to the music of Willima Grant Still, the first successful Black composer who received most of his training in Ohio at Wilberforce and Oberlin. Among his earliest piano compositions, and still most popular, is his Three Visions of 1936. The three movements, titled Dark Horsemen, Summerland, and Radiant Pinnacle, are based on visions of the four horsemen of the Apocalypse, and a new beginning, leading to the Eternal Kingdom. Everett played it as a tone poem, breathing life into its darkest corners. His technique showed him most effective in the darkest passages. Works by Franz Liszt were the centerpiece of the recital. He revolutionized writing for the piano; besides some fiendishly difficult to play studies, he also wrote some very simple works, in addition to the revolutionary programmatic ones. He chose three, the Transcendental Etude No. 1 (preludio), the Concert Etude No. 3 (un sospiro), and Funerailles, With technique to spare, the etudes were tossed off with ease in brilliant if somewhat subdued fashion. Invocation, followed by Dance I and Dance II. It is successful without being truly memorable. Invocation is nostalgic while the Dances incorporate hints of his experience as a pianist in a jazz band. It was a sympathetic, deeply felt, performance. Works by Federico Mompou followed. Mompou, a Spaniard, wrote in a somewhat impressionist form ala Debussy colored by the primitiveness of Eric Satie. Most of his works are piano miniatures, usually involving popular themes, with a minimum of modulation or development. Many are pastels of extraordinarily haunting, exquisite melancholy elegance. Jones played No. 6 and No. 7 of the Canciones y Danzas (Songs and Dances). They lost some of their charm as a result of the emphasis on their rhythms at the expense of the songs. For his final work, Jones substituted Secrets from Mompou's Character Pieces, in place of the scheduled Etude Op. 25, No. 10, of Chopin. Secrets, conceived in a dream, seemed here to be conceived in a very troublled dream indeed, if not a nightmare. Victor G, Soukup, Nov 5, 2004 South African Piano Duo Opens New Challenging Performances Concert Season The 2004 -2005 season of Challenging Performances concerts started on October 3rd with rousing performances of works for two pianos by Brahms, Rachmaninov, and Ravel, played by the Westhuizen Piano Duo. They are Pierre van der Westhuizen and Sophia Grobler, husband and wife. Hailing from South Africa, they are in Cincinnati at CCM, working on doctorate degrees. Singly each has won many honors in competitions throughout the world and they demonstrated that they consider each other as equals by exchanging the primary and secondary piano parts at the start of each work. They began with Johannes Brahms (1883-1897), Variations on a Theme of Josef Haydn, Op 56b, better known in its orchestral version. With pause only long enough to acknowledge the warm applause of the audience, they exchanged primary/secondary piano roles, and launched into the two piano version of one of the towering orchestral masterpieces of the 20th century, the Symphonic Dances, Op. 45 of Sergei Rachmaninoff. The Westhuizens played the first two movements of this longish three movement work. I was overwhelmed by the performance. Not only was it rhythmically powerful but it managed to evoke all the color inherent in the orchestral version. In retrospect, this performance made me realize just exactly why the Westhuizens gained such praise for their recent performances of the Bartok Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion. Again without pause, they played Sites Auriculaires (1898) of Maurice Ravel. The recital was capped with a solid, incisive performance of La Valse, A Choreographic Poem, also by Ravel. It would be hard to imagine a more idiomatic performance. In contrast to the subdued dynamics they employed in Sites Auriculaires, here the duo used the full dynamic range of the two piano medium. It was sheer exhilaration. Vic Soukup Oct 13, 2004 Kinga Augustyn, violinist, & Xavier de Beteta, pianist, December 05, 2004 Violinist Kinga Augustyn is an accomplished artist now studying at CCM for an advanced degree. Pianist Xavier de Beteta, in addition to also being a skilled performer, has a degree in mathematics and was contemplating working toward his doctorate in theoretical physics before music finally won out. The two chose a program which enabled them to show off their ensemble work and also to allow each to shine in solo performance. Together they played three works by violinist/composers: Fritz Kreisler's Liebesfreud, and Libeslied, and the Legend in g minor, Op. 17, of Henryk Wienawski. The performance featured excellent ensemble and was quite remarkable considering the short time the pair has been working together. Mr. De Beteta played two of Chopin's best known Etudes from Op. 10, the Nos 3 and 12. He showed his considerable skills in dealing with their problems. The performances were lovingly phrased and poetic. Miss Augustyn played two movements (grave, and fugue) from the solo violin sonata in a-minor of Johann S. Bach. Bach enriched the repertoire of music for solo string instruments with the set of 6 suites for cello and 6 for violin. Each set is almost unique in the breadth and scope of the demands it makes on performers. I come finally to Miss Augustyn's performance of two of Nicolo Paganini's Caprices, No. 13 and No. 24, Op 1, for solo violin, his first published work. If Bach's suites/sonatas are a compendium of what a first rate violinist of the mid 1700s should be able to play, Paganini's Caprices pretty much spell out what was expected from the very best by the mid 1800s. It is only some fifty years ago that Ruggiero Ricci made a splash with the first recording on 2 LP discs of the entire set. Violinists had rarely dared to perform them in entirety because they were so difficult. Miss Augustyn has made a specialty of the 24 Caprices, and has recorded them for a minor Eastern European label. Within their approximately one hour can be found all manners of expression, spiced with all known tricks, and then some of Paganini's own invention. Caprice No 24, with its intricate bowing, wide stretches and its left hand pizzicati is an absolute tour de force which fully demonstrated her prodigious technique. No 13, with far fewer technical demands, benefited from the warmth she breathed into it. All in all, this was a most attractive concert. Victor G. Soukup Jan 01, 2005 |
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| THE BEST STUDENTS from College-Conservatory of Music present the best music this 2008-2009, 10th season. |
| OUR 2007-2008 ARTISTS: October 14, 2007 -Russell Burge, vibraphone (Guest Artist, CCM Faculty and CSO Member), Jim Connerley, piano (Guest Artist) November 4- Castalian String Quartet December 2 - Meng-Chun Lin, soprano January 13, 2008 - Polina Bespalko, piano Bonus FREE Concert: January 27 - Shiau-uen Ding, piano February 10 - Christopher Wilke, guitar (Guest Artist) March16 - Albert Muehlboeck, piano April 13 - Sonia Rodriguez, soprano and Moises Ruiz De Gauna, piano May 4 - Yuking Muehlboeck, piano OUR 2006-2007 ARTISTS: October 1, 2006 -Russell Burge, vibraphone (Guest Artist, CCM Faculty and CSO Member), Jim Connerley, piano (Guest Artist) November 12, 2006 - Orieta Dado, violin, Lei Weng, piano December 3, 2006 - Laura Sabo, clarinet trio, Takako Hayase, piano January 14, 2007 - Albert Muhlbock, piano February 11, 2007 - Christopher Wilke, guitar March 11, 2007 - Everett N. Jones III - Piano (Guest Artist) April 1, 2007 - Kevin Towner, saxophone (Guest Artist, former CCM student) May 6, 2007 - Adam Clark, piano OUR 2005-2006 ARTISTS: October 2, 2005 - Adam Clark, piano November 6, 2005 - Anita Hiradhar, violin, David Peaker, piano December 4, 2005 - Marianne Breneman Trio January 8, 2006 - Arturo Araya, cello February 5, 2006 - Albert Muehlboeck, piano March 5, 2006 - Xiao-Xian Wang, violin, Reiko-Christine Hoehmann, piano April 2, 2006 - Randal Umstead, tenor May 7, 2006 - Shiau-uen Ding, piano OUR 2004-2005 ARTISTS: October 3, 2004 Westhuizen Piano Duo - Peter van der Westhuizen and Sophia Grobler November 7, 2004 Everett N. Jones III, piano December 5, 2004 Kinga Augustyn, violin, Xavier Beteta, piano January 9, 2005 Shiau-uen Ding, piano February 6, 2005 Nana Shi, piano March 6, 2005 Bora Lee, piano April 3, 2005 Trio Mundo May 1, 2005 Polina Bespalko, piano |
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| TICKET INFORMATION: E-Z Pass - $60 for all eight concerts (plus a FREE bonus concert), are now on sale in the Quimby Room after services at NHF. Please be sure to include your name and return address when ordering. Checks should be made to Northern Hills Fellowship and marked "Concert Series". You can order directly from Joan Wolking: 513-825-6052, or e-mail: vla@fuse.net. "At-the-door" admission for those without series tickets is $10. Interested young people and music students are encouraged to attend, and are admitted free. If you purchase E-Z Pass, and miss a concert - you may use that ticket to bring a friend to one of the other concerts. If you can only attend a couple of concerts, bring several friends. Give the tickets as gifts, or to say thank you for a special favor, as recipients may use them at their convenience. Or you could purchase an extra set and leave them with the Concert Committee (see Joan Wolking) to be picked up by friends at the last minute. If you would like to offer additional financial support for our concert series, your gift may be included with your ticket order. If you wish, you may specify a particular concert you would like to sponsor, and please tell us if we may include your name in that program as a sponsor. |
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