Ten young pianists—from as far afield as Canada and China, from states coast to coast and from our very own Hartland, Wis.—present their musical skills in several venues and ways for an entire week. The event is the biennial PianoArts North American Competition and Music Festival, taking place in various locations in Milwaukee and Waukesha counties from June 2-8.
Likely an audience favorite will be 17-year-old John Schindler from Hartland—last year’s winner of Waukesha’s Chapman Memorial Piano Competition. Just to qualify as a semifinalist, Schindler and his nine fellow pianists competed with dozens of other young instrumentalists last March, wherein a distinguished, three-member jury listened to solo and concerto performances by the participants. The top-10 selectees will now vie via live performances for rewards that include $27,000, a summer keyboard institute scholarship and the undeniable privilege of being able to further display his or her pianistic talents before local audiences.
One rather unique aspect of the PianoArts competition is the fact that each of the semifinalists will, in addition to a solo performance, perform a duo with a member of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra (MSO) and be part of a quintet involving members of either the MSO or the Milwaukee Ballet Orchestra (MBO). After some winnowing down, the finalists will then participate in a concerto round with a rather larger cohort of MSO instrumentalists.
All of this glorious music making kicks off for the public on June 3 at the Wisconsin Conservatory of Music with a recital prelude by PianoArts alum Pallavi Mahidhara. The competition itself begins with solo and ensemble recitals by the contestants Saturday, June 4 and Monday, June 6, respectively. The original field of 10 will have been reduced to just three finalists for the highly anticipated concerto competition with the MSO under the baton of Andrews Sill on Wednesday, June 8.
Stay on top of the news of the day
Subscribe to our free, daily e-newsletter to get Milwaukee's latest local news, restaurants, music, arts and entertainment and events delivered right to your inbox every weekday, plus a bonus Week in Review email on Saturdays.
True to this event’s title, there’s more to it than vigorous competition; it’s also a music festival. To that end, the evening of Tuesday, June 7 sees a “Concert by the Masters” taking place at the Conservatory, featuring all three members of the jury panel joining forces with four MSO musicians: clarinetist Benjamin Adler, cellists Susan Babini and Scott Tisdel and violinist Ilana Setapen. Works by Wolfgang Mozart, Ludwig van Beethoven and Johannes Brahms will be performed. In addition, pedagogue and pianist Joseph Kalichstein performs Robert Schumann’s eight-movement suite Kreisleriana, composed in the space of a mere four days in April 1838. This fine piece is, despite its name, not devoted to extolling the virtues of E.T.A. Hoffmann’s fictitious Kapellmeister Kreisler, but rather (somewhat surreptitiously) to those of Schumann’s young fiancée, Clara.
One is tempted at this point to say, “Wait! There’s more!” for this first week of June will see many additional events taking place relating to this tremendous undertaking by PianoArts. The Conservatory hosts master classes in piano by the members of the international jury on Sunday, June 5. Maestro Sill and musicians from both the MSO and MBO present a two-part seminar, “Performing with an Orchestra,” at the Sharon Lynne Wilson Center on Tuesday, June 7. That same day (and new this year) will be “Meet, Greet and Hear the 2016 Finalists” taking place at the Milwaukee Art Museum. The impressive schedule is further filled out by free concerts by the competitors at area schools and retirement centers, a panel discussion about professional music careers and additional recitals and lectures.
According to their mission statement, PianoArts exists “to foster appreciation and performance of classical music by identifying and mentoring a new generation of pianists with exceptional musical and verbal communication skills and by presenting them to diverse audiences.” PianoArts’ weeklong music competition and festival—with wall-to-wall music-centered offerings in several area locations—undoubtedly will be a matter of “mission accomplished.”
For further information and tickets, call 414-962-3055 or visit pianoarts.org.
