Archive: Arts & Entertainment

A spring evening in the private Hayloft space at the Carriage House Café is the perfect venue for early keyboard music. On Thursday, May 16, prizewinners of the Westfield International Keyboard Competitions Mike Lee and Ignacio Prego will offer a keyboard salon concert to raise funds to help support the 2013 Westfield Organ Competition and Academy, to be held at Cornell and the Eastman School of Music in September.

This limited seating special concert, reminiscent of a 19th century salon concert, will be an intimate affair filled with music, conversation and creativity, featuring two past winners of the Westfield International Keyboard Competition, Mike Lee, who took second and audience prize in the 2011 Westfield Fortepiano competition and Ignacio Prego, who received first prize in the 2012 Westfield Harpsichord Competition. Cornell professors Malcolm Bilson, Roger Moseley and Annette Richard will each make special appearances.

Prego will perform solo pieces on one of the fine reproduction harpsichords in the Cornell Music Department collection. Lee will perform Mozart sonatas for violin and piano on a 5 octave Viennese Walter copy fortepiano, modeled on Mozart’s own Walter piano, with violinist Wayne Lee.

The Westfield Center, the country's preeminent organization for the advancement of classical keyboard music, is recognized for its advocacy on behalf of classical keyboard instruments and for outstanding workshops, symposia, and publications. The International Keyboard Competition and Summer Academy series, has allowed the Westfield Center to bring together leaders in the field of historical keyboard performance with young musicians in the early stages of their careers, to combine performance on historical (or historically-informed) keyboard instruments with learning about the instruments and their repertoires.

Competition and academy events in September will begin with a recital by jurors Kimberly Marshall and David Yearsley on Sunday, September 22, at 3 pm in Cornell University’s Anabel Taylor Chapel. During the week, young organists from around the world will compete and study on a collection of outstanding instruments: the Craighead-Saunders organ at Christ Church, Rochester, modeled on the 1776 Adam Gottlob Casparini organ in Vilnius, Lithuania; the original 18th-century Italian organ in the Memorial Art Gallery, Rochester; the organ in Anabel Taylor Chapel at Cornell University, based on the 1706 Arp Schnitger organ at Schloss Charlottenburg, Berlin; and both the 1940 Aeolian-Skinner organ and the original 18th-century Italian organ in Sage Chapel at Cornell.

Twelve competitors will compete in the first round in Rochester, September 23 and 24. Six competitors go on to the second round in Ithaca, on September 26. Three finalists will perform in the third and final round in Rochester, at Christ Church, and the winners will play a recital in Ithaca on September 29 at 8pm. Masterclasses and lectures will take place throughout the week in Ithaca and Rochester. All events are free and open to the public and a free bus from Ithaca to Rochester will be available to audience members who want to follow the entire competition.

The Westfield Center will distribute prize money totaling $17,500 to the three top winners of the Organ competition, and the first place winner will receive a solo concert tour in the US and Europe and a CD recording with the Loft label. All proceeds from the May 16, Keyboard Salon ticket sales and donations will go towards the prize money.

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