Asheville artist Robin Rector Krupp attended with me. Among her artistic talents is the ability to do quick sketches, and five of her illustrations accompany this report, showing some of the competitors in action.
The order in which the competitors performed was chosen by lot. First up was Chia-Jung Lee playing Carl Nielsen’s Flute Concerto, one of the finest works in the recent flute repertoire. Rudy Chen then performed Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto #3, my personal favorite from the twentieth century. Midori Samson (a high school student) played Mozart’s Bassoon Concerto. Hedy Lee gave us Rachmaninoff’s lyrical Piano Concerto #2.
The fifth musician to take the stage was pianist Xiao Wang performing the first movement of Tchaikovsky’s monumental Piano Concerto #2. Robin Krupp’s sketch caught the posture, the power and the intensity of this pianist. Next, Alex Samawicz played the well-known Haydn Concerto for Trumpet and Orchestra.After a brief intermission, Brandon Garbot presented Camille Saint-Saëns’ virtuosic Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso. Following Garbot was David Hagee, performing the Thom Ritter George Concerto for Bass Trombone. High school age violinist Annie Bender chose the third movement of Mendelssohn’s Concerto for Violin and Orchestra.
We were into the home stretch with just three more musicians to hear from, and the audience had lost none of its enthusiasm. Claire Mashburn played Charles Tomlinson Griffes’ Poem for Flute and Orchestra. Yifei Deng gave us the William Walton Concerto for Viola and Orchestra. High schooler Joshua Paulus finished the evening with the Mozart Concerto #4 for French Horn and Orchestra.
Each year, this free concert provides an opportunity to hear some of the best instrumental students at the Brevard Music Center, and each year more BMC fans join the large number of students who attend. Very few left without waiting to hear the judges’ decision. And the winners were (in alphabetical order):
• Yifei Deng, viola
• Brandon Garbot, violin
• David Hagee, bass trombone
• Claire Mashburn, flute
• Xiao Wang, piano
My personal favorite among these was fifteen-year-old Brandon Garbot, who was also one of last year’s winners in the Jan & Beattie Wood Concerto Competition. He has been concertmaster of the Portland (OR) Youth Philharmonic Orchestra for the last three years, and during this summer’s Brevard Music Festival he studied with William Preucil, concertmaster of the Cleveland Orchestra. He is an impressive young violinist that I expect we shall hear more from.
That said, I want to hear again the Thom Ritter George Concerto for Bass Trombone, an interesting work by the prolific but little-known American composer. That concerto was written early in his career when Dr. George studied at Eastman School of Music with Wayne Barlow and Bernard Rogers. It was about the time that ESM professor Emory Remington revolutionized orchestral trombone. Remington designed a large bore orchestral trombone and taught many of the mid-century’s finest orchestral trombone players. This concerto was surely influenced by the “trombone aura” surrounding Remington at Eastman, and should be heard more often.
Deng, Garbot, Hagee, Mashburn and Wang will perform their concerto movements with the BMC Orchestra under conductor Ken Lam in a concert (not free) that will begin at 7:30 pm on Friday, July 31. I look forward to hearing the five winners perform but will miss hearing the other seven. They were all very good. Think of it: they had one chance in five of passing the audition to come to Brevard in the first place, then one chance in six of beating out the competition to become a finalist. These are our “Soloists of Tomorrow,” as the concert has been dubbed.
© 2009 Edward C. McIrvine
illustrations © 2009 Robin Rector Krupp
Arts Spectrum column #443
July 24, 2009
Ted, what a great article, and I love the inclusion of Robin's artwork! Thanks, Karen Boyd
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