March 8, 2003 — It has been a high-octane year for piano students and recent graduates of the Oberlin College's Conservatory of Music. Here is an overview of some recent awards and achievements garnered this past year:

Giacomo Battarino AD '02 placed in three major international competitions. He won first prize at the European Music Competition, held in Moncalieri (near Turin), Italy, in October-November 2002. As part of his award Battarino will perform in concert next May 22 in Turin's Circolo degli Artisti (Artists' Circle Hall). He won third prize in the E. Porrino International Piano Competition, held November-December 2002 on the island of Sardinia, in Cagliari, Italy. Battarino also took the concert prize at the L. Gante European Piano Competition, held in Pordenone, Italy, in October 2002; as a result he will present a piano recital April 18, 2004, at the Liszt Institute in Bologna, Italy. Battarino studied with Oberlin Professor of Pianoforte Sedmara Rutstein.

Recently recovered from a fractured arm, Mudi Han '06 won the Ann Arbor Symphony Orchestra's Youth Piano Concerto Competition in October 2002. For the competition, held at the University of Michigan School of Music, Han performed Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 19 in F Major, K. 459. As part of his award, Han, a native of China, performed the Mozart piece in January with the orchestra under Conductor Arie Lipsky at Ann Arbor's Michigan Theater. A review in The Ann Arbor News noted: "Clarity, beautifully delineated phrases, and delicacy of touch were the hallmarks of [Han's] Mozart playing." A piano performance major, Han studies with Oberlin Professor of Pianoforte Peter Tak�cs. The competition was his first public performance since an accident in which he fractured his arm.

Oberlin Conservatory Keyboard Awards & Achievements

Han credits his comeback to Tak�cs: "Without his support I can hardly imagine how I would have survived the competition. He encouraged me. That's the most important thing. He also taught me some relaxation and arm strength techniques that helped me overcome the physical difficulties." Han says that he will use these techniques for the rest of his life.

Tak�cs has similar admiration for his young pupil. "It's such a pleasure to work with a student who is both talented and motivated," says Tak�cs. "Mudi has had to work very hard to regain the time and mobility he lost due to his accident, so winning this competition is even more of an achievement. He also has become a very skilled Mozart player, which is not a very easy thing for a young performer to do."

Spencer Myer '00 won first prize at the 2002 Heida Hermanns International Piano Competition, sponsored by the Connecticut Alliance for Music and held last December in Westport, Connecticut. Myer performed works by Beethoven, Chopin, Liszt, and Carl Vine for jurors Constance Keene, Blanca Uribe, and Neal Larabee. Last August Myer performed the Schumann Konzerstuck, Op. 92, in Gijon, Spain with the New Millennium Orchestra, conducted by Oliver Diaz Suarez. Myer's other awards include first prizes in the Grace Welsh International Piano Competition and the Marilyn Horne Foundation Competition, and a Jacob Javits Fellowship from the U.S. Department of Education. He was also a finalist for the American Pianists Association Classical Fellowships in Indianapolis. Myer, a native of North Ridgeville, Ohio, studied with Oberlin Professor of Pianoforte Peter Tak�cs and earned the master of music degree at the Juilliard School of Music.

Thomas Rosenkranz '99 was one of five pianists selected as finalists for the 2002-03 Classical Fellowship Awards, sponsored by the American Pianists Association (APA). Rosenkranz will perform both in recital and in concert with the Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra during "Discovery Week," (April 6-12, 2003), the culmination of the seven-month-long competition.

This intense period of performances will also include chamber music performances; Rosenkranz will perform Shostakovich's Piano Quintet in G Minor, Op. 57, with the Pacifica Quartet Thursday, April 10, at noon in a concert that will be judged and broadcast live on NPR affiliate WFYI-90.1 FM. (Two members of the Pacifica Quartet are Conservatory alumni.)

At the end of "Discovery Week," two of the five pianists will be selected as Fellows of the APA and will receive a cash prize of $20,000 and two years of performances, master classes, and educational outreach opportunities. Rosenkranz, who studied with Oberlin Professor of Pianoforte Robert Shannon, earned his master of music degree and performer's certificate from the Eastman School of Music, where he is now a doctoral-degree candidate. His other awards include a Presser Foundation grant to study Oliver Messiaen's Vingt regards sur l'enfant Jesus with Messiaen's wife, Yvonne Loriod, in Paris, France.

As part of the award for receiving a top prize at the Eighth International Murray Dranoff Duo Piano Competition in December 2001, Svetlana Smolina '03 will perform later this year with her partner, pianist Maxim Mogilevsky, at New York's Merkin Hall. The duo also walked away from the Dranoff with the Audience Award and the Robert Casadesus Prize for their rendition of the Casadesus Double Piano Concerto. Their Dranoff performance of Camille Saint-Sa�ns' Variations on a Theme of Beethoven was broadcast in January and April 2002 on National Public Radio's Performance Today. The program's web site noted: "Sometimes even the winners don't give the best performances: At last month's Murray Dranoff Two Piano Competition in Miami, the third-place winners gave the most dynamic performance."

The duo also performed Scriabin at New York's Society for Ethical Culture last November as part of the city's Rock Hotel PianoFest. Paul Griffiths wrote in The New York Times that "Smolina created a storming, breathing piano in the Fantasy in B minor," and, in a three-piano arrangement of "Prometheus" with Mogilevsky and Alexander Toradze, she demonstrated "qualities of power and convulsive attack that were inimitable." Smolina is a piano performance major studying with Oberlin Professor of Pianoforte Monique Duphil.

Last January, the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra premiered the Scherzo No. 2 in E Minor by Herman Whitfield III '06. In February, Whitfield performed his Fantasy for Piano and Orchestra in C-sharp Minor-another premiere-with the Philharmonic Orchestra of Indianapolis. Both ensembles have featured Whitfield's compositions in the past.

Also in February, Whitfield's Romance for Violin and Orchestra in A-flat Minor was selected for an orchestral reading as part of the Detroit Symphony's 2003 African-American Composers Program. His music was also selected for the program in 2001.

Whitfield, 20, is a double-degree and triple-major student from Indianapolis and was profiled in the Indianapolis Star (January 19, 2003).

In addition to studying piano with Oberlin Professor of Pianoforte Peter Tak�cs, he also studies composition in the Conservatory and is a politics major in the College. "Herman is a natural musician, with an instinctive sense of melodic and harmonic line," says Tak�cs. "He creates marvelous colors at the piano with an unusually delicate touch for someone who easily reaches a twelfth (from C to G an octave and a fifth above)! I expect he will develop into a brilliant and original performer."

The Oberlin Conservatory of Music-an "all-Steinway School"-was founded in 1865. The oldest continuously operating conservatory in the United States, Oberlin is also the oldest continuous customer of Steinway & Sons, which is celebrating its 150th anniversary this year.

Notable pianists who graduated from Oberlin include concert and recording artists Gregory Allen, Jeremy Denk, Marian Hahn, Thomas Hecht, the legendary Natalie Hinderas-one of the first African American women to perform as a soloist with a major symphony orchestra-and Robert Shannon, who is also Professor of Pianoforte at the Conservatory.

For more information, please call Marci Janas at (440) 775-8328 or email her at [email protected]