By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
Keyboards will be in the spotlight at the annual BG Philharmonia’s Concerto Concert at BGSU on Saturday.
This is no tickling of the ivories. This is full bore 88-keys mastery of three pianists, and a percussionist moving from vibraphone and marimba as well as myriad other idiophones.
The soloists are the winners of the College of Musical Arts Competitions in Music Performance, which was held in December.
The soloists are:
Percussionist Claire Miller, a junior in music education from Vandalia, Ohio, performing BGSU alumna Jennifer Higdon’s Percussion Concerto.
Pianist Abigail Petersen, a sophomore in piano performance from Neenah Wisconsin, performing Piano Concerto No. 1 in C minor by Dimitri Shostakovich.
Pianist Stephen Eckert, a first student in the Doctor of Musical Arts in Contemporary Music program from Stephenville, Newfoundland, performing Concerto for Piano and Orchestra by Witold Lutosławski.
Pianist Nano Beraia, a master in piano performance student from the Republic of Georgia, performing Piano Concerto No. 3 in C by Sergei Prokofiev
The concert will be Saturday, Feb. 11, at 8 p.m. in Kobacker Hall on the BGSU campus.
Emily Freeman Brown will conduct the three piano concertos and Ezra Calvino will conduct the percussion concerto.
Claire Miller
Miller was inspired to study percussion when as a middle schooler spotted a drummer in the high school marching band playing tenor tom-toms. She remembers watching from the bleachers and thinking: “wow, they are incredible. They’re skills are so great; I want to be like that.”
She’d already been studying piano for several years. That helped her, she said, to develop the motion in her hands and wrists, as well as a general knowledge of music.
As a sophomore, she arrived “at a fork in the road.” Would she pursue visual art or music?
“I felt music in my heart and my soul,” she said. “There wasn’t a day I didn’t play a rhythm in my hands or tap a beat on my feet or stop thinking about music.”
Miller also decided she wanted to teach music and share that joy.
As a high school junior, her father suggested she do a mock audition at BGSU. That’s when she met Dan Piccolo, professor of percussion.
Instead of doing a mock audition, he gave her a lesson.
In those 30 minutes, Miller said, “he cleared up some issues I was having with four mallets and that I had since I started playing percussion.”
She was committed to attending BGSU and so she could study with Piccolo.
In spring after she presented a sophomore recital, he suggested she take part in the concerto competition.
Miller said since has been playing a lot of marimba, she wanted a concerto that employed other instruments as well.
Piccolo suggested several. She watched video after video. The Higdon concerto stuck out. She found it interesting that the composer used both vibraphone and marimba. Miller ended up studying videos by several percussionists playing the piece. “It was incredible to witness. That’s what inspired me to keep pushing through.”
She also exchanged emails with Higdon over questions she had. She asked about one spot where the orchestra was playing a C-natural while she was playing a C-sharp, causing a dissonance. Yes, that’s what Higdon intended, and the composer explained why. The percussionist was also curious about why the composer specified hard rubber mallets for the vibraphone. Higdon said she concerned the sound of the instrument would be lost if played with typical softer mallets.
Miller said she intends to continue her studies with graduate work in percussion performance. “There’ll never be a single day, knock on wood, that I will ever stop loving music as much as I do,” Miller said. “It’s a passion that’s gotten me through a lot, and I want to keep pursuing it for as long as I can.”
Abigail Petersen*
Last year as a first-year student, Petersen was a finalist in the competition. “I wanted to push myself again to see if I could win.”
In spring, Petersen worked on some solo pieces that a sarcastic character, which fit her sense of humor, she said. So, she asked her teacher Yevgeny Yontov if there were any concertos that had similar humorous qualities. He suggested the one by Shostakovich.
“This fit the bill,” Petersen said.
Yontov is the reason that Petersen enrolled at BGSU.
At first as she was looking for schools “BGSU was not at the top of my list,” she said. It was “just another state school in Ohio and far from Wisconsin.”
Then Yontov reached out by email. He told her more about the school and offered a sample lesson.
Petersen enjoyed the lesson. Yontov continued to recruit her over the next few months, even after “a rough audition” conducted over Zoom.
“He still saw potential in me,” Petersen said. “His dedication stuck out to me.” So, she decided, she wanted to come to BGSU and study with Yontov.
She started playing at 10. It was something her parents expected all their children to do. Petersen was the youngest. While her brother and sister didn’t continue playing, she did.
“It fit me naturally,’ she said. “I enjoyed it , and I haven’t stopped having fun with it since.”
She did play clarinet for one year, but orthodontic work made that difficult. She also played percussion.
“I really enjoy the selection of music that’s available for the piano,” Petersen said, “because it has so much available from any era.”
By the end of middle school, she started taking hour-long lessons. Then, as she became more convinced, she would pursue music in college, she went to 90-minute lessons.
Petersen also enjoyed attending recitals at Lawrence University in nearby Appleton.
Saturday will be the first time that she performs as a soloist with orchestra. “There’s a whole wash of color behind me which is gorgeous.”
Petersen is minoring in Latin. She enjoys the language, and it helps her understand the singers she accompanies when they perform songs in French and Spanish.
She plans to perform with a vocalist in the Conrad Art Song Competition and as part of a trio with flute and clarinet for the Wayland Chamber Music Competition this semester.
Petersen hopes to pursue her career as a collaborative pianist. She’s been pleased with the opportunities she’s had to work and help other musicians at BGSU.
Stephen Eckert
Like Petersen, Eckert grew up in a family where taking piano lessons was an expectation, as was playing sports. Starting at 5 as the youngest, they sat through their two older siblings’ lessons.
While their brother and sister excelled in athletics, they found their niche in music.
Last summer, the Newfoundland-native was named one of the top 30 under 30 classical musicians by the Canadian Broadcast Company.
After studying at Memorial University in Newfoundland and Ottawa University, they wanted to pursue a doctorate in contemporary music, and BGSU is just about the only option, unless they wanted to study in Germany.
When they started college, though, Eckert was not “sold” on contemporary music. But five years of study opened their ears up to this other sound world.
Eckert said there was “a lot of buzz for the concerto competition,” when they arrived in Bowling Green.
They had never heard of the Lutosławski concerto until it was suggested by their teacher Solungga Liu. “It’s a real treasure,” Eckert said.
The interaction between the soloist and the orchestra gives it more of a chamber music quality, as they exchange passages and respond to each other.
“It has that new music edge, but also has those soaring romantic melodies,” Eckert said. “He was a good pianist,” Eckert said of the composer. “It’s hard, but it’s not hard because it’s awkward. It’s hard because of the runs, but it feels good to play them
They found the timing required playing with the orchestra took some getting used to. There’s an almost imperceptible delay before the strings and winds sound their note. The piano sounds instantly.
The piece also is written in “aleatoric style” with no repeated sections. Having 27 minutes of unique material to memorize is a challenge. However, they are never in danger of losing their place by playing a repeated section at the wrong time. With Bach’s Preludes and Fugues, one accidental can send the player back to the beginning.
Eckert is honored to have the chance to play with the Philharmonia. “Many fine pianists never get a chance to play with an orchestra.”
Nano Beraia
While this is the first time soloing with an orchestra for the other three, Beraia had that opportunity when she was 5, playing a Mozart Concerto less than a year after starting piano lessons. She went on to perform widely and competed successfully in numerous international competitions.
Then at 17, she decided to take a break from competing, and instead concentrate on her studies without that pressure. She instead focused on concerts and recitals. That was about 10 years ago.
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She waded back into competing with BGSU Competitions in Music Performance.
Beraia, who studies with Yontov, said she chose the Prokofiev concerto because “it is very close to my character and nature.”
The composition “is very challenging and intriguing. It’s full of surprises,” she said. “There’re so many things to explore, so many things to discover.
To perform it, she said, “you should be a little bit of a bad boy. … Prokofiev is full of this sarcasm, irony, almost bipolar. The character is changing so quickly and so many times…. It’s a little twisted and I love it.”
When she performs it, she feels like she’s acting. “Prokofiev is the director, and I’m his actress just trying to do my best.”
*Editor’s note: Abigail Petersen’s name was misspelled in the original version of this story.
