On this week's Cleveland Ovations, we brought you a faculty recital from Baldwin Wallace Conservatory. Lembi Veskimets, viola, was joined by pianist Hyunsoon Whang. Recorded September 9, 2015.
Program
Mikhail Glinka: Sonata for Viola and Piano in D Minor
Jean Sibelius: Rondo for Viola and Piano
Sergei Prokofiev arr. Vadim Borisovsky: Six Pieces from the Ballet “Romeo and Juliet”
Franz Schubert: Sonata in A Minor, K. 821 “Arpeggione”
Lembi Veskimets is a member of the viola section of the world-renowned Cleveland Orchestra and Professor of Viola at Baldwin-Wallace University’s Conservatory of Music. She previously held the positions of Principal Viola of the Ohio Chamber Orchestra and of the National Repertory Orchestra (CO).
She received both her Bachelor and Master of Music degrees from the Cleveland Institute of Music where she was a student of Robert Vernon, Principal Viola of the Cleveland Orchestra. An enthusiastic chamber musician, she has participated in the Aspen Center for Advanced Quartet Studies, the Taos School of Music, the Juilliard String Quartet Seminar, the Sarasota Music Festival, the EXPO in Osaka, Japan, Chamber Music Encounters in Paris, France and the Isaac Stern Chamber Music Workshop at Carnegie Hall. Ms. Veskimets also performs in the public schools as an Artist-Teacher in the Cleveland Orchestra’s Learning Through Music program and has served as a board member of the American Viola Society and contributed to its journal.
Born in Toronto, Canada of Estonian parentage, she has been featured on the gala concerts of several international Estonian festivals, as well as appearing in recital at the International Viola Congress. In addition to her position at B-W, she is also on the faculties of the Cleveland Institute of Music\'s Preparatory Department and the Cleveland Music Settlement, as well as having taught and performed at the Encore School for Strings (OH) and the Green Mountain Chamber Music Festival (VT) in the summers.
Ms. Veskimets and Dr. Whang have previously collaborated on many recitals and chamber music programs including performances in Boston, Cleveland, Lawton, Princeton, Winston-Salem and Toronto. Lembi Veskimets is married to clarinetist Daniel McKelway and the proud mother of four-year-old twin girls, Kaja and Kiili, and a nine-year-old boy, Rein.
Korean-American pianist Hyunsoon Whang began her piano studies at the age of four and started playing public concerts at age twelve. Since then she has delighted audiences in hundreds of con
certs across North America, Europe and Asia. Critics have praised her as \"the kind of player who appears to immerse her entire being in the music,\" and as one who has \"always delivered with grace and beauty.\"
She has appeared as a soloist with Leonard Slatkin, Joel Revzen, Miriam Burns and Nicholas Harsanyi. Her recent engagements have included solo and chamber music appearances and master classes in California, Michigan, Missouri, Nebraska, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, Utah and Iceland. Her live videos have been airing on PBS television stations throughout the Midwest. Whang serves on the Touring Artists Roster of the Oklahoma Arts Council and the Mid-America Arts Alliance’s Artist Roster.
A passionate educator, Whang has taught and nurtured generations of students. Her students have won competitions on a state and national level, and received scholarships and fellowships from prestigious graduate schools. She presents interactive mini-recitals for the public school children each year fostering and introducing the love of music to young people. She received Oklahoma Governor’s Arts in Education Award in 2010.
Whang studied at the North Carolina School of the Arts, the St. Louis Conservatory, The Juilliard School, and earned a doctorate from Indiana University. She is on the faculty at Cameron University in Lawton, Oklahoma where she holds the McMahon Endowed Chair in Music. Besides piano, she enjoys learning Italian, practicing yoga, watching baseball and being a virtual mom to her daughter Courtney who is a college student in Chicago.