on 2 July 2023
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Keila Wakao, violin, and Gordon Back, piano
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Keila Wakao
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Keila Wakao
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Keila Wakao, violin, and Gordon Back, piano
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Keila Wakao, violin, and Gordon Back, piano
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Keila Wakao
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Keila Wakao
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Photographs by David Hogg of Horizon Imaging.
It was the ideal Sunday afternoon – glorious music by Keila Wakao, winner of the 2021 Menuhin Competition, and Gordon Back, a hugely experienced and accomplished pianist.
Their diverse programme of Bartok, Beethoven, Bloch, Wagner and Szymanowski certainly showed off Keila’s virtuosity, but she had so much more to offer beyond that. Throughout the performance, her incredible musicality was abundantly felt, and it was so natural as if fresh water was emerging from a spring. Her exceptional technical skills were presented in the most musical way, making each piece come alive and express its own message. Keila also had a matured sense of artistic ability to describe from bold passages to subtle nuances with endless colours of sounds.
Bartok’s Rhapsody made the audience sit up with straight spines but somehow brought a nostalgic feeling. With Beethoven’s Spring Sonata, we swayed and swung along with the sweet melody. The deeply engaging and spiritual sound of Bloch’s Nigun made our skin prick, and what a beauty Wagner’s Romance was with such lovely singing tones. Szymanowski’s Nocturne was played with a mysterious, velvety tone, and the fiery Tarantella was fantastically dramatic. Gordon’s expertise blended seamlessly with Keila’s playing and complimented her strengths from multi angles.
Two short and charming encores, Kreisler’s Midnight Bell and Poulenc’s Les chemins de l’amour, left us feeling as if we were sitting in an outdoor café in Paris, completed the ideal Sunday afternoon.
When she was not performing, Keila was a lovely, soft-spoken, and good-natured teenager with a twinkling smile.
Keila Wakao was awarded the 1st prize and the Junior Composer Award in the 2021 Menuhin International Violin Competition. She was also the 1st prize winner of the Stulberg International String Competition and was awarded the Bach prize in 2021.
Born in 2006, 16 year old violinist Keila Wakao is from Boston, MA and began playing the violin at the age of 3. At age 6, the late Mr. Joseph Silverstein accepted Keila as a student. Currently, she is an eleventh grader at the Walnut Hill School for the Arts and studies with Donald Weilerstein and Soovin Kim at the New England Conservatory Preparatory School. Keila has also been receiving Kyoko Takezawa's private instruction in Japan.
From 2002 until Spring 2022, Gordon Back was the Artistic Director of the Menuhin Competition. For 20 years, he channelled his creative energy into defining it as a unique international event. It now is a major violin festival featuring all jury members as performers and provides an educational forum to all participants and visiting musicians. The competition was hosted in Oslo 2010, Beijing 2012, Austin 2014 and celebrated the Menuhin Centenary in London in 2016. The following competitions were hosted in Geneva 2018 and most recently Richmond, VA 2021. The 2021 event was the first ever entirely virtual Menuhin Competition. Streamed globally from 14 – 23 May 2021 it attracted more than six million viewers on its streaming channel.
- Bartok
- Rhapsody No.1
- Beethoven
- Violin Sonata No. 5 in F, Op. 24 ‘Spring’
- Bloch
- Nigun
- Wagner
- Romance from Albumblatt
- Szymanowski
- Nocturne
- Tarantella
Encores
- Kreisler
- Midnight Bells
- Poulenc
- Les chemins de l'amour