11-year-old pianist earns chance to perform with Philadelphia Orchestra
An 11-year-old girl from Downingtown has earned a coveted opportunity to perform with the Philadelphia Orchestra during its 2014-15 season.
Melody Yu
Pianist Melody Yu won the children’s division (ages 12 and under) in the orchestra’s prestigious Albert M. Greenfield Student Competition, competing against a standard of excellence that was evaluated on the following merits: “exceptional talent, virtuosity, artistic individuality, and comportment as a performer.” Yu’s winning piece was the first movement of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 23, according to an orchestra news release.
Throughout the annual competition’s preliminary auditions, 62 competitors in three divisions – senior, junior, and children’s – performed, producing 12 finalists. The finalists went on to audition on the stage of Verizon Hall at the Kimmel Center in front of a live audience, where a winner from each division was selected. The other 2014 winners are soprano Sarah Shafer, 25, of Philadelphia, who won the senior division; and violist Hae Sue Lee, 14, of Philadelphia, who won the junior division, the release said.
“I was incredibly impressed not just by the hard work everyone put into this performance, but I was equally moved by the maturity of the music making itself. This stood out to me and there is no doubt in my mind so many of them will go on to have a very successful career in music,” said Cristian Măcelaru, the orchestra’s associate conductor.
According to the release, Melody Yu started studying piano with Nelly Berman at age 5. She is currently a student of Maxim Mogilevsky and Anna Kislitsyna at the Nelly Berman School of Music. She debuted in the Kimmel Center for Performing Arts at the age of 6 as the Platinum Prize winner of the Golden Key Piano Competition. Yu is also the first-prize winner of the International Crescendo International Piano Competition and the Young Classical Virtuosos of Tomorrow Competition and has performed in such venues as Carnegie Hall.
Yu is also a winner of the West Chester Pre-Collegiate Piano Competition. Most recently, she was a winner of the Ambler Symphony Menges Scholarship Competition, and performed as a soloist with the Ambler Symphony in March. She was also the first-place winner of the 2014 Chopin International Competition in Hartford, Ct.
She attended a summer piano training program at Boston University’s Tanglewood Institute in 2010 and attended master classes with world-renowned piano pedagogues. As a Chanlan Lee Music Scholarship recipient and Nelly Berman School of Music full scholarship recipient for five years, she has participated in many fund-raising concerts for charity such as the New York Sandy Benefit Concert. An active chamber musician, Yu was a violinist in the Philadelphia Youth String Ensemble in 2012-13 and a pianist in the Nelly Berman School Chamber Music Quartet. In her spare time, she loves to play lacrosse, dance, read, and bake, the release said.
Former Music Director Leopold Stokowski first initiated a Philadelphia Orchestra Student Competition in 1933, later named in 1992 in recognition of a generous endowment gift from the Albert M. Greenfield Foundation. This annual Competition is open to young vocalists, pianists, and instrumentalists who reside in, or study regularly with, a teacher who lives in the greater Philadelphia area.
