Ravinia 2026 Issue 2

Above: Alsop conducts the final round of the 2022 Van Cliburn Piano Competition, featuring eventual winner Yunchan Lim. Below: Alsop leads Lim in a bow after his climactic performance at the Cliburn, where she is helping to establish a conducting competition in 2028. “I want people to understand the impact of music in film and how it can determine your interpretation, your emotional response to what you’re seeing.” ALSOP’S NEWEST PROJECT is setting up a competition for conductors in cooperation with the Van Cliburn Piano Competition in Texas. Held every four years since 1962 in Fort Worth, it is one of the world’s foremost piano competitions, drawing entrants from around the world. Its namesake is the fiery young pianist from Texas who won the 1958 International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow. The Cold War between the US and the USSR was at its height, and the fact that an American won the brand-new, highly hyped Soviet Union competition made international headlines. In the Cliburn competition’s final round, pianists perform a concerto with an orchestra, which in the last two editions has been conducted by Alsop. “I’ve been doing the piano competi- tion for a couple of rounds now,” she said. “I love the Cliburn team, and I love the competition. Believe it or not, if a compe- tition can be nourishing, that’s what it is.” Alsop went to them with the idea of adding a contest for young conductors. “I said to the president of the Cliburn Foundation, ‘You know, you really should start a conducting competition. There are no major conducting competi- tions in the United States.’ He thought it was a great idea and sold it to his board. He found a partner in the Houston Sym- phony, so we’ll be basing it in Houston.” One reason Alsop is working with so many different groups is because she is constantly coming up with ideas for new projects. Having different artistic partners increases the odds that more of her ideas will come to fruition. “It’s very hard for me,” she said, “when I get a great idea, not to pursue it. It keeps me alive and engaged. Working on so much repertoire, it’s really stimu- lating. It keeps you on your toes.” But Alsop also craves a long-term, close relationship with one institution like the one she has had in Baltimore. “For me, having opportunities to build a situation and work within a particular community, that’s what I truly love.” She compared her guest conducting duties to being a visiting aunt or uncle rather than a parent. “You come in,” she said, “you take the kids for the day, and then you send them back. You take them on cool trips—ev- erybody gets a trip.” It’s a close, important relationship, but it’s not the same as being the head of the household, guiding a family’s future day in and day out. “At the moment, I’m not really in that situation,” said Alsop. “It’s a little bit of a searching time for me, weighing different things.” Wynne Delacoma was classical music critic for the Chicago Sun-Times from 1991 to 2006 and has been an adjunct journalism faculty member at Northwestern University. She is a freelance music critic, writer, and lecturer. “ If a competition can be nourishing, that’s what the Cliburn is. ” RAVINIA.ORG • RAVINIAMAGAZINE 13 GEORGEEVAN(KARPMAN);RALPHLAUER(CLIBURN)