The competitors can choose to play this obligatory piece in either the First or Second Stage in the Competition.

          
         Aviya Kopelman

Menachem Wiesenberg

Aviya Kopelman

Born in Moscow in 1978, composer and pianist Aviya Kopelman immigrated to Israel with her family 20 years ago. She began her musical education at the age of 12, studying, among others, with Natasha Tadson and Leah Agmon. She graduated from the Music Academy in Jerusalem where she studied composition with Prof. Tzvi Avni and piano with Dr. Assaf Zohar. She has worked with and been influenced by composers such as Oded Zahavi, Andre Hadju and Ronen Shapira.

Ms. Kopelman's works have been performed regularly in Israel and abroad, by the Jerusalem Camerata, the Israel Camerata, the Israel Chamber Orchestra, Tel Aviv Chamber Choir, Conjunto Iberico Octet (Spain), Ensemble de la Paix (France), Les Solistes de Waterloo (Belgium), and others. She has also composed commissioned pieces for The Israel Festival, The Arthur Rubinstein Piano Master Competition, Kfar Blum Festival and the Desert Festival.

Aviya recently won First Prize in an international competition for young composers for which she was asked to write a composition for the legendary Kronos Quartet.

Aviya Kopelman teaches composition at the Hed College for Music in Tel Aviv and at the Rimon School of Jazz and Contemporary Music.

Everything is Foreseen and Free Will is Given

The piece deals with the issue of free choice in our lives, and how this choice finally affects the whole – if at all…
As a piece that was commissioned especially for a piano competition, it is not meant to display the pianist's dazzling virtuosity or the endless possibilities of the instrument. The challenge the performer is faced with is different: the piece comprises nine short movements and the performer has to choose the order in which to play them so that they create one continuous piece. The number of possibilities is vast, but the music obviously leads to certain choices rather than others. I believe that the listener will find the numerous connections between the movements. The title of the piece is a saying from Jewish Thought (Avot chapters of the Mishnah), which tries to settle a seeming contradiction between the existence of God and Man's free choice.
While composing the piece, I was also thinking that in our time technology is another element of random choice – or no choice – like computer programs that "choose" for us which piece from our music collection to play. This made me think about the significance of the order of details within the whole.
A piano competition, which features many performances, provides a rare opportunity to write such a piece.

Menachem Wiesenberg

Menachem Wiesenberg, composer, arranger, pianist and educator is one of Israel's most varied and acclaimed musicians.

Mr. Wiesenberg is winner of the "1998 Prime Minister Prize for Composition" and was awarded the 1992 prize for outstanding achievement in the concert music field by the Society of Authors, Composers and Music Publishers in Israel (ACUM Ltd.). He was granted fellowships as composer in residence by the “Rockfeller Foundation”, the “Bogliasco Foundation” and the “Virginia Center for Creative Arts”.

Mr. Wiesenberg's commissions and composers' awards have been received from the Oregon Bach Festival, The Arts Council of England, The Schleswig-Holstein Festival in Germany, the Lille Festival in France, Wisconsin University, the Relache Ensemble in Philadelphia, The Council for Culture and Arts in Israel, and the Tel-Aviv Foundation for Culture and Arts and The Arthur Rubinstein Foundation among many others.

His oeuvre covers a wide range of styles from orchestral, chamber and vocal works in the classical field to light music and jazz. His music has been performed in Germany, England, Austria, France, Spain, Irland, Czech Republic, Croatia, Russia, The Netherlands, Belgium, Italy, Switzerland, Cyprus, USA, Australia, New Ziland, Columbia, Brazil, Japan and Taiwan. Performances of his Orchestral music have been done by the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, The Deutsche Bremen Kamerphilharmonie, The The Potsdam Kammerakademie Orchestra The Basel Chamber Orchestra and every major Symphony and Chamber Orchestra in Israel including the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, the Jerusalem Philharmonic Orchestra, the Israel Camerata-Jerusalem, the Israel Chamber Orchestra and many many more. His music was also performed by ensembles such as the Jerusalem Quartet, the Huberman Quartet, the Aviv Quartet, the Lumina Quartet, the Relache Ensemble, the Musica Nova Ensemble, the 21st Music Ensemble and by well known soloists such as the German Violist Tabea Zimmerman, the American cellist Ron Leonard, The Principal Clarinet Player of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra Karl Heinz Steffens, the Israeli Violinist Hagai Shaham, the Cellists Hillel Zori and Zvi Plesser and the singer Mira Zakai.

Mr. Wiesenberg has garnered renown for his arrangements of Israeli and Yiddish folk songs, and his interest in the folk music of his native land serves as a fundamental influence throughout all of his compositional activity.

His music appears internationally on several CDs, distributed most notably under the EMI, Koch International and Live Classics labels. Performances of his music have received many broadcasts by Radio Cologne, Radio Bavaria, Radio Geneva, French Internatinal Radio and by the Israel Broadcasting Service.

He has performed as a soloist as well as chamber music pianist in Israel, Europe and America. In addition, Mr Wiesenberg was also a professional jazz pianist and performed with his jazz trio all over Israel.

Mr. Wiesenberg has given Composition Master Classes and Lectures in many Academies in the States and in England, among them should USC, Oregon University, the New England Conservatory and Mannes College in the USA, The Guildhall School of Music and Drama, the Royal College of Music and the Royal Academy of Music in London, the RNCM in Manchester and the Faculty of Music at the Oxford University.

Mr. Wiesenberg graduated with a Masters degree from the Julliard School of Music. He is now a Senior Lecturer at the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance in Jerusalem and was the founder and Head of the Interdisiplinary Music Department there. In addition, Mr. Wiesenberg is a Musical Advisor and Senior Instructor of the Young Musicians Group under the auspices of the Jerusalem Music Center founded by the late Maestro Isaac Stern. He was nominated the first Visiting Israeli Composer by the J.M.I. in London.

His music is published by the Schott Edition and by the I.M.I.

Metamorphosis II

The piece examines, in a way, the most resonant intervals – the perfect octave and the perfect fifth. These first two intervals of the overtone series were almost banned by the strictest followers of atonal and serial music. Their extreme stand was partly due to their reaction against the excessive use of octaves in the Romantic piano literature and partly because the fifth as a delimited interval defined the major and minor chords, representing the tonal/modal system they sought to abolish. The use of these inherently consonant and stable intervals went against the sentiments of an epoch that sanctified dissonance and instability.

The very attributes mentioned above are those which attract my creative imagination and appeal to my musical sensibility. I like the very fact that these intervals are so sonorous, and their use seems to me very idiomatic and natural for the piano.

The very different, even contrasting moods of the consequent movements conceal the fact that they all share the basic musical material which undergoes far-reaching changes – in short, a metamorphosis.

Previous works commissioned for the Arthur Rubinstein
International Piano Master Competitions