Over land and sea, classical pianist mingles performances with teaching, recording

by Charles Cassady

Jules Verne’s fictional heroes of yesteryear traveled around the world in 80 days. Hudson’s Caroline Oltmanns goes around the world on 88 keys.

Oltmanns, an acclaimed classical pianist and professor, performs throughout the United States, Switzerland, France, Germany, South Africa, Canada, China and elsewhere. This spring she will tour Australia and Tasmania.

“It is my first time playing on that continent, and I am very much looking forward to it,” said Oltmanns, during a heavy winter schedule that included her regular teaching assignment at Youngstown State University and a lecture and appearance with the Cleveland Orchestra. Later this year she will perform a series of recitals for a special ocean cruise on the legendary luxury liner Queen Elizabeth 2.

And she will continue in her ongoing role with the Cleveland International Piano Competition.

Oltmanns said she and her composer-husband James Wilding have been attending Cleveland Orchestra concerts at Severance Hall and Blossom Music Center ever since they arrived in Ohio in 1994, when she took her position at YSU.

“My pre-concert lecture activity is a relatively new addition to my quite busy life,’’ she said. “This marks my second season. I love getting the audience excited about the fantastic music they are going to hear, and I have had many meaningful and interesting conversations with the audience.”

Oltmanns called the Cleveland International Piano Competition “one of the gems of Cleveland, attracting international musicians from all over the world every second year – the impressive youth division and the long standing adult division are each held every four years with a two-year gap.” At CIPC she has been on the screening jury, presented master classes and given guest recitals.

She also has adopted hometown affection for the Youngstown Symphony, saying, “I not only adore their performance venue, Powers Auditorium – which is the former Warner Brothers Theater – but I have had several opportunities to perform as a soloist with the orchestra.”

Choosing the most memorable play dates over the years is not easy. “Weill Hall at Carnegie Hall to playing tours in China, where many of the halls are brand new,’’ Oltmanns said. “I love most the moment when the audience is completely engaged, quietly enjoying the music. It is the moment I cherish most no matter where in the world.”

Oltmanns began studying the piano in childhood in her native Bavaria. Her mother hailed from the same town as the great German composer and musicologist Robert Schumann. At university, the young Caroline started studying law but found music irresistible and switched her concentration to classical piano. A Fulbright Scholarship enabled her to attend the University of Southern California, matriculating with Master’s and Doctoral Degrees in Piano Performance, prelude to an international career. Settling in Hudson struck felicitous notes. s

“We wanted to live in an area with easy access to the many wonderful offerings of Northeast Ohio,’’ she said. “In the vicinity of our two universities – Youngstown State University, where I am head of Piano Studies, and the University of Akron, where my husband co-directs the Theory and Composition Department – the closeness to Severance Hall… the closeness to Cuyahoga Valley National Park, our favorite place to walk Winston our beloved English Labrador.”

She finds teaching music a strong accompaniment to playing. “I started teaching already during my undergraduate years and have since been able to guide my full studio of piano students at the Dana School of Music while maintaining an active performance career,’’ Oltmanns said. “My teaching suffers when I am not performing.

“The immediacy of knowing what is needed to perform fades relatively quickly, and I would go so far to say that I feel less acutely tuned in to playing on a stage when I have not played in public for say a couple of weeks. … The two work in tandem well, even though maintaining both a full studio and an active performing career make for a very full schedule and sometimes for only a few hours of sleep.”

Her advice to aspiring student musicians now: “Other than practice, practice, practice? Working with a lot of young pianists especially of high school age, I often hear playing that sounds somewhat inexperienced. I would suggest to listen to as much well-performed or well-recorded music as possible.

“I was so lucky that my mom actually sat down with me, listened with me – invaluable added bonus to listen together – and talked with me about what we were experiencing. It is crucial to listen not only in order to understand music, but also to understand the endless variety of color, sound, phrasing and structure building we have as musicians and as pianists.”

In her own recorded repertoire, Oltmanns has made six critically acclaimed recordings so far. Her 2018 classical ‘concept album’ “Ghosts” centered around her interpretation of an unfinished Schumann piano composition that the composer wrote immediately after a failed suicide attempt. After Schumann’s death in 1865, his wife Clara kept the notes a secret until their rediscovery about a dozen years ago. Oltmanns is only one of a handful of modern pianists to record the piece.

Her new studio project takes its cue from “WIND – A Natural Phenomenon Depicted in Music,” another atypical classical-piano performance she has done here and abroad.

“All works on the album will feature music dealing with wind from a gentle breeze to a raging storm, every aspect of wind will be covered,’’ Oltmanns said. “I am absolutely mesmerized by the invisible phenomenon, wind, something everyone relates to emotionally in one way of another.”

Instrumentation will be entirely Oltmanns at the keyboard, no wind instruments.

Synergizing with Germany’s pledge to massively convert to wind-powered electricity, the CD is to be accompanied by a DVD of visualizations by an Estonian multimedia artist. Oltmanns has Grammy hopes for the finished concept.

“I am very much looking forward to the release of this album later this year,’’ she said. “The preview concerts have been received very enthusiastically by audiences in Europe, China and stateside.”

Wind is, fortunately, not a factor in performing on a vast cruise ship like the QE2 engagement in mid-May. This will be the second time Oltmanns has performed for the special one-week “London Theatre at Sea” transatlantic cruise.

“The ocean liners are very steady; so much so that it is hardly noticeable that the stage is not on land,” she said.

There are still seats available for the Cunard Line voyage, which sails from New York City to Southampton, England, and includes performances and lectures by eminent guests of stage, screen and music. See the “M013” listings on www.cunard.com. A veritable playbill of information, from events to blog entries, can be found at Oltmanns’ eponymous website, caroline-oltmanns.com. Look for the link for “88 Hearts for Youngstown,” a college music scholarship she founded a decade ago for aspiring pianists needing financial assistance – a refrain of the Fulbright Scholarship helped send Oltmanns on the journey of a lifetime. “It is easy to contribute to 88 Hearts,” she said.

Feature image photo caption: Classical pianist Caroline Oltmanns manages a hectic schedule of teaching and performances, not to mention recording a new album due out later this year.