The American pianist Van Cliburn, violin virtuoso Itzhak Perlman, Cleveland native Frederick Fennell and Arthur Fiedler, conductor of the Boston Pops for nearly 50 years, are among the class of 2001 who will be inducted into the American Classical Music Hall of Fame.

        The Cincinnati-based Hall of Fame will announce 12 inductees at a press conference at the Juilliard School in New York today. The induction ceremony will be April 21 in Corbett Auditorium at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music.

        The list includes 10 individuals, the 55-year-old Juilliard String Quartet and the New York Philharmonic, America's oldest symphony orchestra.

        Noted American soprano Beverly Sills, chairman of Lincoln Center, is expected to attend the press conference. Martin Bookspan (the “Voice of Classical Music” for PBS) will present Ms. Sills with a medallion from her 2000 induction into the Hall of Fame.

        “We're terribly excited,” says Stefan Skirtz, executive director of the Hall of Fame since November. “We've got some good momentum this year, and I hope we never stop.”

        The inductees will be announced by Ohio-based composer Samuel Adler, who, with former CCM dean Robert Werner, co-chairs the Hall of Fame's national artistic directorate, which selects the inductees.

        Others who will be at the press conference are Juilliard president Joseph Polisi and the composer Milton Babbitt, who was honored in 1999.

        The individual inductees are:

        • William Billings (1746-1800), one of the first American-born composers.

        • Pianist Van Cliburn, 66, who skyrocketed to fame in 1958, when he won the International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow. He is artistic adviser of the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in Fort Worth.

        • Composer George Crumb, 71, known for works such as Ancient Voices of Children.

        • Antonin Dvorak (1841-1904), a Bohemian composer who spent three years in New York, where he wrote Symphony No. 9, “From the New World.”

        • Conductor Frederick Fennell, 86, founder of the Eastman Wind Ensemble.

        • Conductor Arthur Fiedler (1894-1979).

        • Paul Hindemith (1895-1963), a German-born composer who settled in this country in 1940.

        • Violinist Itzhak Perlman, 55.

        • Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943), a celebrated Russian composer who moved to America in 1917.

        • Virgil Thomson (1896-1989), a major American composer and 14-year music critic of New York's Herald Tribune.

        Mr. Cliburn, Mr. Crumb, Mr. Fennell and members of the Juilliard String Quartet are expected to attend the induction ceremony in April.

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