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Archives for November 2012

Review: Tri-C Classical Piano Series: Hugues LeClère at Cleveland Museum of Art (November 11)

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by Guytano Parks

ViolinistLECLERE-Hugues Joshua Bell describes his Gibson Stradivarius as an amazing instrument which enables him to express in his performances a multitude of nuanced shades and dynamics, much like an artist blessed with an immense cache of colors with which to paint. Likewise, pianists marvel at the expressive tonal and dynamic range of the Steinway. When a master sets his fingers to the keyboard, beauty, art and intelligence abound. Such was the case on Sunday afternoon, November 11 when the esteemed French pianist Hugues LeClère performed an innovative and masterly recital in celebration of the 150th anniversary of Debussy’s birth entitled Debussy, Poet of the Avant-Garde in Gartner Auditorium at The Cleveland Museum of Art as part of the Cuyahoga Community College Classical Piano Series. [Read more…]

Review: Tenebrae Chamber Choir at St. John’s Cathedral (November 7)

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by Timothy Robson

We canTenebrae1 say from the outset that no finer choral singing will be heard in Cleveland this season than that of the British choir Tenebrae, who performed at the Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist on Wednesday, November 7. Tenebrae’s precision, dynamic range, unanimity of sound and musicality were nothing short of astonishing. The sixteen-member mixed choir was conducted by its founder, Nigel Short.

Tenebrae added elements of theatricality into its performance. Many of the lights in the cathedral’s nave were dimmed, lending a mysterious and contemplative atmosphere. “Come, let us worship God, our King,” the first movement from Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Vespers (known also as the All Night Vigil) opened the concert and was sung in Russian from the rear of the nave. The group has the very low bass singers required for effective performance of the Russian choral repertoire [Read more…]

Preview Suburban Symphony to play Severance Hall benefit for Alzheimer Association and University Hospitals Neurological Institute

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 by Daniel Hathaway

Martin Kesslerkesslerphoto will conduct the Suburban Symphony Orchestra in a special Severance Hall concert on Sunday, November 18 at 4:00 pm based around Robert S. Cohen and Herschel Garfein’s Alzheimer’s Stories. The performance is a benefit for the Alzheimer’s Association of Greater Cleveland and the University Hospitals Neurological Institute. How Cohen and Garfein’s piece came to be written and how it came to be performed in Cleveland are interesting narratives of their own.

An anonymous member of Pennsylvania’s Susquehanna Valley Chorale made a donation in 2007 toward commissioning a piece dealing with Alzheimer’s disease in honor of his parents, who had both died of that irreversible neurological condition. A blog was set up in cooperation with Garfein (the librettist for Elmer Gantry and Rosenkranz and Guildenstern are Dead) to collect stories from chorus and community members who had dealt with the disease. The work was premiered in October, 2009 at the Weis Center at Bucknell University in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, along with works by Cohen’s teacher, Ron Nelson, and was recorded for radio and television by PBS. (Read the libretto and listen to excerpts here). [Read more…]

Preview: Opera Circle to produce Bellini’s Norma

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by Mike Telin

Opera composer Vincenzo BelliniBELLINI-Vicenzo once said: “If I were shipwrecked at sea, I would leave all the rest of my operas and try to save Norma.” Indeed, of all Bellini’s operas, Norma has remained the favorite of audiences around the world. On Friday, November 16, at 7:30 pm and Sunday, November 18th, at 3:00 pm in First Baptist Church, Opera Circle opens their 2012-13 season with Bellini’s tragic tale.

“It is a story of feelings and how people act and react to those feelings. It is about the psychology of human nature,” says soprano and Opera Circle executive director Dorota Sobieska, who will perform the role of Norma, the Druid high priestess, who is forced to make difficult life choices (read a synopsis here). For people who may not be familiar with the work, Sobieska likens it to a psychological thriller; “The opera is full of internal tragedy and you need to get into the psychology of the characters.” [Read more…]

Review: CIM Opera: Il matrimonio segreto

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by J.D. Goddard

On ThursdayCIM-Matrimonio.317104034_std evening November 8 I attended the second of four performances of Cimarosa’s opera buffa, Il matrimonio segreto (The Secret Marriage) at the Cleveland Institute of Music’s Kulas Hall. There were two casts: Wednesday / Friday and Thursday / Saturday. Director David Bamberger and conductor Harry Davidson handily crafted a charming performance showcasing the multi-talented vocal and instrumental students who inhabit the halls and practice rooms of CIM. Sets and lighting by Dave Brooks, costumes, wigs and makeup by Allison Garrigan and English supertitles by Jana Mosby and Paul Zweifel wonderfully enhanced the stage tableau and visually amplified the opera’s innate buffastyle with formidable simplicity.

In 1792, Emperor Leopold II commissioned Domenico Cimarosa to write his opera Il matrimonio segreto on a libretto by Giovanni Bertati based on the play The Clandestine/Secret Marriage (1766) by George Colman and David Garrick. The opera was premiered in Vienna in 1792, two months after the death of Mozart. Love triangles and romantic chicanery in 18th century Italy permeate this two-act opera, which unfurls slowly in the first act and becomes more frolicsome in the second. [Read more…]

Azica’s Masters of Bandoneon nominated for two Latin Grammy Awards

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 by Mike Telin

When theMastersOfBandoneon-CD 13th Annual Latin Grammy Awards are held on November 15 at the Mandalay Bay Events Center in Las Vegas, Alan Bise and Bruce Egre of Cleveland’s Azica records will be anxiously awaiting the results of their nomination in two categories for their recent release, Masters of Bandoneon. The disc itself has been nominated for Best Tango Album, and one of its tracks, Stringago by Carlos Franzetti, played by the Cuartetango String Quartet, has been nominated for Best Classical Contemporary Composition (listen to two of the tracks here). These nominations bring a relationship that began as a chance meeting between violinist and Cuartetango founder Leonardo Suarez Paz and Alan Bise to a fitting conclusion — at least for this recording project.

“I first met Leonardo after the performance of Romance de Tango that he created for the Cleveland Museum of Art’s VIVA! & Gala series in 2009,” Bise told me over coffee. That performance featured Paz’s award-winning string quartet Cuartetango, as well as eight dancers. Bise said that he struck up a conversation with Paz, one thing led to another, and soon they were working together on the recording project. The project also took Bise on his first visit to Buenos Aires, a trip that he calls life-changing. “First, the musical life in the city is intoxicating, and Tango is the national soundtrack of Argentina that plays 24/7.” [Read more…]

Review: Les Délices: Pocket Opera at William Busta Gallery (November 10)

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 by Nicholas Jones

LesDelicesGoup1Opera performed by only seven musicians? Mon Dieu!

French Baroque opera, now generally seen as recherché to the extreme, was once so popular that its tunes were madly sought after. As every garage band today wants to cover Justin Bieber, so many in the mid-eighteenth century wanted a bit of Rameau, even if they couldn’t be at the court of the Sun King.

Following their lead, Les Délices, Cleveland’s inventive and efficient baroque group showed us how opera could fit in the pocket. (But…did they have pockets then? Well, never mind! [Read more…]

CD Review: Les Délices: Myths and Allegories

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by Daniel Hathaway

Thanks to heregroups like William Christie’s Les Arts Florissants and Debra Nagy’s Les Délices, who have made it their primary business to interpret French baroque music for twenty-first century ears, that special, highly stylized repertory now comes to life on a regular basis. Cleveland-based Les Délices has today issued its second CD, Myths and Allegories, with music by Jean-Féry Rebel, Thomas-Louis Bourgeois Michel Pignolet de Montéclair and Elisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre based on tales from The Odyssey credited to the Greek epic singer, Homer (probably there were many of him). The album, featuring soprano Clara Rottsolk, with Debra Nagy, baroque oboe and recorder, Julie Andrijeski, violin, Emily Walhout, viola da gamba, and Michael Sponseller, harpsichord and organ, was recorded by Peter Nothnagle in Harkness Chapel at CWRU in March of this year.

Subjects drawn from classical antiquity were important to French baroque artists and musicians, and the story of Ulysses’s torturous return to Ithaca after the Trojan War was rich with possibilities. This recording begins and ends with movements from Rebel’s Ulysse (his only attempt at opera), and incorporates cantatas by Bourgeois and de la Guerre depicting the lure of the Sirens and Ulysses’s sea battle with Neptune in retaliation for the blinding of Polyphemus. [Read more…]

Review: Oberlin Opera Theater flies you to the Moon — and back (November 7)

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by Daniel Hathaway

Joseph HaydnOberlin-Mondo.310100651_std (1) wrote more than a dozen operas for the Esterházy family during his thirty years as its Kapellmeister (plus another late one for London that never made it to the stage). Oberlin Opera Theater’s production of Il mondo della luna (The World on the Moon), which opened on Wednesday evening at Hall Auditorium for four performances, provided the rare opportunity to encounter one of Haydn’s stage works. The evening was entertaining and successful not so much because of Carlo Goldoni’s libretto (ridiculous) or Haydn’s score (every inch masterful though largely unmemorable) but because of Jonathon Field’s resourceful and often hysterically funny stage direction, the fine singing and acting of Oberlin voice students, and generally excellent work from the pit by the Oberlin Chamber Orchestra under guest conductor Christopher Larkin. And also no doubt because of extensive cuts in the score. [Read more…]

Preview: Tenebrae Choir from U.K. to sing Russian program at St. John’s Cathedral on November 7

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by Daniel Hathaway

The great British choral tradition, cultivated for centuries in cathedrals, college chapels and prominent parish churches, has spawned a number of superb, mixed choral ensembles who regularly tour in North America. Tenebrae, a chamber choir founded and directed by Nigel Short, which will perform on the free Helen D. Schubert concert series at St. John’s Cathedral in downtown Cleveland on Wednesday, November 7, offers something a bit different. In Latin, the name means “shadows” (it’s also the name of a trio of dramatic services during Holy Week). Tenebrae chamber choir performances usually invoke a spiritual ambiance through the use of candlelight and special lighting effects, and singers move around ecclesiastical buildings, treating them as real performance spaces.

Short launched Tenebrae in 2001 with concerts in London and Switzerland, after a singing career at both Westminster Abbey and Westminster Cathedral, with the Tallis Scholars, the King’s Consort and the King’s Singers as well as in opera productions with the English National Opera and Opera North. He was so committed to the idea of performing by candlelight that he commissioned ten medieval-style iron candle stands from a Swiss ironmonger, each to hold twenty-five candles. [Read more…]

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