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Archives for January 2013

Preview: CMA VIVA! & Gala: Chanticleer to sing on January 30 in the museum’s new atrium

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by Mike Telin

CalledCHANTICLEER “the world’s reigning male chorus” by the New Yorker, Chanticleer brings their 35th Anniversary concert tour to the Cleveland Museum of Art’s VIVA! & Gala series on Wednesday, January 30, beginning at 7:30 pm. The concert titled A Siren’s Call, is an evening of seductive and irresistible songs of the sirens—sometimes fateful, sometimes fatal, will be performed in the newly opened Ames Family Atrium and is presented in conjunction with the opening of the Renaissance galleries.

We spoke to Chanticleer’s interim music director, Jace Wittig, by telephone from his office in San Francisco. [Read more…]

Review: Kronos Quartet at Cleveland Museum of Art (January 18)

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by Daniel Hathaway

“Eclectic”Kronos-Quartet doesn’t begin to describe the musical tastes of the Kronos Quartet. “Omniludic” (we just made that up) would be more like it. Musical omnivores, the Kronos are ready and eager to play music of any genre, and violinists David Harrington and John Sherba and cellist Jeffrey Zeigler have the technical and stylistic chops to do that — and to moonlight on a few other instruments too.

In their wide-ranging program in Gartner Auditorium of the Cleveland Museum of Art on January 18, the Kronos Quartet offered compelling performances of works by Bryce Dessner, Ram Narayan, Dan Becker (a first performance), Laurie Anderson, Steve Reich, Omar Souleyman and Aleksandra Vrebalov, plus arrangements of Vietnamese and Swedish tunes, to a large and rapt audience. [Read more…]

Review: Akron Symphony with Alexander Schimpf (January 19)

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by Daniel Hathaway

GermanSCHIMPF-Alexander pianist Alexander Schimpf performed with a Northeast Ohio orchestra under the baton of Christopher Wilkins for the second time in two years on Saturday evening. His first appearance on August 6, 2011 — with The Cleveland Orchestra in Beethoven’s fourth concerto — won him top prize in the Cleveland International Piano Competition. His second collaboration came as part of that prize package — a series of bookings with orchestras — as he returned to be the featured soloist in Chopin’s first concerto with the Akron Symphony at E.J. Thomas Hall.

It was clear from the contingent of Cleveland fans who drove down to hear Schimpf that the Cleveland Competition continues to support its laureates not only with post-contest bookings but with enthusiastic moral support. On Saturday, both Akron and Cleveland listeners were obviously thrilled by Schimpf’s gorgeously assured performance of a work the pianist has lived with for more than a decade: Chopin No. 1 was the first work he ever played with an orchestra, at the age of 18. [Read more…]

Preview CMA VIVA! & Gala: King Lear in Beijing Opera style— a conversation with Taiwanese actor Wu Hsing-Kuo

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by Mike Telin

TheCLT-King-Lear Cleveland Museum of Art’s VIVA! & Gala series presents King Lear: Contemporary Legend Theatre of Taiwan on Friday, January 25 beginning at 7:30 pm at the Breen Center for the Performing Arts. The production combines the virtuosity of Beijing Opera acting style with visually stunning Western stagecraft. Described as a one man tour de force, the celebrated Taiwanese actor Wu Hsing-Kuo simultaneously depicts multiple characters, from the maniacal Lear and his ally, Gloucester, to his evil, grasping daughters and the pitiful, lonely Fool. Combining richly embroidered and colorful costumes, dazzling martial arts, contemporary dance, superb visual effects, and live Chinese music and song, the production is in Mandarin with English supertitles.

Known for his movie roles as well as for his adaptations of Western classics, Wu Hsing-Kuo began his training in classical Beijing Opera at the age of 11 at the Fu-Hsing Chinese Opera School in Taiwan where he specialized in male martial arts (wu sheng). He went on to attend the Theatre Department of Chinese Cultural University in Taipei where he studied under master Chou Cheng-jung (Zhou Zheng-rong).  [Read more…]

Review: Oberlin Orchestra at Carnegie Hall (January 19)

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by Michael Cirigliano II

Special to ClevelandClassical.com

CappingOberlinOrchestraCarnegieHall off a week of performances that brought their jazz, new music, and Baroque ensembles to four of New York City’s prized venues, the Oberlin Conservatory of Music imported its prestigious orchestra to Carnegie Hall for a varied program that included contributions from two of the school’s most famous alumni, pianist Jeremy Denk and Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Christopher Rouse.

Conductor Raphael Jiménez was wise to showcase the divergent talents of his ensemble on the program’s first half, programming both the high camp of Ravel’s La Valse and the Viennese delicacy of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 21. After a tentative and shadowy opening in the Ravel, the orchestra’s rich colors slowly began to emerge, led by a glossy violin section that displayed impeccable intonation that endured even as the composer continued to process his stately waltz through the fractured machine of a postwar Cubist landscape.  [Read more…]

Review: Cleveland Orchestra with Joshua Bell (January 17)

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by Daniel Hathaway

WhenBELL-Joshua violinist Joshua Bell last played in Northeast Ohio two years ago with pianist Jeremy Denk, he packed Finney Chapel in Oberlin and E.J. Thomas Hall in Akron (causing a major traffic jam outside the 2,900-seat Akron venue, whose ushers ran out of programs early on). His return to Severance Hall after an absence of a decade to play the Beethoven concerto last night with Franz Welser-Möst and The Cleveland Orchestra also produced long lines of cars looking for parking and the excitement of a full house — something that doesn’t happen too often for a Thursday evening concert.

The crowd had to wait for the second half to enjoy Bell’s luminous performance of the 40-minute concerto, but what went before was anything but mere program filler. Jörg Widmann’s Lied [Song] and Béla Bartók’s Dance Suite offered exciting contributions all their own. [Read more…]

Review: Rocky River Chamber Music Society: Rarities from the Utrecht String Quartet (January 14)

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by Daniel Hathaway

TheUtrecht-SQ Utrecht String Quartet made Rocky River the first stop on its brief tour of the US on Monday evening, January 14, in a fresh and fascinating program of little-heard repertory by Verhulst, Mendelssohn and Sibelius at the West Shore Unitarian Universalist Church. Though only violist Joël Waterman is Dutch by birth, all of the ensemble’s members (violinists Eeva Koskinen, from Finland, Katherine Routley, from Australia and cellist Sebastian Koloski, from Germany) gravitated to the Netherlands and to the charming canal city of Utrecht, where they teach and play in other groups when not appearing as a quartet. When they do, to judge by Monday evening’s performance, their playing is always thoughtful, lively and infectious. The near-capacity audience was obviously captivated.

The program began with a charming quartet by the 19th century Dutch composer Johannes Verhulst (1816-1891), a friend and admirer of Schumann and Mendelssohn who spent his career keeping the “Music of the Future” of Liszt and Wagner at bay. The first of Verhulst’s three quartets — cellist Sebastian Koloski noted that the group had discovered it “in a library” — pays homage to both of his heroes. The second movement Adagio is songlike in the style of R.S. and the third movement Scherzo — the first of several on Monday’s program — owes its genes to F.M. The sweet and skittery opening Allegro and the energetic Presto con fuoco put the quartet’s virtuosity and ensemble playing to the test, and they rose to the challenge skilfully. A few moments of gratuitous chromaticism left only a small blotch on Verhulst’s musical character. (Players looking for new repertory can download parts for all three of his quartets here). [Read more…]

Preview: Cleveland Orchestra’s MLK Celebration to feature Sphinx competition winner Adé Williams

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Williams-Adeby Mike Telin

On Sunday, January 20, 2013, at 7:00 pm, The Cleveland Orchestra, conducted by Tito Muñoz, will perform its 33rd annual concert in celebration of the birthday of Martin Luther King Jr., a tradition that began even before Dr. King’s birthday became a national holiday.

The concert will include the Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration Chorus (a 125-member volunteer chorus from the greater Cleveland community) and the Central State University Chorus, both prepared by William Henry Caldwell, and will feature Sphinx Competition prizewinner Adé Williams as violin soloist. All available tickets have already been distributed, but listeners can tune into a live broadcast on WCLV (104.9 FM) and WCPN (90.3 FM) or on the stations’ live Internet streams. [Read more…]

CD Review: Piano two ways: new recordings by Alexander Schimpf and Jenny Lin

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by Daniel Hathaway

OnSchimpf-CD February 1, shortly after his appearance with the Akron Symphony this weekend, 2011 Cleveland International Piano Competition winner Alexander Schimpf will release his new CD on the OEHMS Classics label. Simply titled “Ravel, Scriabin, Schubert” and recorded at the Munich studios of Bayerischer Rundfunk (Bavarian Radio) not far from Schimpf’s home in Würtzburg, the album is devoted to three works: Ravel’s Le tombeau de Couperin, Scriabin’s Five Preludes, op. 74, and Schubert’s Sonata in B-flat.

Though Schimpf confesses in his thoughtful liner notes that “the only determining idea for this CD” was “recording works that are particularly dear to my heart”, once his program was chosen, he noticed interesting bits of connective tissue between the pieces. They happen to be each composer’s final compositions for the piano, “late works” even for those who, like Schubert, died young. For Scriabin, op. 74 was the last music he wrote. Additionally, Ravel and Scriabin’s pieces date from 1914, “a highly charged period in Central Europe in every respect — socially, artistically and philosophically.” And the “dance-like elements” in Ravel’s suite “also determine large sections of the 3rd and 4th movements of the Schubert Sonata.”  [Read more…]

Review: Organist James Feddeck at Cleveland Museum of Art (January 13)

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 by Daniel Hathaway

ForFeddeck-at-organ many decades, regular organ concerts were part of the weekly routine at the Cleveland Museum of Art, both when the 1920 E.M. Skinner instrument could be heard throughout the building from its position in the loggia of the Garden Court and then after the organ, completely rebuilt by the Holtkamp company, came to live in the new Gartner Auditorium in 1971.

In 2010, after spending five years in mothballs during the Gartner renovation, the organ played out once again in a rededication recital by David Higgs, but except for a special recital by former musical arts curator Karel Paukert a month later and a young artist competition sponsored by the American Guild of Organists last Spring, the instrument has been more often seen than heard. [Read more…]

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