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Archives for March 2013

Review: Joshua Smith, Jacob Nissly & Christina Dahl perform (mostly) twentieth century works at Arts Renaissance Tremont (March 24)

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by Timothy Robson

ARTMarch24SzaboFlutist Joshua Smith must be one of Cleveland’s busiest musicians, from his position as principal flute in the center of the Cleveland Orchestra, to his teaching at the Cleveland Institute of Music, to his many chamber music appearances, including founding the semi-regular classical music performances by Ensemble HD at The Happy Dog. He was joined by pianist Christina Dahl and Cleveland Orchestra principal percussionist Jacob Nissly on Sunday afternoon, March 24, at Pilgrim Church for a concert as part of the Arts Renaissance Tremont Series. The program looked daunting, with composers of such scary repute as Busoni, Kurtág, and Xenakis. In fact, the well-attended concert was varied and entertaining, with top-drawer performances from all three musicians.

Ms. Dahl opened the concert with Ferruccio Busoni’s 1892 transcription of Johann Sebastian Bach’s Chaconne in D Minor, from the solo Violin Partita, BWV 1004. [Read more…]

Review: Clocks in Motion Percussion Ensemble at Waetjen Auditorium, CSU (March 25)

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by Robert Rollin

ClocksCSUMar25ParksClocks in Motion, the ensemble in residence for the University of Wisconsin-Madison percussion studio, appeared at Cleveland State’s Waetjen Auditorium, Monday evening March 24, presenting an exceptional new music program. The group, established in 2011, is on its second Midwest tour. There are nine professional percussionists in the group, one of whom also serves as pianist.

According to its mission statement, Clocks in Motion, is “dedicated to performing modern chamber music and commissioning new repertoire.” The ensemble’s membership ranges from undergraduate and graduate students to those with the Doctor of Musical Arts degree in percussion. At the concert all the performers evidenced a remarkable professionalism, skillful performance, and prompt, careful organization and structuring of the complex percussion resources. [Read more…]

Review: LCCC Signature Series: flutist Karen Johnson & pianist Carlos Cesar Rodriguez (March 18)

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by Mike Telin

Johnson-KarenThere’s more to presenting an engaging recital then simply performing beautifully crafted music with all the correct notes played at the right time. A performer also needs to be able to speak about the music in a conversational and informative manner that gives the audience the information they need to know without making them feel like there’s going to be a quiz at the end. On Monday, March 18 in the Studio Theatre at the Stocker Arts Center in Elyria, flutist Karen Johnson and pianist Carlos Cesar Rodriguez most certainly had the audience’s rapt attention during their recital titled The American Sprite II. The evening featured music by North and South American composers and was presented as part of Lorain County Community College’s Signature Series.

Johnson, who is based in the Washington DC area and serves on the faculty at the Levine School of Music and St. Mary’s College in Maryland, has a way of communicating even the most complicated musical rhetoric in down-to-earth terms. [Read more…]

Review: Tri-C Classical Piano Series — Angelin Chang at Gartner Auditorium (March 24)

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by Daniel Hathaway

CHANG-AngelinAngelin Chang brought a lot of technology to her recital at Gartner Auditorium of the Cleveland Museum of Art on Sunday afternoon, March 24. A Yamaha concert grand piano wired for midi held conversations with three laptop computers and projected the results onto a large screen for some of the works on the program, and Chang used an iPad instead of sheet music during one selection. The recital was the third and final concert of the Tri-C Classical Piano Series for this season and attracted a good-sized audience.

The images, generated first during Chang’s performance of Liszt’s transcription of J.S. Bach’s organ prelude and fugue in a minor, were the work of Cleveland State University faculty artist Qian Li — a set of slides ordered and superimposed at the behest of Chang’s fingers as channeled into the laptops and translated by computer software. [Read more…]

Review: No Exit at Spaces Gallery (March 23)

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by Jarrett Hoffman

SPACES3A wide spectrum of new music, by turns casual and intense, pre-determined and spontaneous, was on display in a performance by the new music ensemble No Exit on March 23 at SPACES Gallery. It was the final concert of the group’s March series, which included performances of the same program the previous two nights at MOCA Cleveland and Cleveland State University’s Drinko Auditorium.

SPACES provided a small, intimate setting, with three rows of chairs for the audience located only feet from the performers in the first room of the gallery. This, along with the art visible in the next room such as the “Twinkling Tricycle”— an antique tricycle wrapped in an absurd length of lights — lent a casual atmosphere to the concert.

The first piece, however, was anything but casual. Guest artist and virtuoso flutist Carlton Vickers performed Brian Ferneyhough’s first essay for solo flute, Cassandra’s Dream Song. Ferneyhough is known for his stunningly deliberate, complex pieces, and this one was no different. [Read more…]

Review: Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra (March 10)

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by Mike Telin

COYO-FEDDECK-MastroianniIt is no secret that Tchaikovsky was frequently plagued with self-doubt, and while writing his Fifth Symphony the composer was also struggling to make sense out of the cards that fate had dealt him in life. On Sunday, March 10 at Severance Hall, one was never in doubt that The Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra (COYO) under the direction of James Feddeck was in anything but complete command of this monumental work. From the opening “fate” theme played exquisitely by the clarinets, to the finale triumphal march, the performance was electrifying.

Feddeck’s straightforward approach to the symphony was a breath of fresh air, as far too often Tchaikovsky’s passionate music suffers from over-indulgent interpretations from the podium. Throughout, Feddeck drew a full, rich sound from his musicians who played with confidence and rhythmic accuracy. The lyrical horn solo in the 2nd movement was brilliantly played by Leo Steinkerchner and bassoonist Stuart Englehart performed with aplomb during the waltz. Bravos also go out to flutist Elise Campbell, oboist Mary O’Keefe, clarinetist Alexandria Ballinger and to the entire brass section for jobs well done. In short, this was a performance of Tchaikovsky’s Symphony #5 to remember. [Read more…]

Review: Cleveland Orchestra with Alan Gilbert (March 21)

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by Daniel Hathaway

GILBERT-AlanHow much difference does a change of conductors make? Quite a lot, when you have an ensemble as cooperative and malleable as The Cleveland Orchestra, and when a big, sprawly work like Mahler’s seventh symphony is involved.

Last weekend, New York Philharmonic music director Alan Gilbert returned to Severance Hall, where he had served as conducting assistant and assistant conductor from 1994-1997, to fill in for the ailing French maestro Pierre Boulez and to provide a fascinating contrast between what one conductor hypothetically might have done and what another one actually did.

A Boulez interpretation of Mahler 7 — purely speculative, of course — would probably have subjected the work to a thorough and rigorous formal analysis, would likely have mined the score for inner details and placed them importantly in the context of larger structures, and almost certainly would have observed every tempo change, rhythmic subtlety and dynamic level Mahler obsessively prescribed. [Read more…]

Review: Canton Symphony Orchestra — a marriage of passion and perplexity (March 23)

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by Tom Wachunas

ZIMMERMN-GerhardtIf there is a single idea that remains maddeningly entangled with my overall sense of the March 23 program by the Canton Symphony Orchestra, it is that love is a many splintered thing. For it was largely a theme of love, in wildly diverse applications, that united the three works on the program: Beethoven’s Leonore Overture No. 3, Canti guerrieri ed amorosi (Songs of War and Love) by American composer Claude Baker, and Symphony No. 5 by Dmitri Shostakovich. The evening was a stormy orchestral journey, some of it difficult to navigate, but ultimately richly rewarding.

Not surprisingly, the performance of the Beethoven overture was utterly entrancing. With inspiring clarity, the orchestra wholly embraced the work’s intense pathos and urgent drama of undeserved suffering and the resolute power of heroic love.

The second selection of the evening was the much touted world premiere of Claude Baker’s Canti guerrieri ed amorosi, which was commissioned through Meet the Composer’s Commissioning Music/USA program, and written specifically to commemorate the CSO’s 75th Anniversary. [Read more…]

Preview: Linden String Quartet to launch series at Reinberger Chamber Hall at Severance Hall

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by Mike Telin

Linden-QuartetOne of the great joys of living in a region that has more then its share of music schools is that quite often “students” return to the area as accomplished professional artists. And, one can find joy in knowing that you first heard them perform way back when. Case in point, the Linden String Quartet.

On Tuesday, April 2nd beginning at 7:30 PM, in Severance Hall’s Reinberger Chamber Hall, the quartet will present their first concert as part of the Parallels Cleveland Chamber Music Series. The concert features guest artists pianist Arthur Rowe and Cleveland Orchestra concertmaster William Preucil in Chausson’s Concerto for Piano, Violin and String Quartet in D major. The program also includes Haydn’s Quartet in D major, Op. 76, and William Bolcom’s Three Rags for String Quartet.

Founded in the spring of 2008 at the Cleveland Institute of Music, violinists Sarah McElravy and Catherine Cosbey, violist Eric Wong and cellist Felix Umansky have quickly established an impressive reputation on the national and international chamber music circuit. [Read more…]

Review: Cleveland Chamber Music Society: Takács Quartet with Garrick Ohlsson at Plymouth Church (March 19)

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by Daniel Hathaway

TakacsQuartetSmReferring in a recent interview to the Brahms-Haydn-Brahms program the Takács String Quartet cooked up for their March 19 Cleveland Chamber Music Society concert with Garrick Ohlsson (and repeated the following evening at Lincoln Center), violist Geraldine Walther exclaimed, “Who would have thunk it! But it actually does work and it’s a really satisfying concert to hear.”

The unusually large crowd in Plymouth Church last Tuesday evening agreed enthusiastically with that assessment as the Takács and their distinguished piano colleague dug deeply into the structure and substance of Brahms’s Quartet in a, op. 51, no. 2, Piano Quintet in f, op. 34 and Haydn’s Quartet in B-flat, op. 76, no. 4, sculpting performances that rank among the most distinguished and compelling of the CCMS season to date.

The two Brahms works are fascinatingly dissimilar — the quartet lyrical but abstract, the quintet craggy and visceral. The Haydn — especially in the magical hands and bows of the Takács — provided a delicious entremet and made for just about as much fun as you could possibly have at a chamber music concert. [Read more…]

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