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Archives for February 2014

Review: Sephardic program takes Apollo’s Fire on a different kind of musical journey (Feb. 21)

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By Daniel Hathaway

AF SJApollo’s Fire has made a name for itself in over twenty years’ worth of vivid and passionate interpretations of early music on period instruments. Now, founder and artistic director Jeannette Sorrell has taken her ensemble in a new direction with a program of Jewish music from Spain and Italy entitled “Sephardic Journey: Wanderings of the Spanish Jews,” which is making the rounds of venues in Akron, Cleveland Heights, Beachwood and Rocky River from February 20-25. I heard the performance on February 21 at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Cleveland Heights. [Read more…]

Preview: CIM Opera Theater — Riders to the Sea & Dido & Aeneas: conversations with Lyndsay Moy & Elizabeth Frey

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by Mike Telin

MOY-FREYBeginning on Wednesday, February 26 in Kulas Hall at the Cleveland Institute of Music director David Bamberger and the CIM Opera Theater will present two one-act masterpieces of English opera, Dido & Aeneas and Riders to the Sea. Harry Davidson will conduct the Cleveland Institute of Music Orchestra. The performances will be sung in English with projected text. Performances begin at 7:30 pm and run through Saturday, March 1.

Ralph Vaughan Williams’s Riders to the Sea is set in the Aran Islands, off Ireland’s west coast. Before the opera opens, Maurya has lost her husband, father-in-law, and four of her six sons at sea. Mezzo soprano Lyndsay Moy (left), who performs the role of Maurya, says all one needs to do to perceive the difficulties of daily life the opera’s characters are forced to endure is to look at the geographic location where the opera is set.

“It’s easy to understand just how dangerous the ocean can be. And Maurya is someone who has experienced a lot of pain caused by the ocean. She has lost her husband, her father-in-law and four sons and at the beginning of the opera she presumes that her fifth son, Michael, is also dead. [Read more…]

Review: Cleveland Classical Guitar Society — Gomez and Davin in an enticing tribute to Dowland and Britten (Feb. 22)

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by Timothy Robson

Davin-GomezSoprano Estelí Gomez and classical guitarist Colin Davin presented a splendid and fascinating program on Saturday, February 22, at Plymouth Church, sponsored by the Cleveland Classical Guitar Society. The program was a belated tribute to the Benjamin Britten centennial celebration, but was, in fact, as much a tribute to Peter Pears, tenor and Britten’s life partner, and Julian Bream, guitarist, lutenist, and a long-time recital collaborator with Pears.

The two also presented an arresting new work by Caroline Shaw, which easily could have fit into a Pears/Bream recital program. Colin Davin closed the program with Britten’s only solo guitar work, Nocturnal after John Dowland, op. 70, composed for Julian Bream and first performed by him in 1964.

Under the title “Ancient Melodies, Modern Echoes,” Davin and Gomez alternated lute songs by Elizabethan composer John Dowland with songs from Britten’s cycle Songs from the Chinese, op. 58, which was written for Pears and Bream. [Read more…]

CD Review: The Knights — Beethoven Triple Concerto and 5th Symphony

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by Daniel Hautzinger

KnightsBeethovenCDThe Knights evolved out of chamber music parties among friends, and have a “unique camaraderie [that] retains the intimacy and spontaneity of chamber music,” according to their biography. That driving concept is so strong that it is clearly audible in the New York-based orchestra’s playing. The informality and joy of making music with friends animates their new recording for Sony Classical of Beethoven’s Triple Concerto and Fifth Symphony.

That congenial spirit fits the highly collaborative Triple Concerto well. Knights violinist Colin Jacobsen, cellist Jan Vogler, and pianist Antti Siirala share the limelight as soloists, relishing the musical back-and-forth (Jacobsen is also a member of Brooklyn Rider with Knights conductor Eric Jacobsen). The cello often leads, which is good news when it’s played by Vogler. He has one of the more astonishing tones of any cellist: impossibly expressive, whether potent or dulcet. This is in contrast to Jacobsen, whose sound is pared down and razor-like, especially in the upper range. Siirala’s clear, smooth touch infuses each note with effervescence. [Read more…]

Review: Baldwin Wallace Opera — Hansel and Gretel (February 20)

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by Daniel Hathaway

BW-H&G3There are paradoxes aplenty in Engelbert Humperdinck’s opera Hansel and Gretel — beyond the idea of an edible house. It’s a folk tale with roots in the dark days of the Plague years in medieval Europe collected by the Brothers Grimm but sanitized into a children’s story by the composer’s sister, Adelheid Wette, who wrote the libretto.

It’s a simple tale, but one that was set to complex and sophisticated music by a disciple of Wagner who adopted the technique of Leitmotiv to subliminally suggest characters and themes. The score interested Richard Strauss to the point that he agreed to conduct its premiere in 1893.

It’s a vocally demanding work that calls for experienced singers, but it’s frequently mounted by university and conservatory opera departments who have a bumper crop of women’s voices to cast (Hansel is routinely performed as a trouser role). It calls for a large orchestra — which can cause balance problems against younger singers. [Read more…]

Review: CMA at Transformer Station — Miya Masaoka (February 16)

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by Mike Telin

MASAOKA-MiyaBefore the advent of electronic tuning devices there were tuning forks and musicians usually carried at least one in their instrument cases to use to set a pitch standard. Tuning forks also provide entertainment for people of all ages who want to experiment with sound vibrations: strike the fork and place the end on a table and hear how the sound changes when placed on a chair or on the floor.

And this a how musician, composer and performance artist Miya Masaoka began her CMA at Transformer Station series Concert on Sunday, February 16. For roughly 50 minutes, Masaoka presented three thoroughly engaging, extended improvisations featuring koto, electronics, lasers and tuning forks.

To be accurate, Masaoka used two differently-sized tuning forks as she methodically placed the forks on different surfaces, the sound altering ever so slightly with each placement. [Read more…]

Review: CMA Masters of the Violin — Ray Chen with Julio Elizalde (February 12)

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by Daniel Hathaway

CHEN-RayNot quite twenty-five years old, violinist Ray Chen has left his prodigy days well behind and enjoys a burgeoning reputation as a smart, stylish young virtuoso who told this publication that his main concern is to connect with audiences.

Born in Taiwan and brought up in Australia, and having spent a local stint at the Encore School for Strings in Hudson barely a decade ago, Chen is refreshingly devoid of pretense and attitude. And as he showed a good-sized audience at the Cleveland Museum of Art on February 12, he can deliver an impressive and thoroughly engaging recital.

Chen and his pianist partner, Julio Elizalde, playing modishly from iPads, led off with a vigorous and incisive retelling of Mozart’s A-major sonata, K. 305, neatly passing off phrases and finishing each other’s sentences like old buddies. The two-movement piece, written when Mozart was barely twenty, concludes with a set of six variations on a theme in which the two musicians brought out a variety of subtle inflections. [Read more…]

Review: Cleveland Orchestra — Mahler & Schoenberg with Marc Albrecht and Sasha Cooke (February 13)

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by Daniel Hathaway

ALBRECHT-MarcGuest conductor Marc Albrecht brought an interesting musical portfolio with him to Severance Hall last weekend. First came two Mahler works, one an orphaned movement spun out from an early version of his first symphony, the other his short but dramatic song-cycle, Songs of a Wayfarer. Then to end the program, Arnold Schoenberg’s drastic transformation of Brahms’s Piano Quartet in g into an exuberant piece for large orchestra.

It was a weekend of replacements. Albrecht agreed some weeks ago to step in for Pierre Boulez, necessitating a complete change in repertoire, and mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke filled in on much shorter notice for Alice Coote, who had to cancel due to a family illness. I heard the Thursday concert.

Mahler’s Blumine is an unassuming, sentimental little piece that seems to have wandered in from a cabaret — or maybe from the pit of a theater orchestra, judging by its instrumentation. [Read more…]

Preview: Cleveland POPS to salute Marvin Hamlisch February 21

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by Mike Telin

Hamlisch&CIMOrchIf you were asked to name one musical by the late great Marvin Hamlisch, chances are you’d say A Chorus Line. “I think the whole idea of A Chorus Line is amazing in itself,” says Cleveland Pops Conductor Carl Topilow, “and it is the work that distinguished him and made him very special. All you have to hear are the opening rhythms and you know exactly what it is. It’s so iconic.”

On Friday, February 21st beginning at 8:00 pm in Severance Hall, Topilow will lead The Cleveland POPS Orchestra in a concert dedicated to Hamlisch’s music. “Marvin Hamlisch, A Musical Legacy” features many of the composer’s most beloved music from A Chorus Line, Ice Castles and The Way We Were. Topliow will be joined by three stars of musical theatre, Donna McKechnie, Jodi Benson and Doug LaBrecque.

Prior to his 2011 performance with the Cleveland Institute of Music Orchestra (pictured above), we asked Hamlisch why he thought A Chorus Line resonates with so many. [Read more…]

Preview: CIPC Concert Series: Duo Amal

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by Mike Telin

Duo-AmalHow quickly life can change. Just ask Israeli pianist Yaron Kohlberg, the second prize winner at the 2007 Cleveland International Piano Competition. After joining forces with Palestinian pianist Bishara Haroni for a peace concert at the Oslo Opera House in 2011, the two pianists chose to redirect their professional energies away from solo careers in favor of pursuing their career paths as a duo piano team.

On Saturday, February 22 beginning at 8:00 pm inReinberger Chamber Music Hall at Severance Hall, the Cleveland International Piano Competition Concert Series presents Duo Amal, Yaron Kohlberg and Bishara Haroni, duo pianos.

The sold-out concert features Schubert’s Fantasy in F Minor, Shostakovich’s Concertino for Two Pianos, Rachmaninoff’s Suite No. 1, an arrangement of Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 1, “Classical” and Avner Dorman’s Karsilama. Beginning at 7:00 pm in Reinberger Hall, Yaron Kohlberg and Bishara Haroni will participate in a discussion led by Charles Michener. The discussion is open to anyone holding a ticket to the concert. [Read more…]

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