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Archives for April 2014

Announcement: Hautzinger named first ClevelandClassical Young Writers Fellow

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ClevelandClassical is pleased to announce that Chicago native Daniel Hautzinger has been named the 2014 ClevelandClassical.com Young Writers Fellow. The two-month summer fellowship is designed for young writers who wish to hone their skills and prepare for careers on the new frontiers of musical journalism.

Hautzinger is completing his sophomore year at Oberlin where he is a double degree student majoring in piano performance and history. “I am incredibly grateful for this opportunity,” he said. “As an aspiring music critic, I will gain great journalistic experience through this fellowship by writing reviews and previews and conducting interviews with artists.”

Additionally, Hautzinger will participate in daily editorial meetings and strategy sessions with editors Daniel Hathaway and Mike Telin, and will interact with artists, presenters and publicists in the music industry. He will also be provided the opportunity to learn about and assist with all matters associated with the daily operations and managing of the website. [Read more…]

Cleveland Chamber Music Society announces its 2014-2015 season

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Isserlis-LevinAt the performance by the Pavel Haas Quartet on April 8, the Cleveland Chamber Music Society announced the seven concerts to be presented during its 65th season. All performances will begin on Tuesdays at 7:30 pm at Plymouth Church in Shaker Heights.

September 23: Pianist Wu Han, violinist Philip Setzer & cellist David Finckel.

October 21: The Belcea Quartet

December 2: The Juilliard String Quartet

January 13: Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center (Benjamin Beilman & Ani Kavafian, violins, Paul Neubauer & Yura Lee, violins & David Finckel, cello)

February 24: The Jerusalem Quartet

March 10: Cellist Steven Isserlis & fortepianist Robert Levin (above)

April 21: Tenor Ian Bostridge & pianist Wenwen Duh

Review: NEOSonicFest Concert 5 — FiveOne Experimental Orchestra at The Screw Factory (April 5)

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By Mike Telin

FiveOne-Screw-Factory-(Frank-Lanza)

Anyone familiar with FiveOne Experimental Orchestra knows one thing: no concert will be like the last one. With their “no-boundaries” approach to music, this inventive group has a knack for creating happenings. They regularly incorporate artistic disciplines such as sculptors, filmmakers, dancers, and visual artists into their concerts. And they stand by their mission to present their concerts in unusual spaces like the Sculpture Center and the East Cleveland Township Cemetery.

On Saturday, Saturday, April 5 as part of NEOSonicFest, FiveOne Experimental Orchestra outdid themselves during their performance at The Screw Factory in Lakewood. And once again, it was a happening.

The Screw Factory is a massive complex that once served as the home of the Templar Motor Company. It later became a production facility for nuts and bolts, hence its name. Today it is home to an electrical wire manufacturer while the second and third floors serve as artists’ studios. [Read more…]

Review: NEOSonicFest 6: Cleveland Chamber Symphony — Young & Emerging Composers at BW (April 6)

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By Daniel Hathaway

CCS-Y&EC-040614

The Cleveland Chamber Symphony wrapped up its six-concert NEOSonicFest on Sunday evening in Gamble Auditorium at Baldwin Wallace Conservatory with the second part of its tribute to founder Edwin London. Continuing London’s tradition of orchestral readings of scores by “Young and Emerging Composers”, music director Stephen Smith and the ensemble brought the works of four composers to life in performances bracketed with scores by what might be called the Already Emerged: long-time CSU professor and CCS collaborator Howie Smith and 20th century insurance executive and musical iconoclast Charles Ives.

Each of the four composers — chosen after an earlier reading session — was invited to come to the stage and say a few words about their very different pieces. [Read more…]

Review: Violinist Miranda Cuckson — CMA @ Transformer Station (April 1)

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by Mike Telin

CUCKSON-MirandaIf you don’t know violinist Miranda Cuckson, you should. Cuckson, who has firmly established herself as one of the foremost interpreters of contemporary music — especially on the east coast — presented two area concerts last week at LCCC’s Signature Series (March 31) and CMA@ Transformer Station (April 1). I heard the Transformer Station concert.

Miranda Cuckson, who admits to having accumulated quite a bit of repertoire, admirably arrived with not one, but two concerts’ worth, nine works in total and including some of the most technically and physically demanding compositions in the contemporary solo violin canon.

Although soft spoken and slight of frame, Cuckson is a commanding performer with technique to spare. She possesses a bow arm that would be the envy of many violinists. She also has an instinctive ability for making sense out of the most abstract musical structures and conveying them to the listener. Throughout the performance her intonation was impeccable and her sound rich and focused no matter what dynamic level the music required. [Read more…]

Review: Quire Cleveland — American Choral Gems at Historic St. Peter Church (April 6)

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By Daniel Hathaway

Quire-@-St-PeterRoss Duffin and the twenty voices of Quire Cleveland turned their attention to nearly three hundred years of American music on Sunday afternoon at Historic St. Peter Church in downtown Cleveland, visiting some well-known tunes in lesser-known packaging and dusting the cobwebs off some fine music that deserves to come down out of the attic and be heard once again.

Duffin led off with his own four-part arrangement of The Star-Spangled Banner, probably the first time most members of the audience had heard — or even been aware of — all four of its stanzas. The arrangement was artful even if some of Francis Scott Key’s verse is overwrought (and lines like Their blood has wash’d out their foul footstep’s pollution challenged the normally admirable diction of the group).

The antebellum first half of the program included stern Puritan psalms from The Bay Psalm Book nicely softened and varied by Duffin’s arrangements, a set by William Billings and his circle that included the well-known round, When Jesus wept, and I am the Rose of Sharon, plus two amusing choruses about music-making, Daniel Read’s Down steers the bass, and Billings’s Modern Music. [Read more…]

Preview: Cleveland Orchestra’s Fridays @ 7 — after party to feature Brazilian Carnival music by Kenia

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by Mike Telin

KeniaBrazilian vocal sensation Kenia wants to remind audiences of one thing about Friday’s Cleveland Orchestra Friday’s @ 7 post-concert: “Remember to bring your dancing shoes,” she exclaimed. “People should expect to take a little trip to Brazil and I’d love it if they would close their eyes and find themselves transported to Rio in the midst of Carnival.”

On Friday, April 11 in Severance Hall, The Cleveland Orchestra continues its popular Fridays @ 7 series. The evening begins at 6:00 pm with a Pre-Concert in Reinberger Hall featuring Classical Indian Music with Steven Gorn, bansuri bamboo flute, and Samir Chatterjee, tabla. At 7:00 pm, Giancarlo Guerrero leads the Orchestra in a performance of Prokofiev’s Classical Symphony and Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3 with Yuja Wang as soloist. Then, on to Festa Brasileira…Carnival!

“The show is all about revisiting Carnival from the 1940’s and 50’s,” Kenia told us during a recent telephone conversation. We’ll be playing some of the marches and some of the sambas from those days. It’s away from the bossa nova but something new, exciting and very upbeat.” [Read more…]

Preview: Boston’s Blue Heron Renaissance Choir to bring rare pre-Reformation music to St. John’s Cathedral

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by Daniel Hathaway

Blue-Heron-Choir

Scott Metcalfe will bring 14 singers from his Blue Heron Renaissance Choir in Boston to the Helen D. Schubert Concert Series at St. John’s Cathedral in downtown Cleveland on Friday evening, April 11 at 7:30 pm to sing music associated with Canterbury Cathedral in the last decade before the English Reformation.

The program will include an elaborate plainchant Kyrie (Deus creator omnium), a five-part mass by Robert Jones (Missa Spes nostra), and a votive antiphon by Robert Hunt (Stabat mater). “I’m quite sure that none of these pieces have ever been sung in Cleveland before,” Metcalfe said in a recent phone conversation.

The repertory is taken from the Peterhouse partbooks, a set of manuscript scores each containing music for a single voice part, which were probably copied around 1540 at Magdalen College, Oxford, for use at Canterbury Cathedral and now held at Peterhouse at Cambridge University.

They help fill in our knowledge of what was being sung in important English choral establishments between Henry VIII’s dissolution of the monasteries (1536-1541) and the Protestant movement that led to huge changes in musical styles by the end of that decade — after the Church of England cut its ties to Rome. [Read more…]

Preview: Oberlin Artist Recital Series — a conversation with Takács Quartet violist Geraldine Walther

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By Mike Telin

WALTHER-Geraldine“I think it’s going to be a great experience playing this program, especially in Finney Chapel”, Takacs Quartet violist Geraldine Walther told us by telephone from Colorado. “It’s a gorgeous place and we love playing there.”

On Sunday, April 13 beginning at 4:00 pm. Walther and her Takács colleagues Edward Dusinberre and Károly Schrantz, violins and András Fejér, cello, will perform quartets by Shostakovich, Webern and Beethoven as part of Oberlin College’s Artist Recital Series.

The Takács were recently in the area for performances of the complete Bartók Quartet cycle, but looking at their concert schedule you discover that it’s not unusual for them to be back on the road with an equally intense program.

“Yes, we do kind of go for the gusto,” Walther said laughing. “But it’s great and we do enjoy it a lot. The string quartet repertoire is such that you can’t just let a piece sit, you’ve got to look at it again and refresh it. So it’s a constant process of revisiting pieces. Even if it’s something that we’ve played two weeks prior, we do sit down and rehearse it.” [Read more…]

Akron Symphony: a conversation with Rossini Stabat Mater mezzo-soprano Elizabeth DeShong

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By Mike Telin

On Saturday, April 12 the Akron Symphony, under the direction of Christopher Wilkins, will present its final Classic Series Concert of the season with performances of Walton’s Crown Imperial March and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5. The concert, which begins at 8:00 in E.J. Thomas Hall also features The Akron Symphony Chorus, Maria Sensi Sellner, chorus director, in Rossini’s Stabat Mater.

“I’ve worked with Christopher Wilkins and the Akron Symphony in the past,” mezzo-soprano and opera sensation Elizabeth DeShong told us during a recent conversation from New York where she was performing the role of Hermina in The Metropolitan Opera’s pastiche, The Enchanted Island. “And knowing that I am occasionally in Akron, since my base is there, they asked if I would come back for the Stabat Mater and I was really happy to do so. I have sung many Rossini opera roles but this will be my first experience of singing Stabat Mater. It’s a piece that I’ve been wanting to sing and it’s wonderful to be able to do it in Akron.” [Read more…]

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