By Mike Telin and Daniel Hautzinger
Every summer, young music students leave their conservatories to attend festivals, where they essentially continue the studies they undertake during the year, but with other teachers, and performances and master classes by exceptional visiting artists. Kent/Blossom Music Festival is no different: students descend upon Kent State University for five weeks to study with musicians from the Cleveland Orchestra, Kent Faculty, and guest artists. Throughout those five weeks, there are six faculty concerts and a performance with the Cleveland Orchestra, as well as eight student recitals (see our concert listings page for details).
“We put the students in a room and say ‘here’s your group and your music. Good luck,’” said Charles Latshaw, director of the Kent State University Orchestra and of Kent/Blossom. “In a few days we bring in a faculty coach who’ll work with them. The students learn and grow on their own and develop their own personal expression. That’s special for a chamber music festival.” [Read more…]
Sometime in the next year, Noah Bendix-Balgley will leave his position as concertmaster of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, which he won when he was 27 in 2011. Why leave such a desirable chair, especially when he was appointed at such a young age? To become first concertmaster of the Berlin Philharmonic, one of the most prestigious orchestras in the world.
ClevelandClassical staffers Mike Telin, Daniel Hautzinger and myself were among the thirty-three members of the Music Critics Association of North America who gathered in Chicago from June 17-19 for the association’s annual meeting.
ChamberFest Cleveland’s savvy programming strategy continued on Saturday, June 21 with a 5:00 pm concert at MOCA Cleveland that paired an edgy solo cello work by Iannis Xenakis with a daring arrangement of J.S. Bach’s Goldberg Variations for string trio.
“Another opening, another show…” And so it was on Thursday afternoon, June 19 when the Ohio Light Opera staged its opening performance Irving Berlin’s Call me Madam in Freedlander Theater on the campus of The College of Wooster. Filled to capacity, the house was teeming with enthusiasm as OLO launched its 36th season with a political topic that, not coincidentally, hit close to home.
Apollo Fire’s Sunday evening performance at the Baroque Music Barn in Hunting Valley shows why the early music/Baroque ensemble can and should make forays outside of classical and into the heart of American folk music. Their latest program “Glory on the Mountain,” is a follow-up to their highly successful “Come to the River” tour and CD, and is now in the midst of a 10 performance tour of the Cleveland area. “Glory on the Mountain” is an exploration into the music and culture of 18th and 19th century Appalachia, a place populated by British settlers. It combines haunting melodies, foot-stomping jigs and reels, stories, and a healthy dose of comedy, all with musicianship of the highest order. The audience sang, clapped, shed a few tears, and laughed, ultimately enjoying a taste of the good times that our mountain forebears must have had.
Opera Circle staged an enticing production of Erich Korngold’s Die tote Stadt (“The Dead City”) on Saturday, June 14 at the Ohio Theatre in PlayHouseSquare. The opera is something of a rarity, probably because of the challenges of dealing with the eerie subtleties of its plot, its demand for a Heldentenor to sing the role of Paul, and its opulent 1920s orchestration. Die tote Stadt is a major undertaking for any small company, but Opera Circle admirably rose to the task.