by Daniel Hathaway
The Cleveland Cello Society’s annual “iCellisti” concert on Friday, January 30 at CWRU’s Harkness Chapel might set a local record for the number of cellists to appear onstage at the same time. At the end of a program featuring members of The Cleveland Orchestra cello section in various solos, duets and quartets, the Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra cello section will join their senior counterparts in a work that calls for an ensemble of twelve performers.
“Julius Klengel’s Hymnus looks a little intimidating in the score, with its twelve individual parts,” TCO cellist Bryan Dumm said in a telephone conversation. “But it’s a charming piece in a Romantic style. We’ll be doubling the parts, with Youth Orchestra players sharing stands with Cleveland Orchestra cellists. Having twenty-two cellists onstage at the same time will thicken the texture and make the piece even a bit nicer. It’s going to sound ringing and quite glorious in Harkness Chapel.” [Read more…]
Listening to a concert is like hugging: you can tell when someone is into it and when they aren’t. A performer might revel in a slow movement or delight in a fast one — or every now and then they might just go through the motions. Both ways of playing were on display Wednesday night, January 21 in Oberlin’s Kulas Recital Hall. 
More performers — at least those who can write lucid prose — should pen their own program notes to let us know what mental wheels were spinning when they decided what they were going to play. Jonathan Biss thinks and writes as eloquently as he plays the piano, and his choice of repertoire is deliberate and insightful, as he proved in his excellent performance on January 20 for the Tuesday Musical Association at Akron’s E.J. Thomas Hall. 
Cleveland, January 25, 2015 — The Cleveland Orchestra will play fifteen of seventeen Blossom Festival concerts this summer, which begins on July 2 and continues through September 6. Subscription Renewals are currently underway, and premier subscriptions and Create-Your-Own are now available for purchase. Pre-sale single tickets for current Cleveland Orchestra subscribers will go on sale on April 20 and individual tickets for the general public may be purchased beginning on May 12.
Apollo’s Fire’s “Fireside Concerts” this season gather audiences around the hypothetical hearth of the Bach family in Leipzig (before moving on to Zimmermann’s Coffee House). Music by Johann Christian (1735-1782) Wilhelm Friedmann (1710-1784) and Papa Bach himself feature the talented members of the ensemble’s Young Artist Apprentice Program performing alongside AF regulars, with a special appearance by three even younger members of Apollo’s Musettes. 
Tugan Sokhiev has withdrawn as conductor from concerts by The Cleveland Orchestra on January 29, 30 and 31 on the advice of his physician. He will be replaced by Finnish conductor 
On Sunday, January 25, the Cleveland Museum of Art will present organist Karel Paukert, former and long-time curator of musical arts at the museum, in a special recital in Gartner Auditorium. To mark his 80th birthday Paukert will revisit a work that he has played “at least annually” for decades, Olivier Messiaen’s La Nativité du Seigneur (“The Birth of Christ”).
One person’s music is another’s noise. On Friday, January 16 in Gartner Auditorium at the Cleveland Museum of Art, Italian musicologist, composer and musician Luciano Chessa led a fascinating and brilliantly programmed concert by the “Orchestra of Future Noise Intoners” or “Intonarumori,” which challenged listeners to hear the musical possibilities that can be found in noise. 
Guitarist Jason Vieaux’s solo album, Play, is among the five 2015 Grammy Award nominees in the category of Best Classical Instrumental Solo. The awards ceremony will take place on February 8 at Los Angeles’s Staples Center.
The fourteenth century was a strange time in the history of Europe, as those who have read Barbara W. Tuchman’s 1978 book, A Distant Mirror, already know. Amid all its tumult, that period also became a fertile era for musical experimentation, a subject Les Délices explored in two concerts last weekend presented in collaboration with the Boston ensemble Blue Heron.