by Monica Hunter-Hart, Guest Contributor
Who among us can recall, through personal memory, the Weimar Republic’s cultural renaissance from 1924-1929, considered the German Golden Era? Such a person would have to be around a hundred years old. German tenor Jonas Kaufmann probably won’t find many centenarians among his audience—but Sony Classical’s September 2014 release Du bist die Welt für mich (“You Mean the World to Me”) is sure to make listeners yearn for a time they never knew. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Although the second concert of this busy Severance Hall week wasn’t formally part of the Boulez tribute, Friday’s performance fit right in, featuring as it did the premiere of a new work by British composer-conductor Ryan Wigglesworth, and an expedition into one of Gustav Mahler’s more enigmatic and unwieldy symphonies. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Though the man of the hour was unable to travel and bask in his celebration, The Cleveland Orchestra’s tribute to Pierre Boulez on Thursday, January 15, was a festive one, warmed by video tributes from long-time Orchestra members and illuminated by thrilling performances of works written or led by the French composer-conductor during his forty-some year relationship with the organization. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hautzinger
Northeastern Ohio has some fantastic musicians. Case in point: the chamber concert in Oberlin’s Kulas Recital Hall on January 14, part of the conservatory’s Winter Chamber Music Festival. Featuring the abundant talents of members of The Cleveland Orchestra, Oberlin faculty, and one student, it offered a cornucopia of musicality, passion, and delight. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
The last Cleveland performance by the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center in 2010 brought two pianists and two percussionists to town for music by Shostakovich, Crumb and Bartók and shifted the Cleveland Chamber Music Society’s center of gravity westward to Waetjen Auditorium at CSU. On Tuesday evening, the Societies colluded once again, but this time the agenda was all strings and the venue was Plymouth Church in Shaker Heights. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Johann Sebastian Bach’s charming cantata about a parent in the throes of despair over his daughter’s addiction to coffee forms the centerpiece of Apollo’s Fire’s next set of concerts. “Family Frolic” will begin its run on Thursday, January 22 with a performance at the Cleveland Institute of Music’s Mixon Hall.
Set in the context of a day in the Bach family quarters in Leipzig, the comedic cantata had — and will have — some connections to real life. One of Bach’s daughters answered to the nickname of Lieschen, and Madeline Apple Healey, the soprano who will play that role this weekend, actually works as a barista at Phoenix Coffee in Ohio City. And she does love the beverage she dispenses, she said in a telephone conversation. “I’m a coffee purist. Usually I just make a pourover of single origin coffee — Ethiopians are my favorite, though occasionally I’ll have a cappuccino.”
Bach penned his Kaffee-Kantate to be performed by the Leipzig Collegium Musicum at a Leipzig coffee emporium, possibly Zimmerman’s, where the composer’s student ensemble was a regular fixture. After the patrons are called to order by a narrator, Herr Schlendrian storms in, roaring like a bear over his daughter’s fascination with the caffeinated brew, which is all the rage among the younger set in Leipzig. Lieschen responds with an elaborate ode to coffee, and the conversation, or shall we say family argument, continues from that point. Artistic Director Jeannette Sorrell, who has provided a new English translation, will direct the mini-drama with tenor Corey Shotwell as narrator and bass-baritone Jeffrey Strauss as Schlendrian. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Cleveland composer H. Leslie Adams (left), an Oberlin Conservatory graduate, spent the decade from 1997 to 2007 writing his Twenty-six Etudes for Solo Piano. He describes them in the liner notes to two recent recordings as “studies of varying styles, moods, tonalities, and thematic natures — each providing different technical challenges, while expressing my personal sense of beauty.” [Read more…]
by Mike Telin
“His personality is a tremendous contrast, because he seems so serious and intellectual, and of course he’s probably the person with the highest IQ that I ever met. Yet, he has this whimsical and humorous personality behind it.”
The person Cleveland Orchestra principal keyboardist Joela Jones is referring to is none other than Pierre Boulez. “To me it’s amazing that somebody who is so great, so brilliant, and so gifted, could also be so humble and modest. He just makes you feel so comfortable, like you are his equal, which of course you’re not. And, if you have enough intelligence you know that.” [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
It’s a busy week for The Cleveland Orchestra. In addition to marking the 90th birthday of Pierre Boulez on Thursday, and playing the annual Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration Concert on Sunday, the orchestra, led by Franz Welser-Möst, will present a pair of concerts on Friday and Saturday evening that include Mahler’s sixth symphony and the first performances of Études-Tableaux, a new work by British composer Ryan Wigglesworth. Wigglesworth is in his second and final year as the orchestra’s Daniel R. Lewis Young Composer. [Read more…]
by Mike Telin
American violinist, conductor, and composer William Harvey has dedicated a large part of his professional career to his passion, Cultural Diplomacy. Harvey, who holds degrees from the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University and Juilliard, first gained international recognition when he lead the Afghan National Youth Orchestra, a group he founded, on a historic tour of the United States in 2013.
During a recent telephone conversation, Harvey gave full credit to the success of the tour to the founder of the Afghanistan National Institute of Music. [Read more…]