by Daniel Hathaway
L-R: Ori Kam, Alexander Pavlovsky, Kyril Zlotnikov, Sergei Bresler
A few days before the Jerusalem Quartet’s concert at Plymouth Church on February 24, the ensemble’s home city got buried in a rare 10 inches of snow, with more in the forecast. Perhaps that brought Cleveland and Jerusalem into a special meteorological kinship as well as a musical one. Certainly, there were a lot of warm feelings being passed back and forth between musicians and audience during the quartet’s excellent performance on Tuesday evening on the Cleveland Chamber Music Society series. [Read more…]
Given that the theme for the February 22 Canton Symphony Orchestra program at Umstattd Hall was “Czech Mates,” one would reasonably expect selections by Czech composers. So it’s interesting that the first work on the program was by Mozart, something of a country unto himself. His Symphony No. 38, “Prague,” is anything but Bohemian in character, and fit the bill if only because it premiered in the Czech capital to great acclaim in 1787. 
This weekend when Baldwin Wallace presents its Spring Opera, two casts of students will be singing in a work written by a composer younger than themselves. Wolfgang Amadè Mozart finished La finta giardiniera in Munich in 1775 at the age of 18 and saw it performed in January of that year.
“Rise up, my love, my fair one, my dove, and come away. For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone; The flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land; The fig tree putteth forth her green figs, and the vines with the tender grape give a good smell.”
“I chose the pieces on this program because they belong to a part of the repertoire that was written more for the purpose of entertaining,” conductor Raphael Jiménez said of his upcoming BlueWater Chamber Orchestra program. “I did that on purpose — it’s the middle of winter, and what better way to spend a wintery night than listening to beautiful music.” 
Electrifying keyboard playing opened and closed Saturday evening’s Cleveland Orchestra concert at Severance Hall (February 21). At the outset, organist Paul Jacobs treated the large audience to an alluring taste of the organ music of Johannes Brahms, plus a thrilling performance of one of Johann Sebastian Bach’s most handsomely-constructed preludes and fugues. At the end, pianist Yefim Bronfman joined Franz Welser-Möst and the Orchestra in a reading of Brahms’s first concerto so magisterial that future pianists probably need not apply. 
Since playing their first marathon concert on Mother’s Day of 1987 in a SoHo art gallery, 
It’s a banner week for Chicago-based clarinetist and composer James Falzone. Today marks the release of his Renga Ensemble’s debut recording The Room Is on the Allos Documents label. Tomorrow the group will embark on a nine-city tour promoting the album. Then, on Sunday, March 1 at 7:00 in the Bop Stop, Falzone and his Renga Ensemble colleagues Ken Vandermark, Keefe Jackson, Jason Stein, Ben Goldberg, and Ned Rothenberg, playing an assortment of clarinets and saxophones, will present a concert featuring music from the new recording along with improvised works. 
Formed for the occasion, the Dutch a cappella vocal quartet, Quink, made a fine initial impression at the Holland Festival in 1978, and has been touring ever since. Remarkably, after 37 years, founding members Harry van Berne, tenor and Kees Jan de Koning, bass, are still singing in the ensemble, along with mezzo-soprano Elsbeth Gerritsen, who joined in 2006, and soprano Marjon Strijk, who signed on in 2008.