by Daniel Hathaway
For the fourth event in its five-concert, 32nd season, Heights Chamber Orchestra invited pianist Emanuela Friscioni to be its guest artist in a rare performance of Francis Poulenc’s Piano Concerto. The largely avocational orchestra is playing its first season under its new music director, Mark Allen McCoy. In addition to the Poulenc, HCO offered its audience Charles Gounod’s Funeral March of a Marionette and Franz Schubert’s Symphony No. 6 in C at First Baptist Church on Sunday afternoon, March 29. [Read more…]
In 1815, Wellington and Blücher defeated Napoleon at Waterloo, John McAdam was building roads in Britain out of crushed stone, and the US launched its first steam warship, the U.S.S. Fulton. And on Christmas Day of that year, Boston’s Handel and Haydn Society gave its inaugural concert. Two hundred years later, after reinventing itself more than once, H+H (as it’s now known) has the honor of being the oldest continuously performing arts organization in the country. H+H is celebrating that milestone with a variety of activities, including a handsome exhibition of historical artifacts at the Boston Public Library in Copley Square, and two performances of J.S. Bach’s Matthew-Passion at Symphony Hall.
Looking at the Cleveland Chamber Symphony’s March 21st program, you might think the concert was part of a festival of world premieres. However, the program for their Gamble Auditorium concert at Baldwin Wallace was actually part of the 2015 edition of the orchestra’s NEOSonicFest. The evening included a work by Henry Cowell, as well as world premieres by Jeremy Allen, CCS’s music director Steven Smith and Clint Needham. 
It’s been interesting to watch the evolution of composer Margaret Brouwer’s Blue Streak Ensemble over the past few years. Unlike many composers who form groups for the sole purpose of bringing their own compositions and arrangements to the public, Brouwer has been guided from the beginning by the mission to present her music alongside that of other living composers, as well as those from the past. On Sunday afternoon, March 15 at Fairmount Presbyterian Church, Brouwer realized her mission in a beautifully programmed concert featuring three of her own works, one arrangement, and pieces by two giants of the classical music canon. The concert was splendid from start to finish. 
NEOSonicFest planned a big agenda for its fourth concert at CSU’s Waetjen Auditorium on Tuesday, March 24. The Cleveland Chamber Symphony brought works by five “Young and Emerging Composers” to life under music director Steven Smith; Liza Grossman and the Contemporary Youth Orchestra reprised Stefan Podell’s Concerto for Two Violas and Orchestra with Lynne Ramsey and Jeffrey Irvine; and the two orchestras played side-by-side under Smith’s direction in a performance of Bernard Rands’ London Serenade to honor the memory of CCS founder Edwin London. 
Read Daniel Hathaway’s review of the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s premiere of Michael Gandolfi’s Ascending light with organist Olivier Latry and Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 6, Andris Nelsons, conducting, on 
Since forming in 2001, the clever, innovative contemporary music ensemble Alarm Will Sound has gone on to become one of the most successful composer-musician collectives touring today. The group is the resident ensemble at the Mizzou International Composers Festival at the University of Missouri in Columbia. Each year the festival features eight world premieres by emerging composers.
In curating the 2014-2015 Tri-C Classical Piano Series, Emanuela Friscioni chose to showcase three young pianists from three different countries. This season’s performers have ranged in age from 11 (Gavin George of Granville, OH) to 23 (Beatrice Rana of Italy). The last of the three was 19-year-old Israeli pianist Adi Neuhaus, who played Bach, Beethoven, Chopin, Scriabin and Liszt for a large audience in Gartner Auditorium of the Cleveland Museum of Art on Sunday afternoon, March 22. 
[Editor’s note: John Relyea was forced to cancel his appearance due to illness. Mezzo-soprano Stephanie Blythe agreed to step in for him, but fell ill herself and cancelled shortly before the performance on April 2.] Choosing repertoire for a solo recital is not an easy task when you’re a bass-baritone. “The bass voice is often put into dramatic dark territory, and maybe that’s because of the way people heard the color of the voice lending itself to the mood of the poetry,” bass-baritone John Relyea said during a telephone conversation. “I’m always looking for songs to sing that have more positive, less depressing texts.”