by Robert Rollin
Last Saturday evening, March 21, the Youngstown Symphony presented the second program of its Powers Auditorium classical series, City Lights, an interesting concert intermingling Mozart and film music by Charlie Chaplin. Conductor Randall Craig Fleisher gave a short prelude, astutely pointing out that both Mozart and Chaplin shared an ability to include humor, while at the same time imbuing their outputs with pathos. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
During its more than three decades as an ensemble, the Los Angeles Guitar Quartet has generated a huge and loyal following. LAGQ’s local fans supplied the group with a large, enthusiastic audience on Saturday evening, March 21 at Plymouth Church in Shaker Heights for a two-hour show that touched nearly every possible corner of the repertoire with the group’s forty magic fingers. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
If you didn’t catch one of last weekend’s Cleveland Orchestra concerts, you missed an extraordinary experience. Pianist Daniil Trifonov, making his Severance Hall debut on Thursday evening, March 19, was simply breathtaking in Shostakovich’s first concerto — in cahoots with principal trumpet Michael Sachs and guest conductor Jahja Ling. And Ling’s interpretation of Rachmaninoff’s second symphony — the only other work on the program — was as sonorously thrilling as it was expertly paced. [Read more…]
by Jarrett Hoffman
They should do this more often. Making only their second group appearance, the Cleveland Wind Octet — including members of The Cleveland Orchestra and a couple of esteemed local friends — brought the crowd to its feet at Chagrin Falls’ United Methodist Church last Friday. Performances of a classic, an arrangement, and a new piece composed by one of the group’s own were sublime. [Read more…]
by Mike Telin
When NEOSonicFest presents its fourth concert on Tuesday, March 24, at 7:30pm in Cleveland State University’s Waetjen Auditorium, the Cleveland Chamber Symphony (CCS) will pay tribute to its founder, the late Edwin London. The two-part musical evening will feature pieces by CCS’s 2015 Young and Emerging Composers competition winners, as well as a side-by-side performance with the Contemporary Youth Orchestra (CYO) of Bernard Rands’ London Serenade.
“We’re very excited about this concert,” said CCS’s conductor and Festival music director Steven Smith. “For the first time we will join forces with CYO for a side-by-side performance. This will be one of the highlights of the Festival, because Bernard wrote his London Serenade for the Chamber Symphony. We’ve played it several times over the years, and, I think there’s something poignant about bringing the piece back to life alongside a new generation of players.” [Read more…]
by Mike Telin
Since its formation in 2008, the Mivos Quartet has amassed an impressive list of accomplishments in the world of contemporary classical music. In edition to an active touring schedule, the Quartet regularly commissions new music for string quartet and works in close collaboration with composers for extended time periods. The group is dedicated to advancing careers of emerging composers through their Mivos/Kanter String Quartet Composition Prize and their I Creation/Mivos Quartet Prize, a competition designed to promote works by emerging composers of Chinese descent worldwide.
On Saturday, March 28 at 7:30 pm at Transformer Station, the CMA Performing Arts Series will present the Mivos Quartet, Olivia de Prato and Joshua Modney, violins, Victor Lowrie, viola and Mariel Roberts, cello. The program will feature works by Alex Mincek, Martin Stauning and Helmut Lachenmann. The concert is the first in an eight-concert tour of the Midwest. [Read more…]
by Mike Telin
The 2015 edition of NEOSonicFest will end with a bang when FiveOne Experimental Orchestra (51XO) presents an innovative program on Saturday, March 28 at 8:00 pm at Zygote Press. Along with other surprises, the evening will include music by Marc Mellits, David Crowell, and Ted Hearne as well as a 51XO Zygote Jam.
“We wanted to play someplace downtown for the Festival, and when I checked out Zygote Press I was completely captivated by some of the equipment that they have,” 51XO’s artistic director John HC Thompson explained during a telephone conversation. “They have a lot of antiquated printing equipment and other toys we can play with like hoses, vacuum cleaners and giant pieces of metal. We’ve been having fun figuring out how to incorporate all these things into the show.”
The first half of the evening will take place in Zygote’s intimate gallery space with the orchestra set up in the center. The audience will be invited to sit or stand in a circle around the musicians. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Mention Francis Poulenc’s piano concerto and most musically savvy people will ask, “Don’t you mean the two-piano concerto?” In fact, there’s another one that came later than the 1932 d-minor work for two pianos and orchestra. In 1949, Poulenc wrote a solo piano concerto on commission for the Boston Symphony Orchestra. That piece will be performed by Emanuela Friscioni and Heights Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Mark McCoy, on Sunday, March 29 at 3:30 pm at First Baptist Church in Shaker Heights. (Also on the program are Gounod’s Funeral March for a Marionette and Schubert’s sixth symphony.)
“It looks like the Poulenc may be a Cleveland premiere,” Friscioni told us in a telephone conversation. “The orchestra checked everywhere and there’s no record of another performance.” Underscoring the work’s relative obscurity, the soloist herself wasn’t familiar with it before McCoy suggested it to her. “He saw that my husband Antonio Pompa-Baldi and I had played the two-piano concerto, and Mark and I both love Poulenc. It’s good to learn something new and fresh.” [Read more…]
by Timothy Robson
The a cappella vocal group Roomful of Teeth made a big roomful of noise at the Cleveland Museum of Art’s Gartner Auditorium on Friday, March 20 before a large, enthusiastic audience. This remarkable group, founded in 2009, has won a Grammy for their 2012 eponymous first album, and one of the major works on the program, Partita for 8 voices by member Caroline Shaw, won the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for music. [Read more…]
by Jane Berkner
An inspiring moment in our travels prompts many of us to write in our journals, or for the more ambitious, to create a travelogue. For Swiss flutist Matthias Ziegler, it resulted in the reinventing of his flute, enabling him to perform the sounds that he heard on an exotic instrument in a foreign place. His brainchildren were on display in a concert of original works at Transformer Station on Thursday, March 12 as part of the Cleveland Museum of Art’s Performing Arts Series. [Read more…]