by Nicholas Jones
String players sometimes say that instruments can “remember their past” — that one can tell the quality of the previous owner by listening to the violin’s tone. Played for years by a mediocre player, the violin settles into mediocrity; played by the best, the violin becomes the best. The violins played in last week’s community concert at Severance Hall have a long and heavy past. Now, restored to life, they seem to remember the tragedy and the hope of the Holocaust, a memory that can remind us of the worst and the best in human life. [Read more…]
The newest addition to Cleveland’s classical music scene, Earth and Air: String Orchestra, made its debut on Thursday, October 8 in Tucker Hall at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Cleveland Heights. Founder and director David Ellis chose a challenging program entitled “Prague Serenades” that featured Antonín Dvořák’s Serenade for Strings, Op. 22, and the Serenade, Op. 6 by Dvořák’s student (and son-in-law), Josef Suk. 
Growing up in a musical family will often cause children and younger siblings to reject music or embrace it fully. Luckily for audiences around the world, Croatian guitarist Ana Vidović did the latter. On Saturday, October 24 at 7:30 pm in Plymouth Church, 
Since 1995 conductor, clarinetist, and entertainer Carl Topilow and his Cleveland Pops Orchestra have delighted audiences with performances that inventively blend light classical, swing, jazz, Broadway, Dixieland, and Klezmer music. On Saturday, October 24 at 8:00 pm in Severance Hall, Topilow will kick off the Orchestra’s new season with a program entitled “Big Band and All That Jazz.”
On Sunday, October 25 at 3:00 pm, Arts Renaissance Tremont will continue its 25th anniversary season at Pilgrim Congregational Church in Tremont. The concert will feature clarinetist Franklin Cohen, violist Kirsten Docter, cellist
The Barcelona-based Cuarteto Casals will continue the Cleveland Chamber Music Society’s 66th season at Plymouth Church in Shaker Heights on Tuesday, October 27 at 7:30 pm with a program of string quartets by Joseph Haydn, Dmitri Shostakovich, and Ludwig van Beethoven.
On Tuesday, October 27 at 7:30 pm, pianist Wu Han, violinist Philip Setzer, and cellist David Finckel will return to the Tuesday Musical Series at E.J. Thomas Hall in Akron to present the second and final installment of their project to perform all six of Ludwig van Beethoven’s trios for piano, violin, and cello in two concerts.
Canadian pianist Tony Yike Yang, who won first prize in Oberlin’s Thomas and Evon Cooper International Piano Competition in 2014 at the age of 15, is among the ten finalists competing in Poland’s 17th International Fryderyk Chopin Competition from October 18-20 in Warsaw.
Modernity — with its fresh inventions, sounds, and sensations — often inspires us to respond in kind. We are in constant dialogue with our environs. We listen. We talk back. We create reflections of our experience. This was certainly the case in last Sunday’s Cleveland Composers Guild concert (October 11), which filled Drinko Hall at Cleveland State University with an array of new resonances. 
Venice, always on the verge of sinking into the Adriatic, rose well above sea level on Friday evening at Fairmount Presbyterian Church in Cleveland Heights as Apollo’s Fire began its 24th season with “Splendor of Venice: An Orchestral Extravaganza.” Following a parade by the musicians up the center aisle heralded by natural horns on either side of the stage, founder and conductor Jeannette Sorrell announced in her opening remarks that she would play the role of Rick Steves that night, taking the audience on a musical tour of 18th-century Venice.