by Tom Wachunas
In Classical mythology, Terpsichore, the daughter of Zeus and Mnemosyne, is the Muse of Dance. On November 21, she was present at Umstattdt Performing Arts Hall, in all her poetic vivacity, for a magnificent performance by the Canton Symphony Orchestra (CSO). [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Continuing Cuyahoga Community College’s distinguished Classical Piano Series, Italian pianist Orazio Maione played an intriguing program of works by Sergei Prokofiev and Frédéric Chopin in Gartner Auditorium at the Cleveland Museum of Art on Sunday afternoon, November 22. This concert was sponsored by the Northern Ohio Italian American Foundation. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
On the eve of St. Cecilia’s Day — but obviously blessed in advance by the patron saint of music — the Cleveland Chamber Choir sang a splendid inaugural concert at First Baptist Church in Shaker Heights. Under the direction of its founder, Scott MacPherson, the new ensemble’s performance on Saturday, November 21 set a very high standard for themselves as a professional choral ensemble, and MacPherson’s programming whetted the appetite for more imaginative concert menus to come. [Read more…]
by Mike Telin
Impressionism provides a unique intersection between visual art and music. You can draw parallels between what composers were writing and artists were painting in other periods — baroque, romantic, modernist — but “aha” moments come with remarkable spontaneity when you put Debussy and Monet side by side. It’s like art you can hear, and music you can see.
In a happy coincidence, the Cleveland Museum of Art is glowing with the exhibition “Painting the Modern Garden: Monet to Matisse” the same week that The Cleveland Orchestra is presenting a program of works by Claude Debussy and Hector Berlioz led by French conductor Lionel Bringuier, including the premiere of Bernard Rands’ Concerto for English horn, commissioned by the Oberlin Conservatory for the Orchestra’s solo English horn, Robert Walters. Rands has been heavily influenced by the music of the Impressionist composers. [Read more…]
by Timothy Robson
The plucky concert presenters at Arts Renaissance Tremont continued their excellent 25th Season on Sunday afternoon, November 22 at Pilgrim Church with a complete performance of Igor Stravinsky’s 1918 theater piece, L’Histoire du soldat, as well as the first performance of a new work by ART’s guest composer-in-residence, David Conte, who was present to conduct his own work. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Replicating in concert form the format he developed for his recent CD, Pictures, the 21-year-old piano phenomenon Conrad Tao walked his audience through two musical galleries on Wednesday evening, November 18. The second half of Tuesday Musical’s Margaret Baxtresser Annual Piano Concert had already been curated by Modest Mussorgsky, who used paintings by Victor Hartmann to inspire his popular suite Pictures at an Exhibition. [Read more…]
by J.D. Goddard
On Saturday, November 14, BlueWater Chamber Orchestra presented a program at Plymouth Church in Shaker Heights that could be described as a showcase for some of Cleveland’s most talented musicians. Led by founder and conductor Carlton Woods, the ensemble performed three sublime and challenging works by Gabriel Fauré, Giuseppe Maria Cambini, and Francis Poulenc. These high-energy pieces, calling for technical bravado and some for lush romanticism, seemed to be joined at the hip, and made for an evening that was both serene and breathtakingly beautiful. [Read more…]
by Timothy Robson
Vincent Dubois, Titular Organist of the Cathedral of Soissons, France, played a splendid recital at the Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist in downtown Cleveland on Wednesday, November 18. Indeed, he played almost enough music for two recitals, but such was the quality of his playing that the program did not seem overly long. The music chosen was standard repertoire by the big names of the organ world: Johann Sebastian Bach, Louis Vierne, Olivier Messiaen, Marcel Dupré, Charles-Marie Widor, César Franck, and Maurice Duruflé. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Organized in 2004 and named in honor of the Galician violinist and painter Manuel Quiroga (whose career was attenuated after he was struck by a truck in New York City’s Times Square in 1937), the Spanish string quartet Cuarteto Quiroga paid an impressive visit to the Rocky River Chamber Music Society on Monday evening, November 16. Their performances of music by Mozart, Webern, and Brahms at West Shore Unitarian Universalist Church were full of exquisite details but not at the expense of a broad, lyrical narrative uniquely tailored for each work. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hautzinger
reprinted with permission from the Oberlin Conservatory
There was no Cleveland Orchestra when the Oberlin Conservatory of Music opened 150 years ago.
By the time the orchestra was founded in 1918 — with pivotal support from Oberlin’s John Long Severance ’85 — the conservatory was 53 years old and well into a phase of monumental growth. In 1919, the year-old orchestra performed for the first time in Oberlin’s Finney Chapel. It has returned to campus every year since — well over 200 performances and counting.
Ninety-six seasons later, as the conservatory celebrates its 150th anniversary, it honors these extensive ties to the Cleveland Orchestra with the commission of a work for English horn by composer Bernard Rands. [Read more…]