by Mike Telin
When Robert Walters performs the world premiere of Bernard Rands’ Concerto for English Horn with The Cleveland Orchestra on Friday, November 27 in Severance Hall, it will bring to fruition a composer-performer collaboration whose roots go back more than two decades.
The 8:00 pm concert, under the direction of Lionel Bringuier, will also feature Claude Debussy’s Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun, and Hector Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique. The program will be repeated on Saturday, November 28 at 8:00 pm, and Sunday, November 29 at 3:00 pm. [Read more…]
Since their founding thirteen years ago, the Jupiter Quartet (violinists Nelson Lee and Meg Freivogel, violist Liz Freivogel, and cellist Daniel McDonough) has presented concerts across North America, Europe, and Asia, and have garnered numerous chamber music awards including the Cleveland Quartet Award from Chamber Music America, first prize in the Banff International String Quartet Competition, and grand prize in the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition. In 2008 they were awarded an Avery Fisher Career Grant.
Nostalgia was much in evidence at Severance Hall on Thursday evening, November 19. Music director laureate Christoph von Dohnányi, who conducted The Cleveland Orchestra from 1984-2002, made his annual return visit to the podium, obviously drawing a large audience of fans. Additionally, the premiere of Richard Sortomme’s Concerto for Two Violas on Themes from Smetana’s “From My Life” String Quartet served as a fond recollection of the composer’s long friendship with its dedicatee, principal viola Robert Vernon, who is scheduled to retire at the end of the Blossom season in 2016. 
On Monday evening, November 15, the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra played Severance Hall for the first time since 2004. The concert also marked the Severance Hall debut for Zubin Mehta, world-renowned conductor and the Orchestra’s music director since 1991. 
Oberlin, OH — The Council for Advancement and Support of Education has named Brian Alegant, Oberlin Conservatory’s longtime Barker Professor of Music Theory, as “U.S. Professor of the Year” for 2015, the first music professor to be so honored since the award was established 35 years ago.
As you enter the Violins of Hope exhibit at the Maltz Museum for Jewish Heritage, the first thing you see is a wall legend:
Cleveland’s newest choral organization, the 36-voice Cleveland Chamber Choir, will sing its inaugural concert under the direction of Scott MacPherson on Saturday, November 21 at First Baptist Church in Shaker Heights.
A concert of “new music” conjures up for some listeners the works of the atonal and twelve-tone works of the likes of Arnold Schoenberg and his disciples, the austere works of Pierre Boulez, or the dense modernist Harrison Birtwistle. But these days composers of contemporary “classical” music are no longer bound by such musico-political considerations. There is no “accepted” modern style. Instead composers now draw upon a wide variety of inspiration: old works, pop and rock music, jazz and world music, among other influences. 
It was a fine evening for wind players at the Akron Symphony concert on Saturday, November 14 at E.J. Thomas Hall. Their distinguished playing lent many-hued colors to Johannes Brahms’s Symphony No. 2 in D, as well as to the second suite from Albert Roussel’s ballet Bacchus and Ariadne. And the program, under the direction of guest conductor JoAnn Falletta, featured the artistry of guest soloist Todd Levy in Aaron Copland’s Clarinet Concerto. 
Benjamin Bagby is so consummate a raconteur that he could probably tell you a joke in Anglo-Saxon — with the help of a few facial expressions and gestures — and you’d know exactly when to laugh. Presented by Apollo’s Fire, Bagby brought all his storytelling skills into play at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Cleveland Heights on Friday evening, November 13 to bring the first third of the Old English epic poem Beowulf vividly to life.