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Archives for January 2016

Peter Takács caps off “The Beethoven Experience” at Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall (January 14)

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by Jarrett Hoffman

TAKACS-Peter1New York, January 14 — Pianist Peter Takács knows Beethoven like the palm of his hand, and I’m not saying whether that’s his own or Beethoven’s. Showcasing interpretations built over a lifetime studying that composer, the professor of piano at Oberlin Conservatory capped off “The Beethoven Experience” on January 14 at Weill Recital Hall in Carnegie Hall. The series’ three concerts — starring Takács and chamber music friends — each examined one of the three periods of Beethoven’s works, concluding with Thursday evening’s look at the “late period.” [Read more…]

Cleveland Orchestra with Barbara Hannigan (Jan. 14)

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by Daniel Hathaway

Hannigan-FWMSome of the most arresting concert works don’t end with a bang, but a whisper. Both Hans Abrahamsen’s let me tell you and Dmitri Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 4 dissipated into silence at Severance Hall on Thursday, January 14, as music director Franz Welser-Möst held off the eventual ovations for a long, thoughtful moment. There was a lot to reflect on in The Cleveland Orchestra’s playing of both an enthralling new work and a sprawling Soviet-era symphony. [Read more…]

Olivier Brault and the Akron Symphony: a dialogue of traditions (January 16)

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by Christine Jay

BRAULT-OlivierThankfully not all old traditions die hard. On January 16 in the University of Akron’s E. J. Thomas Hall, music director Christopher Wilkins, baroque violinist Olivier Brault, and the Akron Symphony presented a concert entitled “Vivaldi and Bach — The Great Inspiration.” An intermingling of historical and modern performance traditions ensued, with inspiring results. [Read more…]

CIM New Music:
Keith Fitch talks about Shulamit Ran
(first of two articles)

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by Mike Telin

Ran-ShulamitNortheast Ohio audiences are in for a treat next week when the Cleveland Institute of Music plays host to celebrated composer Shulamit Ran for a three-day residency. On Tuesday, January 26 at 4:30 pm, the Pulitzer Prize-Winner will discuss her music in Studio 113. The event is free and open to the public. The following evening at 8:00 pm in Kulas Hall, guest conductor Steven Smith will lead the Cleveland Institute of Music Orchestra in a concert that will include Ran’s Legends and Violin Concerto featuring Laurie Smukler as soloist. The program will also include Charles Ives’ The Unanswered Question.

“Shulamit is fantastic in every way,” Keith Fitch, who heads the Composition Department and holds the Vincent K. and Edith H. Smith Chair in Composition at the Cleveland Institute of Music, said during a recent telephone conversation. “She’s had such a long and distinguished career as a composer, teacher, and advocate for new music. She’s so good with students, and she’s a great mentor and role model.” Ran recently retired from academia, having taught at the University of Chicago since 1973.

“I’ve always admired Shulamit’s music so much. Not only is it beautifully crafted, it’s also emotionally powerful, and so engaging. There’s this fearless quality to her music that I really love.” [Read more…]

Burning River Baroque to examine
the “colorful lives of composers”

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by Daniel Hathaway

BRB-RoomSinger and cellist Malina Rauschenfels and harpsichordist Paula Maust will be featured in Burning River Baroque’s next pair of performances, entitled “Forces of Good and Evil: the colorful lives of composers” on Saturday, January 23 at 7:30 pm at St. Alban’s Church in Cleveland Heights, and Sunday, January 24 at 3:00 pm at Mary Queen of Peace Church in Old Brooklyn. (Note correct dates!)

The program centers around the idea that music transcends the personal traits of its creators — that whether composers were virtuous in their private lives like Henry Purcell (who was still capable of writing scatalogical rounds) or Tarquinio Merula, who was apparently a difficult employee and was censured for “indecency manifested towards several of his pupils,” their music “remains exquisite enough to stand the test of time,” as Maust writes in her program notes.

The program begins with the good guys: Purcell’s If music be the food of love, and French cello virtuoso Jean Barrière’s Sonata in c minor from his second book of sonatas, composed between 1733 and 1739. Barrière escapes close personal scrutiny because little is known about his life, which “seems to have been quite ordinary,” Maust says, adding that Barrière was the first to compose entirely idiomatic cello music during the first half of the 18th century. [Read more…]

Les Délices: Sponseller & Street in “The Imaginary Orchestra” (January 16)

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by Daniel Hathaway

2-HarpsichordsRecitals that feature duo-harpsichordists are rare enough treats, but the program of French baroque music that Michael Sponseller and Jacob Street played on Les Délices’ series at The Galleries at Cleveland State University on Saturday evening, January 16, was an extraordinary tasting menu of twenty opera-related delights. These ranged from the ancien cuisine music of Jean-Baptiste Lully and Marin Marais to the nouvelle cuisine experiments of Armand-Louis Couperin, sandwiched around ten wonderfully varied main courses by Jean-Philippe Rameau and followed by a pair of postprandial confections supplied by Pancrace Royer. [Read more…]

Les Délices’ The Imaginary Orchestra:
a conversation with harpsichordists Michael Sponseller and Jacob Street

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by Mike Telin

Sponseller-Street“When you work in baroque opera, the job of a harpsichordist is to also be the Répétiteur,” Michael Sponseller explained during a recent conference call with fellow harpsichordist Jacob Street. “During the rehearsals, our job is to take the score and figure out how to make one harpsichord sound like an orchestra.”

This weekend, Les Délices will prove that two harpsichords are better than one when Michael Sponseller and Jacob Street combine their musical wizardry for two concerts entitled “The Imaginary Orchestra.”

The program, presented on Saturday, January 16 at 8:00 pm in The Galleries at Cleveland State University and on Sunday at 4:00 pm at Herr Chapel in Plymouth Church in Shaker Heights, will feature arrangements from operas by Jean-Baptiste Lully, Marin Marais, Jean-Philippe Rameau, and Pancrace Royer, as well as the rarely heard symphony for two harpsichords by Armand-Louis Couperin. Les Délices artistic director Debra Nagy and harpsichordist Lisa Goode Crawford will present a pre-concert talk at each performance. [Read more…]

CD Review:
Barbara Hannigan in Hans Abrahamsen’s let me tell you

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by Daniel Hathaway

let-me-tell-you-CDReleased on January 8, just a week before her U.S. premiere of the work with The Cleveland Orchestra, Canadian soprano Barbara Hannigan’s recording of Hans Abrahamsen’s let me tell you with Andris Nelsons and the Bavarian Radio Orchestra should count as one of the most important new music CDs of 2016. [Read more…]

Cleveland Orchestra: soprano Barbara Hannigan to sing U.S. premiere of Abrahamsen’s let me tell you

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by Christine Jay

Hannigan-performanceWhen critically acclaimed soprano and conductor Barbara Hannigan’s surprise birthday plans for her friend and novelist Paul Griffiths fell through, she suggested a gift of even greater implications: a project of Griffiths’ words animated by Hannigan’s liquid sound. The end product will be heard on Thursday and Friday, January 14 and 15 in Severance Hall when Hannigan joins Franz Welser-Möst and The Cleveland Orchestra in the United States premiere of Hans Abrahamsen’s let me tell you.

This situation, indeed, is an example of collaboration at its finest; a soprano, librettist, and composer each separately became enthralled in telling a story. The bonding narrative is Griffiths’ 2008 novel let me tell you, a work utilizing the 481 words appropriated to Ophelia in Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Told from Ophelia’s point of view, Griffiths depicts her life’s maturation, as she is perpetually caught in a web of royalty and patriarchy until her father’s murder and her subsequent, aqueous suicide. [Read more…]

Akron Symphony:
Keep Calm and Play Bach —
a chat with violinist Olivier Brault

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by Christine Jay

BRAULT-OlivierHow do you follow a celebrated performance of Antonio Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons? Christopher Wilkins, Music Director of the Akron Symphony, created this fabulous conundrum when he invited Olivier Brault, concertmaster of Apollo’s Fire (and other historically informed ensembles across the globe), to lead Vivaldi’s iconic work in January 2014. Brault excelled and left the audience with a Vivaldian fire in its veins — but what next after Brault’s maiden voyage with the Akron Symphony two years ago?

Keep calm and play Bach.

Both friends and lovers of Bach, Wilkins and Brault devised a program of their favorite repertoire — teeming with the usual hyper-caffeinated Vivaldi and fervent complexity of Bach — for a program entitled “Vivaldi and Bach: Inspired Connection” with the Akron Symphony on January 16, 2016 at 8:00 pm in the E.J. Thomas Performing Arts Hall. [Read more…]

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