ClevelandClassical.com Header
Ad
Ad

Archives for February 2016

Cleveland Chamber Music Society: Stephanie Blythe & Warren Jones (Feb. 2)

by

by Daniel Hathaway

Blythe-JonesThe cool thing to do these days is to perform classical music in unconventional venues like bars and taverns. On Tuesday, February 2, mezzo-soprano Stephanie Blythe and pianist Warren Jones flipped that concept on its head by smuggling a program of cabaret and popular songs onto a classical chamber music series. The results were delightful. At the end of their disarming performance for the Cleveland Chamber Music Society at Plymouth Church, Blythe and Jones even had the audience singing along to an Irving Berlin tune. [Read more…]

Oberlin Winter Term Opera: The Music Shop (Jan. 30)

by

by Daniel Hathaway

Bender-Matthew-PayneOpera doesn’t get much more intimate than Oberlin Conservatory’s Winter Term production of Richard Wargo’s The Music Shop. Imaginatively directed by Sally Stunkel, Oberlin’s associate professor of opera theater, Wargo’s musical version of an Anton Chekhov story took place on the stage of Warner Concert Hall with the audience seated at the auditorium edge of the platform. Off in one corner, musical director and pianist Daniel Michalak provided the orchestral accompaniment, and the fine and energetic cast of four singers were so close you could see the perspiration on their brows as the action heated up. [Read more…]

Oberlin Artist Recital Series: tenor Nicholas Phan (Feb. 3)

by

by Timothy Robson

Phan-HuangThe rising young American tenor Nicholas Phan joined pianist Myra Huang in a musically substantial and intellectually satisfying recital on the Oberlin Artist Recital Series in Finney Chapel on Wednesday, February 3. Phan has a clear, well-managed lyric voice, with surprising heft at musical climaxes. Myra Huang, a sensitive collaborator, played with technical mastery and supportive musicianship. [Read more…]

Cleveland POPS with Carl Topilow: The Genius of John Williams (Jan. 30)

by

by Daniel Hathaway

POPS-SoloistsCleveland POPS music director Carl Topilow called in extra forces to celebrate the genius of composer John Williams in Severance Hall on Saturday evening, January 30. To his excellent POPS Orchestra, he added the 50-voice Cleveland Orchestra Children’s Chorus, more than 40 members of the Contemporary Youth Orchestra, and three local heroes — Howie Smith, Franklin Cohen, and Steven Greenman — who made cameo appearances during the celebration. [Read more…]

On the Road: Oberlin Contemporary Music Ensemble at Ganz Hall of Roosevelt University in Chicago (Jan. 29)

by

by Mike Telin

WeissNew music concerts aren’t what they used to be — in a good way. Today’s composers are writing in a myriad of musical styles, and the continuously evolving technical demands their compositions place on players are no longer insurmountable. Undistracted by technical flaws during performances, listeners are free to engage with the music itself. [Read more…]

Earth and Air: String Orchestra plays John Luther Adams at St. Paul’s (Jan. 29)

by

by Daniel Hathaway

EASO-012916-BelisleThe music of John Luther Adams, perhaps one of the most widely-appreciated of contemporary composers, has been performed with some frequency in Northeast Ohio. His Drums of Winter, Wail, Inuksuit, and Veils and Vesper have recently been heard in venues ranging from concert halls to Lake View Cemetery. On January 29, David B. Ellis conducted his new Earth and Air: String Orchestra in Adams’s In the White Silence in Tucker Hall at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Cleveland Heights. [Read more…]

Richard Kogan, pianist & psychiatrist, to be featured with the Akron Symphony

by

by Mike Telin

Kogan-RichardOn Saturday, February 6 at 8:00 pm in E. J. Thomas Hall, the Akron Symphony Orchestra, under the direction of Christopher Wilkins will challenge the stigma surrounding mental illness during a concert featuring Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2 and Hector Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique.

The soloist in Rachmaninoff’s concerto will be Dr. Richard Kogan, a Harvard Medical School-trained psychiatrist, acclaimed pianist, and artistic director of the Weill Cornell Music and Medicine Program in New York. “For many years I’ve had parallel careers as a concert pianist and as a psychiatrist,” Kogan explained during a telephone conversation.

The two strands of Kogan’s career came together some years ago when he was asked by the American Psychiatric Association to lead a symposium on creative geniuses and mental Illness. [Read more…]

CIM Orchestra: Steven Smith conducts music by Shulamit Ran (January 27)

by

by Daniel Hathaway

RAN-ShulamitIn a post-intermission conversation with CIM composition professor Keith Fitch last Wednesday evening, January 27 in Kulas Hall, visiting composer Shulamit Ran showered praise on guest conductor Steven Smith and the Cleveland Institute of Music Orchestra. They had just assumed the considerable challenges of performing her Legends and Violin Concerto, and she found that impressive. “I wouldn’t have thought I’d live to hear both of those pieces on the same program,” she said. [Read more…]

Cleveland Classical Guitar Society: Lutenist Paul O’Dette at Plymouth Church (Jan. 30)

by

by Christine Jay

O'DETTE-PaulA solo lute recital may be one of the most intimate concert experiences ever. Time seems suspended, and melody and harmony intermingle in sweet, soft pluckery. Producing such a sound-world takes skill, however, and Grammy Award-winning lutenist Paul O’Dette demonstrated his skill in spades during his January 30th recital in Herr Chapel at Plymouth Church in Shaker Heights, presented by the Cleveland Classical Guitar Society. [Read more…]

Zsolt Bognár to perform on Tri-C Classical Piano Series February 7

by

by Daniel Hathaway

Bognar-Zsolt-at-pianoCleveland’s own Zsolt Bognár will appear on the next Tri-C Classical Piano Series event on Sunday, February 7 at 2:00 pm in Gartner Auditorium at the Cleveland Museum of Art. “This is a program that has been very close to me,” he said in a Skype conversation yesterday. “I’ve performed it a lot privately, but never publicly here in Cleveland. It includes works that I recorded on my debut album.” The concert is free.

That CD, entitled Franz and Franz, highlighting music by Schubert and Liszt, was recorded in Berlin and released in 2013 on the Con Brio label. On Sunday, Bognár will add a set of pieces by Edvard Grieg to round out his program of 19th-century Romantic music.

The pianist will begin with four pieces by Schubert: an Impromptu in A-flat, then the Drei Klavierstücke, D. 946, “a set of three posthumous impromptus never performed during the composer’s lifetime,” he said. [Read more…]

Follow ClevelandClassical.com

Contact us