by Daniel Hathaway
Strange to tell, but in its nearly hundred-year history, The Cleveland Orchestra never got around to playing two major works by Antonín Dvořák and Leoš Janáček until last Thursday evening. On May 19, Franz Welser-Möst led the orchestra in their first-ever performance of Dvořák’s The Wood Dove and their first performance of more than the overture from Janáček’s opera The House of the Dead. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Music director Avner Dorman and CityMusic Cleveland Chamber Orchestra wound up their current five-concert tour around Cleveland on Sunday afternoon, May 15 at Lakewood Congregational Church. Guest violinist Tessa Lark was the engaging soloist in Antonín Dvořák’s Violin Concerto, and finely-wrought performances of Felix Mendelssohn’s Hebrides Overture and Symphony No. 3 filled out the program. [Read more…]
by Mike Telin
In a promotional video, Cleveland Orchestra Music Director Franz Welser-Möst explains that Antonín Dvořák’s Stabat Mater is “the composer’s personal reflections after having just lost a child.” (Click here to watch the video: the Dvořák starts at 2:52.)
On Thursday, May 26 at 7:30 pm and Saturday, May 28 at 8:00 at Severance Hall, The Cleveland Orchestra and Cleveland Orchestra Chorus, under the direction of Welser-Möst, will conclude their 2015-2016 season with the Czech composer’s setting of an emotional medieval poem that sums up the thoughts of Mary standing at the foot of the cross when Jesus is crucified. The performances will feature vocal soloists Erin Wall, soprano, Jennifer Johnston, mezzo-soprano, Norbert Ernst, tenor, and Eric Owens, bass.
The Orchestra has extended a special $25 ticket offer for readers of ClevelandClassical.com for this week’s concerts. Purchase tickets here using promo code 26082. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
British baritone Edwin Crossley-Mercer sang a brilliant recital in March of 2013 as an off-year event of the biennial Baldwin Wallace Art Song Festival. He returns to Berea this week to give a recital with pianist Jason Paul Peterson on Tuesday, May 24 at 8:00 pm, and to coach some of the week-long Art Song Festival’s ten singer-pianist teams in master classes on Wednesday, May 25.
Crossley-Mercer was “discovered” by Art Song Festival artistic director George Vassos through YouTube videos. The baritone spoke with us three years ago for a pre-concert interview while preparing to sing the role of Don Giovanni in Dijon. We reached him by Skype at his home in France’s Auvergne region to catch up on his recent activities and talk about his Tuesday recital. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
One of the most versatile mezzo-sopranos in the business, Susan Graham will visit the Baldwin Wallace Art Song Festival for a recital with pianist Bradley Moore on Thursday evening, May 26 in Gamble Auditorium. The recital will interleave songs from Robert Schumann’s Frauenliebe und -leben with pieces by other composers ranging from Grieg, Strauss, and Tchaikovsky to Ravel, Poulenc, and Granados.
“It’s a fantastic program,” Graham said in a recent telephone conversation from San Francisco, where she was singing Berlioz’s La Mort de Cléopâtre with Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony. [Read more…]
by Mike Telin
There are competitions for everything, so why not one for snare drummers? When the Atlanta Symphony’s principal percussionist Tom Sherwood took a job with The Cleveland Orchestra, he brought his Modern Snare Drum Competition along with him.
The 2016 edition will get underway with preliminary rounds beginning at 9:00 am on Friday, May 27 in Mixon Hall at the Cleveland Institute of Music. On Saturday, May 28 beginning at 10:00 am, the competition will move to Gartner Auditorium at the Cleveland Museum of Art. The final round is scheduled to begin at 1:30 pm. All sessions are free and open to the public. [Read more…]
by Neil McCalmont
Genre: Waltz
Scoring: Orchestra
Era: High Romantic
Duration: c. 10 minutes
Will you recognize it? You’ll probably start whistling along.
Recommended Recordings: the Vienna Philharmonic, either with Carlos Kleiber or Willi Boskovsky
Composer: Johann Strauss II (1825-1899): Strauss explicitly disobeyed his father’s orders never to be a musician. In fact, dear old dad unintentionally founded a dynasty of musicians, as all three of his sons went against his wishes and became composers. [Read more…]
by Neil McCalmont
Editor’s Note: this week we’ll begin serializing Neil McCalmont’s fourteen-article series designed to introduce first-time or curious listeners to the classical music genre. The series continues through August. Enjoy and share!
Wherever you have heard classical music — on the radio, in a Bugs Bunny cartoon, or through the piano lessons you may or may not have suffered through as a child — it probably grabbed your attention. It may have been as simple as a pleasant melody or a catchy rhythm, or it may have conjured up an important memory. [Read more…]
Inspired by their 2015 “Cancer Blows” benefit concert in conjunction with the Dallas Symphony, which raised nearly $1 million for research into the blood cancer multiple myeloma, trumpeter Ryan Anthony and his wife, Niki, are planning a benefit concert in Cleveland on Friday, May 20 at 7:00 pm in Severance Hall.
100% of the proceeds will go to the Ryan Anthony Foundation, which Ryan and Niki established in 2014 to support research into multiple myeloma.
by Nicholas Jones
The Cleveland Chamber Music Society presented the Dover Quartet on Tuesday, May 10 in the final concert of its 2015-16 season at Plymouth Church in Shaker Heights. The program ranged from the mid-19th century to the mid-20th century, unified by a Romantic palette that perfectly matched the expressive playing of this distinguished young ensemble. [Read more…]