by Kelly Ferjutz
special to ClevelandClassical.com
As a general rule, elevators go up and down, conveying people or goods from one level to another in a given building. The elevator on stage for OLO’s production of Have a Heart, however, goes backwards. It takes the happy audience (plus cast and crew) straight back to early 1917, and the premiere production of Jerome Kern’s then-new musical. It’s a delightful journey, one you won’t want to miss. [Read more…]
by Mike Telin
Musical sparks will fly on Wednesday, July 13 at 7:30 pm when Time for Three, this year’s Kent/Blossom Kulas Guest Artists, will present a free concert at Cartwright Hall on the campus of Kent State University. (Tickets are required and can be reserved by calling 330.672.2787)
In addition to Wednesday’s performance, the band members — violinists Nikki Chooi and Nicholas (Nick) Kendall and bassist Ranaan Meyer — will coach student chamber music ensembles, conduct master classes and workshops, and participate in a Q&A session. “Wherever we go, organizations ask us to talk about the entrepreneurial side of the group,” Ranaan Meyer said during a recent telephone conversation. [Read more…]
by Nicholas Jones
Two Romantic meditations on death comprised the first of this year’s Cleveland Orchestra Summers @Severance programs last Friday evening — Richard Strauss’s Death and Transfiguration and Johannes Brahms’s A German Requiem — both works of ambitious scope and seriousness, led by music director Franz Welser-Möst.
The Romantics knew how to face death. John Keats declared himself “half in love with easeful death.” “Death is the mother of beauty,” asserted Wallace Stevens, that modernist poet with a Romantic soul. [Read more…]
by Neil McCalmont
Summer time is a funner time, and what could be more fun than putting together a picnic and heading off to Blossom Music Festival for wonderful weather and music performed by The Cleveland Orchestra under the direction of Franz Welser-Möst?
On the evening of Saturday, July 9, thousands of listeners gathered in the pavilion, and on the lawn in the Blossom Bowl, spreading their blankets, reclining in their lawn chairs, and soaking up the warm summer night with their loved ones. [Read more…]
by Mike Telin
Since its inauguration in 2010, the Thomas and Evon Cooper International Competition has established an impressive track record for identifying young pianists with potential. That year 14 year-old American pianist George Li took home the top prize. Since then, Li has quickly established himself as a young pianist to watch on the international concert scene. In 2015, Li won 2nd prize at the XV International Tchaikovsky Competition.
In 2012, 16-year-old Italian Leonardo Colafelice won the top honors, and he too quickly cultivated an impressive career. In 2014 the first prize was awarded to 15 year-old Canadian Tony Yike Yang (left, with Jahja Ling and The Cleveland Orchestra), who at the age of 16 won the fifth prize at the International Chopin Piano Competition, making him the youngest prizewinner in the history of that competition. [Read more…]
by Mike Telin
At 5:00 pm on Sunday, July 17, cellist Steuart Pincombe will bring his Music in Familiar Spaces series back to Northeast Ohio for a free performance at Oberlin’s Slow Train Café in cooperation with Credo Chamber Music. The concert, titled Adaptation through form and function, will feature music by Domenico Gabrielli, J.S. Bach, Jean-Louis Duport, and Carlo Alfredo Piatti for cello without endpin using baroque, transitional, and modern bows. [Read more…]
by Mike Telin
“This summer is going to be a full-immersion experience for our audiences,” Pierre van der Westhuizen (left), President and CEO of the Cleveland International Piano Competition, exclaimed during a recent telephone conversation. “They can attend something in the morning, afternoon, and evening, with lunch and dinner in between.”
When the 2016 Cleveland International Piano Competition and Festival gets underway on July 24 at the Cleveland Museum of Art, patrons will discover that CIPC is a true destination event. [Read more…]
by Neil McCalmont
Part of McCalmont’s List Series
Genre: Symphony – a composition for orchestra, usually in several movements
Scoring: Orchestra
Era: Classical – Early Romantic
Length: c. 35 minutes
Will you recognize it? I’d be upset if you didn’t
Recommended Recordings: Carlos Kleiber and the Vienna Philharmonic; or George Szell and the Cleveland Orchestra; or Otto Klemperer and the Philharmonia Orchestra; or Herbert von Karajan and the Berlin Philharmonic (it’s an important piece, okay?)
Composer: Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827). What possibly could be said about Beethoven that hasn’t been said already? [Read more…]
by Nicholas Jones
Johann Sebastian Bach’s Mass in B Minor is, to say the least, a daunting work. It’s full of challenging vocal and instrumental parts that seem to venture into every key in the theory book. It’s composed of one complicated counterpoint after another. And like any sung mass, its musical integrity can seem at odds with the liturgical functions of the texts. And it’s long (over two hours). In its recent embodiment at Oberlin’s Baroque Performance Institute (BPI), all of these challenges seemed to disappear. [Read more…]
by Neil McCalmont & Mike Telin
In celebration of the summer solstice on June 21, Cleveland inaugurated its first Make Music Day. Over 700 cities worldwide participate in this open-to-all festival, launched in 1982 by the French Ministry of Culture. Local venues offered performances throughout the city, including the Cleveland Clinic, the Bop Stop, Edgewater Park, Stone Mad Park, Toast, the Happy Dog, and many others. [Read more…]