by Daniel Hathaway
In a thrilling and revelatory recital on September 23, Cleveland Orchestra principal cello Mark Kosower and pianist Jee-Won Oh celebrated the centenary of Argentine composer Alberto Ginastera. Drawing a large audience to Mixon Hall at the Cleveland Institute of Music, Kosower visited all three of Ginastera’s style periods and offered his own tribute to Aurora Nátola, who inspired most of the composer’s works for the cello. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Duo-piano teams pop up with some frequency on recital series, but duo-organists not so much. The Atlanta-based husband and wife team of Raymond and Elizabeth Chenault have four-handedly (and four-footedly) set out to change that dynamic, having commissioned and performed some 60 organ duets during their four decades of sharing an organ bench. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Though the Bascom Little Fund — named after the late Cleveland architect and avocational composer — may be obscure to many music lovers, it’s quite well-known among composers and musicians. Created “for the promotion through the media of concerts, publications, and recordings of serious and semi-popular music, newly composed and performed in or near Cleveland, Ohio,” the charitable trust has funded numerous projects over the last five decades. [Read more…]
by Mike Telin
“I think many people have heard Pinchas Zukerman in a concerto setting, but to hear him in a chamber music setting is an incredible way of experiencing the artistry and magic that he brings to everything that he plays,” Zukerman Trio pianist and Oberlin Conservatory faculty member Angela Cheng said during a recent telephone conversation.
“And Amanda Forsyth is an incredible cellist, so I’m grateful to have the opportunity to work with two wonderful artists. To be able to play this concert at home is something I will remember for a long time.”
On Friday, September 30 at 8:00 pm in Finney Chapel, the Oberlin Artist Recital Series will present The Zukerman Trio. The program will include selections from Reinhold Glière’s Eight Pieces For Violin And Cello, Op. 39, Dmitri Shostakovich’s Trio No. 2 in e, Op. 67, and Franz Schubert’s Trio in B-flat, D. 898. [Read more…]
by Mike Telin
On Wednesday, September 28 at 8:00 pm in Mixon Hall at the Cleveland Institute of Music, pianists Carolyn Warner and Daniel Shapiro will join clarinetist Franklin Cohen, saxophonist James Umble, violinists Stephen Warner and Mari Sato, and cellist Brian Thornton in a program titled “Boulez the Friend and Teacher.” The concert is part of CIM’s series celebrating “The Boulez Legacy.”
“This concert completely lives up to its title,” program curator Carolyn Warner said during a recent telephone conversation. Warner, who joined the violin and keyboard sections of The Cleveland Orchestra in 1979 and serves on the CIM faculty, noted that deciding to include the two works by Ravel was a no-brainer. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Think of the early Baroque Italian composer Claudio Monteverdi, and images of Venice and its highly photogenic Piazza San Marco inevitably pop up — especially if the work in question is the Vespers of 1610. But he didn’t write his most famous piece for the Most Serene Republic. Monteverdi composed the Vespers, along with the opera Orfeo, his first five books of madrigals, and the Missa in illo tempore when he was in the employ of the Gonzaga family in Mantua, until the family’s declining economic situation made him a free agent in 1612.
Ross W. Duffin and his twenty professional singers of Quire Cleveland will explore Monteverdi’s Mantuan legacy in a free concert at the Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist in downtown Cleveland on Friday evening, September 30 at 7:30 pm. [Read more…]
by Timothy Robson
On Sunday afternoon, September 25th, The Cleveland Institute of Music began a series of seven concerts celebrating the musical legacy of French composer and conductor Pierre Boulez, whose relationship with The Cleveland Orchestra and other Cleveland musical institutions spanned almost 50 years. [Read more…]
by Robert Rollin
Last Saturday evening, September 17, the Youngstown Symphony inaugurated its 90th Anniversary Season with an interesting program celebrating the city’s ethnic heritage born of the steel industry and a predominantly Eastern European immigrant population. [Read more…]
by Nicholas Jones
For its 2016 season-opener on September 17 at St. Alban’s Episcopal Church in Cleveland Heights, Burning River Baroque assembled a fascinating and diverse program of music by women composers, both “famed and forgotten.” The pieces they chose — spanning ten centuries! — gave a taste of what gems lie beyond the patriarchal canon, particularly in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. [Read more…]
by Mike Telin
The dream of any presenter is to kick off a season with a world premiere of a work written by a celebrated composer. It’s even better when that work is performed by one of the world’s greatest chamber music ensembles. On Tuesday, September 27 at 7:30 pm at E.J. Thomas Hall in Akron, Tuesday Musical will present the opening concert of its season. The evening will feature the world premiere of English composer Mark-Anthony Turnage’s Shroud performed by the Emerson String Quartet, Eugene Drucker and Philip Setzer, violins, Lawrence Dutton, viola, and Paul Watkins, cello. [Read more…]