by Daniel Hathaway
Departing from its normal Saturday evening time slot, the Cleveland Classical Guitar Society closed its International Series with a duo recital by Sérgio and Odair Assad on Sunday afternoon, April 30 at Plymouth Church in Shaker Heights. Though their styles of playing are different, the Brazilian-born brothers have been performing as a duo for 52 years, and know each other so well that they could probably play a recital blindfolded.
by Daniel Hathaway
A critical mass of nearly 200 singers joined Christopher Wilkins, the Akron Symphony, and a first-rate quartet of soloists for a resounding performance of Felix Mendelssohn’s Elijah on Saturday evening, May 5 in E.J. Thomas Hall. Commissioned for the 1846 Birmingham Festival following the success of his earlier oratorio St. Paul, Mendelssohn’s concert-length work presents the life of the Hebrew prophet in several dramatic scenes.
by Daniel Hathaway
At the end of a long concert season, the final performance in a series may be a happy or a bittersweet moment. For the Mosa String Quartet — violinists James Thompson and Brian Allen, violist Christine Wu, and cellist Anna Hurt — the last Arts Renaissance Tremont concert on Sunday, May 7 at Pilgrim Church was just about the last appearance the group would make as a quartet, for Wu and Allen are off to graduate studies at Juilliard and the University of Michigan, respectively.
by Daniel Hathaway
At the end of Vox Luminis’s flawlessly-sung program of British royal funerary music at St. John’s Cathedral on April 26, artistic director Lionel Meunier said to the audience, “I have to confess: we do have happier programs.” Indeed, this repertoire, largely taken from Thomas Morley’s and Henry Purcell’s obsequies for Queen Elizabeth and Queen Mary, might have added up to a dreary evening if this fine Belgian choir hadn’t pulled it off with such commitment and finesse. [Read more…]
by Mike Telin
After three performances of Debussy’s opera Pelléas and Mélisande last week, the spirit of theater continues at Severance Hall when Franz Welser-Möst leads The Cleveland Orchestra in Felix Mendelssohn’s incidental music to Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream with soprano Anya Matanovic, mezzo-soprano Emily Fons, and members of TCO’s Youth Chorus.
The program, to be presented on Thursday at 7:30 pm, Sunday at 8:00 pm, and Sunday at 3:00 pm, also includes Hans Werner Henze’s Il Vitalino raddoppiato, based on a chaconne by the Baroque composer Vitali, featuring violinist Julia Fischer.
“Shakespeare’s play is full of fairies, dwarves, elves, and demons,” Israeli actor Itay Tiran, who will be the narrator, said during a recent telephone conversation. [Read more…]
by Mike Telin
“This concerto is unlike others — it exists on a different playing field,” Catharine Baek said about Maurice Ravel’s challenging Piano Concerto in G. On Friday, May 12 at 8:00 pm, Baek will make her Severance Hall debut as the soloist with the Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra, performing Ravel’s jazz-inspired work. The concert, under the direction of Brett Mitchell, will also include Joan Tower’s Made in America and Sergei Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 5.
Baek, a junior at Willoughby South High School and a second-year member of COYO’s percussion section, earned the opportunity to perform the Ravel by winning the Orchestra’s annual concerto competition. [Read more…]
by Mike Telin
“I don’t know where four seasons went,” Brett Mitchell said by telephone. On Friday, May 12 at 8:00 pm in Severance Hall, Mitchell will conduct his final concert as music director of the Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra before relocating to Denver to become music director of the Colorado Symphony. The program will include works by Joan Tower, Sergei Prokofiev, and Maurice Ravel.
Friday’s concert will be performance number 29 for Mitchell. He said there is something to be proud of in all of them, although the accomplishment of which he is most proud goes beyond the music. “It is the sense of family that we have built. What I find most rewarding is when I compliment someone or a section during rehearsal, the automatic response from the rest of the orchestra is to shuffle their feet and cheer.” [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
After a fourteen-year sojourn at Baldwin Wallace, the Cleveland Art Song Festival will return to the Cleveland Institute of Music in 2018, the school where it was founded by longtime voice faculty George Vassos in 1985. The every-other-year Festival involves ten singer-pianist teams in a week of intensive coaching, including master classes and artist recitals by well-known singers and collaborative pianists.
In alternate years, the Festival brings in a renowned singer for a solo recital. On Sunday, May 14 at 4:30 pm in Kulas Hall, CIM will celebrate the Art Song Festival’s homecoming with a concert by Metropolitan Opera bass-baritone Eric Owens and pianist Myra Huang. [Read more…]
by Mike Telin
Known for her eloquent performances of traditional harp repertoire, as well as for pushing the musical boundaries of the instrument, harpist Brandee Younger has shared the stage with jazz greats including Ravi Coltrane, Pharoah Sanders, and Jack DeJohnette, as well as singer-songwriters John Legend and Lauryn Hill.
On Wednesday, May 10 at 7:30 pm at the Cleveland Museum of Art’s Gartner Auditorium, Brandee Younger will be joined by equally talented and diverse pianist Courtney Bryan for an evening that will celebrate the music of jazz harpists Alice Coltrane and Dorothy Ashby. The concert is presented as part of CMA’s Performing Arts Series.
“I don’t really consider myself to be a jazz harpist,” Younger said during a telephone conversation. “I’m sort of anti-label because it throws you into this box, although I am most visible in the jazz world, and jazz harpists like Dorothy and Alice are my heroes. But I just consider myself to be a harpist.” [Read more…]
by Tom Wachunas
Composed in 1873-74, Giuseppe Verdi’s Messa Da Requiem (Requiem Mass) poses a wondrous irony. Verdi was openly disdainful of organized church worship. His wife, Giuseppina, once characterized him as, “…not an outright atheist, but a very doubtful believer.” It might seem, then, counterintuitive that this acclaimed champion of worldly opera — who had not composed any conventional sacred music since his youth — would render a work of such profound religiosity. [Read more…]