by Robert Rollin
Last Friday night Opera Western Reserve presented Gaetano Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor at Stambaugh Auditorium, sung in Italian with production director David Vosburgh’s fine supertitles. The excellent cast, coupled with Susan Davenny Wyner’s adroit conducting, a terrific orchestra, and Austin Pendleton’s well-paced staging, made for a very successful single performance. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
New York-based concert organist Paul Jacobs played solo works by Johannes Brahms and Johann Sebastian Bach on the first half of a Cleveland Orchestra program in February of 2015 and was featured with the Orchestra in Aaron Copland’s Organ Symphony in September of 2016. Jacobs will return to Severance Hall this weekend to take the solo role in Stephen Paulus’ Grand Concerto for Organ and Orchestra with Giancarlo Guerrero on the podium.
“Some composers find the organ daunting — understandably so — and will avoid writing for it altogether,” Jacobs said in a telephone conversation from his studio at the Juilliard School, where he heads the organ department. “But Stephen was someone who embraced the instrument, understood it, and composed very beautifully for it.”
Paulus, a prolific composer who lived and worked in the Twin Cities, wrote four concertos for organ and orchestra before he died of a stroke in 2014. “I premiered the fourth concerto with the Phoenix Symphony a year or two before he passed away, so I got to interact with him a bit — and what a tragedy his death was for us all,” Jacobs said. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
OBERLIN – At 25, British pianist Benjamin Grosvenor is a deep thinker whose touring recital program this season highlights historical-stylistic contrasts between composers such as Ravel and Berg, Brahms and Brett Dean. Click here to read the article on Classical Voice North America, the website of the Music Critics Association of North America.
by Mike Telin
CLEVELAND – Margaret Brouwer’s “environmental oratorio,” Voice of the Lake, was inspired by an algae bloom in Lake Erie that caused a water crisis in 2014. Its premiere makes an urgent case that the lake is in trouble. Click here to read the article on Classical Voice North America, the website of the Music Critics Association of North America.
by Mike Telin
“This marks a major change in the evolution of his piano concertos,” Marc-André Hamelin said during a telephone conversation from St. Louis. He was referring to Mozart’s Concerto No. 9 (“Jeunehomme”), which he will perform with The Cleveland Orchestra under the direction of Nicholas McGegan on Friday, November 17 at 7:00 pm and Saturday, November 18 at 8:00 pm.
“The concerto is such an incredible departure from what he did before. There’s an explosion of activity from the very beginning, and the way that he inserts a second slow movement in the middle of the rondo — that’s really quite exceptional.”
Hamelin said that he looks forward to working with Nicholas McGegan for the first time. “Nic is amazing, I was with him at the Van Cliburn back in May and June. He conducted all of the Mozart concerti during the competition, and just to see him at work told me a lot about what our rapport will be this weekend. I anticipate nothing but a delightful experience.”
by Mike Telin
“I just got back from Portugal last night, so I’m playing catch-up here,” conductor Nicholas McGegan said during a telephone call last Sunday morning from his home in San Francisco. “I’ve been away for two weeks so I’m going through the mail and all that stuff. But I’m in California and the sun is shining so it’s all well. I leave in the morning to come to Cleveland.”
On Friday, November 17 at Severance Hall, McGegan will lead The Cleveland Orchestra in an 11:00 am matinee and a Fridays@7 performance. On Saturday the 18th McGegan and company will present a full-length concert beginning at 8:00 pm. For program and ticket information click here.
“I’m looking forward to Cleveland because I’ve got Marc-André Hamelin coming, who is wonderful. I can’t wait. [Read more…]
by Mike Telin
“I like to play great music and I consider Mathis to be one of the greatest 20th-century works. And Pictures, especially in the Ravel orchestration, is a classic,” conductor Christopher Wilkins said by telephone. “Like the other two, Burchfield is a wonderful piece with a dazzling orchestration.”
On Saturday, November 18 at 8:00 pm in E.J. Thomas Hall, the Akron Symphony will present three works inspired by masterpieces of art: Eric Benjamin will conduct Morton Gould’s Burchfield Gallery, and Wilkins will lead Paul Hindemith’s Mathis der Maler and Modest Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition. Tickets are available online.
The concert will also include projected visual images of the art that inspired the music. “Because showing a single image is a static thing to do, I think it’s more artistically honest to show and talk about the paintings and then perform the work,” Wilkins said. “In all three cases that is what we’re going to do.” [Read more…]
by Robert Rollin
Last Saturday night at Powers Auditorium, the Youngstown Symphony, under the direction of Randall Craig Fleischer, presented a charming concert of American music. The evening’s highlight was Ferde Grofé’s Grand Canyon Suite with photomontage stills and film images collected by Texas composer Stephen Lias. Though the visuals showed the influence of Disney’s 1959 Academy Award-winning movie Grand Canyon, they incorporated new images. The performance sparkled in color, ensemble, and continuity. [Read more…]
by Mike Telin
Have you ever wished you could enjoy a concert while lying on a soft mattress instead of sitting in an uncomfortable chair or pew? Dear People, the opportunity will arrive when 51XO (Five One Experimental Orchestra) presents “Gentle Darkness” on Saturday, November 18 at 8:00 pm at The Original Mattress Factory, 4930 State Road, Cleveland. The concert is free.
Described as “a 21st Century Dreamscape showcasing the modern nocturne, lullaby and musical trance in a fully immersive nighttime event,” the program will feature Ananda Sukarian’s Gentle Darkness, Alessandro Amato’s Berceuse No. 3, Sullivan Boecker’s {0}, Steve Kuhn’s Trance, and the premieres of K. Krummenauer’s Born Sleeping and John HC Thompson’s re-imagination of the George Shearing classic Lullaby of Birdland. In keeping with the sleepytime theme, milk and cookies will be provided. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Before dedicated conductors began standing in front of orchestras and wielding batons, ensembles used several means to coordinate their playing. The least subtle and most dangerous — as Jean-Baptiste Lully found out — was to pound on the floor with a staff. (He managed to wound himself in the foot and eventually died of gangrene.) More safely, ensembles were cued from the keyboard or by the first violinist, as Cleveland Orchestra audiences have experienced in past performances led by Mitsuko Uchida and William Preucil, who guided the proceedings while playing the piano and violin. [Read more…]