by Daniel Hathaway
What does it take to create a sparkling production of Mozart’s opera buffa The Marriage of Figaro? The music, of course, comes first, and you need a fine group of vocalists to put the composer’s engaging arias and brilliant finales across, a flexible conductor and orchestra in the pit, and a sure hand at the keyboard for recitatives. [Read more…]
by Timothy Robson
For reasons unknown, Sharon Isbin, one of the leading classical guitar virtuosos of our time, had never performed in Cleveland until Saturday evening, November 4, when she appeared in a recital for the Cleveland Classical Guitar Society at Plymouth Church of Shaker Heights. During the second half of the evening, she was joined by Cleveland native Colin Davin, a former Isbin student and current faculty member at the Cleveland Institute of Music and Baldwin Wallace University. [Read more…]
by Robert Rollin
Last Sunday afternoon the Stambaugh Auditorium Organ Series celebrated Halloween by screening the 1920 silent movie Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde with improvised accompaniment by organist Dorothy Papadakos. The cheerful performer arrived clad in a Mr. Hyde costume complete with the requisite top hat, circa 1890, explaining that the Stambaugh concert was part of her Halloween tour. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Nicholas Phan will certainly be no stranger to Northeast Ohio when he arrives to guest direct and perform in Apollo’s Fire’s next production. The versatile tenor has appeared with The Cleveland Orchestra in Orff’s Carmina Burana in 2013, and in Bach’s B-minor Mass in 2014. In his previous engagements with Apollo’s Fire in 2016, he covered both the Evangelist and the tenor solos in Bach’s St. John Passion. He got off a bit easier in the Cleveland Orchestra’s St. John last March, only singing the role of the Evangelist. And in between those gigs, Phan stepped in for John Relyea on Oberlin’s Artist Recital Series in February, 2016.
This time around, Phan will be performing a program adapted from A Painted Tale, a 2015 recording of Elizabethan lute songs in which he collaborated with lutenist Michael Leopold and gambist Ann Marie Morgan. The album takes its name from the Thomas Morley piece that introduces it, and Phan wrote in a preview that “The songs are structured so that when one listens to them in order, they tell the story of a young man who falls passionately in love for a woman and who is ultimately destroyed by the fire of that passion.” [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
The Helen D. Schubert Concert Series at St. John’s Cathedral in downtown Cleveland has presented a number of fine European chamber choirs over the years, but this fall, music director Gregory Heislman is bringing in talent closer to home.
On Friday evening, November 10 at 7:30 pm, the Columbus-based Fior Angelico Chamber Chorus will present “Spanish Music for Lamentation and Rejoicing” under the direction of its founder, Matthew Bester.
by Mike Telin
Like many musicians, British pianist Benjamin Grosvenor’s career received a jump start after winning a competition. “I won the keyboard section of the BBC Young Musician in 2004, and this began my performing career,” Grosvenor said in an email. “Obviously I was very young at that point and did not play very much, but the attention from the competition brought me concerts.” The pianist later became part of BBC’s Radio 3 New Generation Artist Scheme, which he said was “particularly important for my career, leading to opportunities such as performing at the BBC Proms as well as giving vital recording experience and the possibility to develop relationships with the BBC orchestras.”
On Sunday, November 12 at 4:00 pm, in Finney Chapel, Benjamin Grosvenor will make his debut performance on the Oberlin Artist Recital Series.
by Mike Telin
Enjoying the natural beauty of Lake Erie has always been part of composer Margaret Brouwer’s life — she grew up spending summers at her family’s lake cottage in Huron. But when dangerous levels of algae blooms in the Lake’s western basin caused a water crisis in Toledo in 2014, the ensuing national conversation about environmental pollution and the state of the country’s drinking water became the source of inspiration for Brouwer’s latest composition, Voice of the Lake.
The four-part oratorio will have its world premiere this Sunday, November 12 at 3:00 pm at the Breen Center for the Performing Arts.
by Mike Telin
While there is no shortage of string quartets touring the world, the same does not hold true for wind quintets. However, there must be something going on in Northeast Ohio as the year 2017 has already brought the Imani Winds and the Berlin Philharmonic Wind Quintet to the area.
On Monday, November 13 at 7:30 pm at West Shore Unitarian Universalist Church, the hat-trick will be scored when Rocky River Chamber Music Society plays host to the legendary Dorian Wind Quintet — Gretchen Pusch, flute, Gerard Reuter, oboe, Benjamin Fingland, clarinet, Adrian Morejon, bassoon, and Karl Kremer-Johansen, horn. The free concert will feature works by Bach, Dvořák, and Harberg.
Formed at Tanglewood in 1961, the Dorian is one of chamber music’s longest continuously active ensembles. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
German violinist Christian Tetzlaff has appeared several times recently in Northeast Ohio, as soloist with The Cleveland Orchestra at Blossom and Severance Hall, and in a solo recital on the Oberlin Artist Recital Series. On Tuesday, November 14, he’ll pay us another visit, bringing his string quartet to the Cleveland Chamber Music Society series at Plymouth Church for its Cleveland debut. Tetzlaff will join violinist Elisabeth Kufferath, violist Hanna Weinmeister, and his cellist sister Tanja Tetzlaff in a program of quartets by Mozart, Berg, and Schubert.
Speaking by telephone from her home in Hannover, Elisabeth Kufferath said she’s excited to return to Cleveland after many years. [Read more…]
by Nicholas Stevens
Of the many quotable lines issued by filmmaker and musician Jim Jarmusch at the Cleveland Museum of Art last week, two stood out: “I’m a self-proclaimed dilettante, and I don’t think that’s a bad thing,” and later, “The most beautiful thing humans do — have done — is music.” Both comments, given during a post-concert interview in the Museum’s Gartner Auditorium, shed light on the performance that Jarmusch and his bandmate Carter Logan had just staged.