ClevelandClassical.com Header
Ad
Ad
Ad

Archives for March 2018

Cleveland Chamber Choir joins March Madness — with Madrigals

by

by Daniel Hathaway

ScottMacPhersonClevelandChamberChoirMaybe you’ve already begun filling out your 2018 NCAA March Madness bracket. But if making predictions about basketball isn’t your passion, why not turn to madrigals instead? Cleveland Chamber Choir director Scott MacPherson will join a reduced contingent of his singers in “March Madrigal Madness” in the Recital Hall of the Cleveland Museum of Art on Sunday, March 18 at 3:00 pm to present his own “Sweet Sixteen.”

“At the end of last season, we decided to expand slowly and offer a third program in 2017-2018,” MacPherson said in a telephone conversation. “We thought it would be fun to tie a March program into the NCAA tournament. We can’t really set up a 64-composer draw, but we want the concert to be interactive, so we’ll print the program in the form of a 16-song tournament bracket.”

MacPherson will invite the audience to vote on their favorite madrigal or part song by composers in four national categories — three of them from the 16th century and one from the 19th. [Read more…]

The Cleveland Opera presents three performances of La traviata

by

by Mike Telin

TraviataIn their upcoming production of Verdi’s masterpiece La traviata or “The Fallen Woman,” The Cleveland Opera celebrates the city’s Golden Age with sets and costuming inspired by Art Deco from the Great Gatsby Era of the Roaring Twenties. “Cleveland made such a big statement in the arts during that time period,” the company’s executive artistic director Dorota Sobieska said by telephone. “When you think about the momentum that the city had at that time, it’s phenomenal.”

Sobieska said that the venues they have selected also reflect Cleveland circa 1920s. Performances will take place on Wednesday, March 14 at 7:00 pm at the Polish-American Cultural Center, Friday, March 16 at 7:30 pm at First Baptist Church, and Sunday, March 18 at 3:30 pm at The Tudor Arms Hotel Grand Ballroom. The cast includes Dorota Sobieska as the courtesan Violetta Valéry, Timothy Culver as Alfredo Germont, and Brian Keith Johnson as Giorgio Germont. [Read more…]

CityMusic Cleveland: a conversation with Merima Ključo

by

by Mike Telin

Kljuco“I have always been fascinated by the Sarajevo Haggadah, with its story and amazing history,” Bosnian-born accordionist and composer Merima Ključo told ClevelandClassical.com in a 2015 interview. “After reading Geraldine Brooks’s People of the Book, I became obsessed with the idea of a project that would musically and visually follow the Haggadah’s journey from Spain to Sarajevo.”

Dating from 14th-century Spain, the Jewish prayer book that became known as the Sarajevo Haggadah went through many hands before ending up in Bosnia, having been rescued from destruction by such unlikely figures as a Jesuit priest in Venice and a Muslim imam in Sarajevo — who hid it from the Nazis in the library of his mosque during World War II after it was smuggled out of the Bosnian National Museum by its chief librarian.

That project was presented at the Cleveland Museum of Art in its original scoring for accordion and piano in November of 2015. This week Merima Ključo will return to Cleveland for six free performances of her orchestrated version of the work with Avner Dorman and CityMusic Cleveland as part of the orchestra’s “Two Faiths: One Spirit” project. [Read more…]

“Two Faiths, One Spirit” — fifteen minutes with Avner Dorman

by

by Jarrett Hoffman

dorman-avnerA native of Israel, Avner Dorman recognizes the conflict between the Jewish and Arab communities of the world, and the suffering they have felt. “And yet,” the music director of CityMusic Cleveland said in a recent interview, “I very much like all the people I know who are Muslim. Whenever we get into discussions, you really notice the commonalities more than the differences. We can’t forget that.”

This week, CityMusic Cleveland will present a series of concerts aiming to unite the Jewish and Arab communities, promote togetherness in Greater Cleveland, and emphasize the value of preserving the arts, regardless of culture. Titled “Two Faiths: One Spirit,” the series was inspired by stories of priceless religious texts that were rescued by people of other faiths.

Six free performances run from March 14-18 in Beachwood, Cleveland, Parma, Lakewood, and Elyria (see our Concert Listings for times and locations).

Needless to say, the series’ goal of unity means a lot to Dorman. [Read more…]

Pipa virtuoso Wu Man and the Huayin Shadow Puppet Band to visit Cleveland Museum of Art

by

by Jarrett Hoffman

Wu-ManDeep in the Huayin County in northwest China’s Shaanxi Province, in a rural village at the foot of Mount Hua — it was there that pipa player Wu Man first heard the Huayin Shadow Puppet Band, a family of farmers with an artistic tradition over 300 years old, passed down through generations.

On Wednesday, March 21 at 7:30 pm at the Cleveland Museum of Art’s Gartner Auditorium, Wu Man will combine her virtuosity on the pipa with the Huayin Shadow Puppet Band’s unique blend of sounds — shouting vocals, lutes, fiddles, traditional instruments like the yueqin, banhu, and erhu, clappers, small and large gongs, and the battering of a wooden bench. Together they’ll sing and play about life in remote China through old-tune traditional music with shadow puppetry.

Wu Man described the music of the Shaanxi Province as a far cry from the elegant, urban, tea-house style that is popular where she grew up, in Hangzhou, Zhejiang, near Shanghai.

[Read more…]

Canton Symphony: dazzling fluency in three vernaculars (Mar. 3)

by

by Tom Wachunas

Klein-RandyThe thematic and formal diversity of the March 3 MasterWorks program by the Canton Symphony Orchestra was a compelling reminder that the sounds emanating from an orchestra constitute a language. Like any spoken language, those sounds can articulate a distinct vernacular — the parlance of a specific time and/or place. Here in Umstattdt Performing Arts Hall, the marvelous expressivity of the CSO was transportive, taking us from America’s Texas plains, then to the mid-20th century jazz era, and finally journeying back to the pinnacle of 18th century European classicism. [Read more…]

Tuesday Musical to present pianist Andreas Haefliger

by

by Mike Telin

Haefliger-AndreasAlthough Andreas Haefliger’s repertoire list spans centuries, there is one composer who particularly fascinates him. “I have spent a tremendous amount of time with Beethoven,” the pianist said during a recent telephone conversation. “I also spend time putting him into programs that illuminate and bring out a different perspective on the sonatas that we know so well.”

On Thursday, March 8 at 7:30 pm in E.J. Thomas Hall, Andreas Haefliger will perform Beethoven’s Sonatas No. 28, Op. 101, and No. 29, Op. 106 (“Hammerklavier”). The program will also include Mozart’s Fantasy in c, K. 475, and Adagio in b, K. 450. A pre-concert talk will begin at 6:30 pm. Tickets are available online.

“With a shift in tonality, Mozart has the ability to put you into a completely different psychological state, and that state means something different for every person,” Haefliger said. “And Beethoven does that as well in these two sonatas — especially in 106 where you have such a powerful slow movement that lasts twenty minutes. The shifts of tonality produce a calmness and induce a meditative state.”

[Read more…]

Cleveland Orchestra: Beethoven & Elgar with Znaider & Bronfman (Mar. 1)

by

by Daniel Hathaway

BronfmanConductor Nikolaj Znaider and pianist Yefim Bronfman brought two grand works with them to their guest appearances with The Cleveland Orchestra at Severance Hall on Thursday evening, March 1. Beethoven’s well-known Fifth Piano Concerto and Elgar’s lesser-known Second Symphony gave both the soloist and the orchestra ample opportunity to fill the house with magnificent music on a blustery, snowy evening that left an unusual number of seats unoccupied.

[Read more…]

Akron Baroque to feature
“The Class of 1685” on Sunday

by

by Daniel Hathaway

Bach Handel ScarlattiHow did the planets align so that Johann Sebastian Bach, George Frideric Handel, and Domenico Scarlatti — three of the most eminent and prolific composers of the Baroque period — all came to be born in the same year? That defies explanation, but it makes for interesting concert programming. On Sunday, March 11 at 4:00 pm at Faith Lutheran Church in Fairlawn, Akron Baroque will raise a glass to “The Class of 1685” with a free concert devoted to music by these three luminaries.

The performance will include J.S. Bach’s Harpsichord Concerto in f featuring Robert Mollard, Scarlatti’s Keyboard Sonata in G in an arrangement for orchestra by Amy Barlowe, and Handel’s Concerti Grossi in F and G from his Op. 6. We spoke with concertmaster Alan Bodman to ask how Akron Baroque narrowed down their choice of repertoire for Sunday’s concert.

“We were pretty sure we wanted to do a Handel concerto grosso, so we listened to all of the Op. 6 pieces and really liked No. 1 in G.” Bodman said. “They’re so imaginative, and offer a lot of variety in their movements. We needed something very lively and upbeat to conclude the program, and No. 9 stood out for us.”

[Read more…]

Oberlin Contemporary Music Ensemble at Cleveland Museum of Art (March 4)

by

by Daniel Hathaway

Oberlin CMEOn Sunday afternoon, March 4 in Gartner Auditorium at the Cleveland Museum of Art, Tim Weiss and his Oberlin Contemporary Music Ensemble once again made seemingly easy work out of several challenging scores. It must be every composer’s dream come true to have their creations brought to life by an ensemble that can play at such a high level of precision and understanding. Surely that sentiment was shared by the good-sized audience. [Read more…]

Follow ClevelandClassical.com

Contact us