by Nicholas Stevens
The repertoire for brass quintet embraces a range of periods and styles. Arrangements of vocal music take on a certain muscle and gleam, Baroque pieces ring triumphant, classics gain in pep, and recent music can audibly push the ensemble’s limits. Jazz often makes for a natural fit. Small wonder, then, that the Dana Brass Quintet delighted in a program at Hudson’s Christ Church on April 8 with a program that incorporated all of the above. [Read more…]
by Mike Telin
Works that combine electronic and live acoustic instruments have come a long way since Donald Erb’s Reconnaissance was premiered in 1967. The musical elements are integrated in Erb’s groundbreaking score, but the results come across like a first date. On Friday, April 6 in Warner Concert Hall, legendary pianist Ursula Oppens joined the Oberlin Contemporary Music Ensemble, under the direction of Timothy Weiss, in a mesmerizing performance of Jonathan Harvey’s Bird Concerto with Pianosong (2001). During the colorful 30-minute work, Harvey masterfully merges the technological with the acoustic, and here the result is a love affair. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
The Cleveland Orchestra will welcome three guest conductors to lead its early Friday evening Summers@Severance Concerts in July and August.
Herbert Blomstedt, who will turn 91 shortly before his July 27 appearance with the Orchestra, will lead the ensemble in Brahms’ Fourth Symphony.
Vasily Petrenko, who leads the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic and the Oslo Philharmonic, will conduct Elgar’s In the South and Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra on August 10.
And two artists will make their Severance Hall debuts on August 24 when conductor Jonathan Cohen joins pianist Kristian Bezuidenhout in Haydn’s Piano Concerto No. 11 in D. Also on the program are Handel’s Occasional Oratorio Overture and Mozart’s Symphony No. 25 in g. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Nine concerts under the banner of “In Search of Freedom” will take place in venues around Cleveland from June 14-30 as ChamberFest Cleveland launches its seventh season with a look into the individual struggles and joys of composers.
Founded by Cleveland Orchestra principal clarinet emeritus Franklin Cohen and his daughter, Diana Cohen, who is concertmaster of the Calgary Philharmonic, the festival will feature such favorite artists as Yura Lee, Noah Bendix-Balgley, Alexi Kenney, Oliver Herbert, Roman Rabinovich, Orion Weiss, Nathan Farrington, Julie Albers, and Amy Schwartz Moretti. Among the new faces in 2018 will be flutist Lorna McGhee and violist Tanner Menees, one of this summer’s artists in residence. [Read more…]
by Mike Telin
On Wednesday, April 11 at 8:00 pm at Severance Hall, Carl Topilow will lead the CIM Orchestra for the last time before his retirement from the conservatory, after 36 years as the director of CIM’s orchestra and orchestral conducting program.
The concert will include Topilow’s own arrangement of Verdi’s Fanfare from Act III of Otello, Barber’s Overture to The School for Scandal, Korngold’s Violin Concerto with Aaron Chan as soloist, and Dvořák’s Symphony No. 6. The performance is free, but tickets are required. The event will be broadcast live over WCLV 104.9 and wclv.com.
Although Topilow is leaving CIM, marking the end of an era at the school, he will remain in his positions as music director and conductor of the National Repertory Orchestra, the Firelands Symphony, and The Cleveland Pops Orchestra. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Two big works more than filled The Cleveland Orchestra’s Thursday evening program on April 5, one of them a standard concerto that crosses all international boundaries, the other a Czech symphony receiving only its third performance by the Orchestra, all three of those led by Czech conductors.
by Daniel Hathaway
Violinist Andrew Sords will bring a new piece by Cleveland-born, New York-based composer Evan Fein (left) to his recital with Eriko Izumida on Sunday afternoon, April 15 at 3:00 pm at Valley Lutheran Church in Chagrin Falls. In addition to Beethoven’s “Kreutzer” Sonata, Schubert’s Rondo, and Sarasate’s Gypsy Airs, Sords’ program on the Chagrin Concert Series will feature the first performance of Fein’s Untranslatable (Violin Sonata No. 1).
In a telephone conversation from New York, where he teaches at the Juilliard School, Fein noted that he’s known Andrew Sords for years — the composer grew up in Richmond Heights and he and the violinist were in the same class at the Cleveland Institute of Music. Fein wrote a piece for Sords as his senior thesis, and years later, Sords commissioned Untranslatable, which Fein completed last summer.
I asked him where he got the idea for that title.
by Jarrett Hoffman
It’s an epic feeling when three superheroes, from separate stories and with their own distinct powers, team up. The real-life, artsy, and Cleveland-related parallel to that? A collaboration next week among three prominent local institutions from three different disciplines.
Next Wednesday, April 18 at 7:00 pm and 7:45 pm, the Cleveland Institutes of Music and Art will join the Museum of Natural History for the fourth edition of 360° of Sight + Sound: The Planetarium Project. Five-minute films by students of CIA, scored with electronic music by student composers of CIM, will be given their world premiere screenings inside the dome of Shafran Planetarium at the Museum.
by Jarrett Hoffman
“The war to end all wars” — if only that were true. Known as simply the World War up until the late 1930s, the international disaster we now call WWI came to an armistice a century ago, after claiming over 16 million lives.
A concert this week at the Cleveland Museum of Art will commemorate those lost in that conflict. Embarking on their 71st tour to North America, director Peter Phillips and the Tallis Scholars — the British vocal ensemble whose specialty is sacred music of the Renaissance — will bring “War and Peace” to Gartner Auditorium on Friday, April 13 at 7:30 pm, as part of the Museum’s Performing Arts Series.
L’Homme Armé (“The Armed Man”), a secular song that was popular in Renaissance France, will open Friday’s concert. “It’s a real battle cry,” Peter Phillips said in a phone call from London. “We all go for it — even I sing in it. That’s a pretty noisy start.”
by Daniel Hathaway
Pianist Wu Han, violinist Philip Setzer, and cellist David Finckel — the No-Name trio who like to keep it that way — have been offering performances of Beethoven’s complete piano trios for several years now. That repertoire takes up two complete concert programs, and presenters have been given their choice of several formats.