ClevelandClassical.com Header
Ad
Ad
Ad

Archives for May 2019

Cleveland Opera Theater: La traviata at the Maltz (April 28)

by

by Daniel Hathaway

While opera often treats its audiences to spectacle on a grand scale, what really makes the art form take flight is the melding of distinguished singing with excellent acting and staging. Those elements came together beautifully in Cleveland Opera Theater’s production of Verdi’s La traviata on Sunday afternoon, April 28 at the Maltz Performing Arts Center. A strong cast and a fine chamber orchestra joined director Scott Skiba and conductor Domenico Boyagian in bringing the story of Violetta Valéry to vibrant life on an engagingly human scale. [Read more…]

ChamberFest: catching up with pianist Andrius Žlabys

by

by Jarrett Hoffman

“As I get older I’m really enjoying situations where the audience is five feet away from you and you can feel everyone’s energy,” clarinetist Franklin Cohen told us in March. That month ChamberFest Cleveland, which he co-directs with his daughter Diana Cohen, launched its House Concert Series.

To Lithuanian-born pianist Andrius Žlabys, what’s interesting about house concerts is that they are always unique. “There’s much more variety than with regular concerts, from room size to pianos,” he said from New Haven, Connecticut during a telephone conversation last week. “As a pianist, of course I get to meet new instruments all the time, so it’s always an adventure.”

The third and final event in ChamberFest’s House Concert Series takes place on Thursday, May 16 at 7:30 pm in the home of Mark and Sue Hollingsworth in Shaker Heights — the address will be printed on your receipt after you purchase a ticket.

[Read more…]

Cleveland Chamber Choir & Cleveland Composers Guild: a conversation with Natsumi Osborn

by

by Jarrett Hoffman

Composer Natsumi Osborn remembers the first time she read October Danger, a poem by her friend Anabelle Clark.

“It’s very descriptive and kind of mystical,” Osborn said during a telephone conversation. “It evoked in my head the kinds of images and feelings that I always want to evoke in my music.”

Osborn went on to set that text to music with her choral work Autumn Reflections, for which she won the Cleveland Composers Guild’s 2019 Collegiate Composition Contest. She’s currently finishing up her second year at Oberlin College and Conservatory, where she studies composition with Stephen Hartke, Jesse Jones, and Elizabeth Ogonek.

In two concerts this weekend, the Cleveland Chamber Choir, under the direction of Scott MacPherson, will perform works by members of the Cleveland Composers Guild, including Osborn’s Autumn Reflections, and pieces by American and British women composers — details below.

[Read more…]

Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra: a conversation with concerto competition winner Julia Schilz

by

by Mike Telin

As a young musician, many times the decision to learn a new piece is not a decision at all. Such was the case for violinist Julia Schilz and Max Bruch’s Scottish Fantasy. “My teacher assigned it,” Schilz said during a telephone conversation. “But from the moment I heard it I was so drawn to it.”

On Friday, May 10 at 8:00 pm at Severance Hall, Schilz, a COYO concerto competition winner, will have the honor of performing the work with the Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra under the direction of Vinay Parameswaran. The program also includes Bartók’s Dance Suite and Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 5. Tickets are available online.

Throughout the concerto Bruch borrows Scottish folk melodies such as Through the Wood Laddie, The Dusty Miller, I’m A’ Doun for Lack O’Johnnie, and Hey Tuttie Tatie. That said, Schilz views the concerto as “100% classical music” that is inspired by these Celtic tunes.

Describing the piece, Schilz, who is in her third year as a member of COYO, said that the first and third movements are extremely lyrical.

[Read more…]

Ars Futura on the John Knox series (May 3)

by

by Nicholas Stevens

The history of any art form consists of generalizations, some useful, others reductive, many both. Take classical music: hastily scribbled timelines have too often redrawn the vast panorama of postwar composition into a knot of abstract forms. Advocates of contemporary composition and performance have often pushed back on this stereotype with words, but in a recent concert, Cleveland’s Ars Futura ensemble emphasized the range of its repertoire also in deed. [Read more…]

BlueWater Chamber Orchestra tells tales at Plymouth (May 4)

by

by David Kulma

BlueWater Chamber Orchestra entered an exciting second era with the final concert of its 9th season on Saturday, May 4 at Plymouth Church in Shaker Heights. Last month, conductor Daniel Meyer was named the orchestra’s artistic director, so now this important Northeast Ohio institution can chart a course into its second decade.

[Read more…]

CityMusic Cleveland: Verdi Requiem at Maltz Performing Arts Center (May 2)

by

by Nicholas Stevens

Strange things happen to art amid mass violence. During World War II, Beethoven’s Ninth resounded at festivals in honor of mass murderers, who were proud to count the composer as a compatriot. Yet elsewhere, Allied soldiers were using the opening motif of Beethoven’s Fifth — three short notes, one long: Morse code for the letter V — to signify victory. So it was that, in 1943, the Nazis forced the musicians of the Theresienstadt concentration camp to perform Verdi’s Requiem for an audience of human rights inspectors, before shipping them off to gas chambers at Auschwitz. So it is that last week, CityMusic Cleveland honored the memory of those musicians and all of those lost in the Holocaust, with a performance of that very piece. [Read more…]

Chagrin Arts: Barrick Stees fuses art and music (Apr. 26)

by

by David Kulma

Cleveland Orchestra assistant principal bassoon Barrick Stees has had a longtime love of visual art that he finally turned into a musical event — “A Fusion of Art and Music with Barry Stees & Friends” at Chagrin Falls United Methodist Church on Friday, April 26. As part of the Chagrin Arts Performing Arts Series, Stees paired delightful chamber music with the fascinating art that inspired it, projected for all to see.

[Read more…]

CityMusic: cellist Amit Peled, Saint-Saëns, and basketball

by

by Jarrett Hoffman

Israeli cellist Amit Peled is a warm person, a deep thinker, and a big Cavaliers fan — all equally important aspects of any great artist’s personality.

Next week, from May 15-19, Peled and guest conductor Mélisse Brunet will make their debuts with CityMusic Cleveland in five free concerts around the area to conclude the ensemble’s 15th season.

The title “Hidden Gems” certainly describes three of the four works on the program: Fanny Mendelssohn’s Overture in C, Saint-Saëns’s Symphony No. 2, and Kodály’s Dances of Galánta.

Not so for Saint-Saëns’s First Cello Concerto. “It’s a piece that we all play as teenagers — one of the first we encounter as quote-unquote serious cellists,” Peled told me during a trip to Europe, where he was to perform in Romania and Austria. For him, the Saint-Saëns was also one of the first concertos he performed with orchestra. “I will never forget the feeling of that first chord, and after that the explosion of emotion and the mastery of cello writing,” he said.

[Read more…]

Cleveland Classical Guitar Society: Judicaël Perroy at Plymouth (Apr. 27)

by

by David Kulma

The final concert of the Cleveland Classical Guitar Society’s International Series at Plymouth Church on Saturday, April 27 kept the audience on its toes in the best way possible. The fantastic guitar virtuoso Judicaël Perroy chose an unexpected route through his repertoire, nevermind the printed program. [Read more…]

Follow ClevelandClassical.com

Contact us