ClevelandClassical.com Header
Ad
Ad

Archives for November 2019

BlueWater: violinist Jinjoo Cho to play the Tchaikovsky Concerto

by

by Jarrett Hoffman

Violinist Jinjoo Cho was born in Seoul and lives in Montreal, but you could easily say she’s from Northeast Ohio. She moved here as a teenager and enrolled in the Cleveland Institute of Music’s young artist program, and she didn’t leave the area until last year, when she joined the faculty of the Schulich School of Music at McGill University.

Her time living in Cleveland saw her career take off. Cho won a major competition (International Violin Competition of Indianapolis), made an important solo debut (Carnegie Hall), took on teaching positions (CIM and Oberlin Conservatory), and founded and continues to run a summer festival (ENCORE Chamber Music in Gates Mills).

Cho has been featured by many of the area’s prominent ensembles and presenting organizations — and she’s still adding to that list. She will play Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto this weekend in her first appearances with BlueWater Chamber Orchestra, led by Daniel Meyer.

[Read more…]

Road Trip: Cincinnati Symphony premieres Rouse work (Oct. 19)

by

by David Kulma

Although the symphony has always been the bedrock of orchestral music, new additions to the genre are rare on orchestra programs. On Saturday, October 19, I made the 4-hour drive to Southwest Ohio to hear the world premiere of Christopher Rouse’s Symphony No. 6, commissioned as a part of the Cincinnati Symphony’s 125th anniversary season. That Rouse died only a month earlier at the age of 70 gave extra weight to the proceedings. [Read more…]

Cleveland Chamber Music Society: Jerusalem Quartet at Plymouth (Oct. 22)

by

by David Kulma

Tuesday, October 22 was my second opportunity to hear the Jerusalem Quartet. This was their eighth appearance on the Cleveland Chamber Music Society’s concerts at Plymouth Church, and it’s no wonder they keep getting invited back. In an invigorating program of Mozart, Korngold, and Shostakovich, violinists Alexander Pavlovsky and Sergei Bresler, violist Ori Kam, and cellist Kyril Zlotnikov showed off this elegant quartet’s power and maturity. [Read more…]

Earth and Air: String Orchestra at St. Paul’s, Cleveland Heights (Nov. 1)

by

by David Kulma

Five Novembers ago, David B. Ellis organized a lecture-concert with six string-playing friends. Its focus was Arnold Schoenberg’s decadent 1899 tone poem Verklärte Nacht, Op. 4. This experience bore fruit a year later with the birth of Earth and Air: String Orchestra. On Friday, November 1 at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Cleveland Heights, Ellis opened its fifth season with Schoenberg’s 1917 string orchestra version of Transfigured Night in a program titled “Splendor Falls on Everything Around.” Giving this obsessive piece context, he paired it with music by Gustav Mahler and Samuel Coleridge-Taylor. [Read more…]

Sarangi virtuoso Harsh Narayan plays in Youngstown (Nov. 1)

by

by Robert Rollin

On Friday evening November 1, Youngstown’s Calvin Center for the Arts hosted a concert featuring sarangi virtuoso Harsh Narayan of Mumbai, India, accompanied by tabla artist Joe Culley of Kent, Ohio. The concert took place in the Yoga room, an intimate space that provided a warm atmosphere for the small but enthusiastic audience. Narayan explained that the sarangi dates back to 6th Century India, when at first it accompanied the human voice, even imitating vocal ornaments and slides. [Read more…]

The Cleveland Orchestra & Chorus: Hrůša, Adams & Mahler this week

by

by Mike Telin

After leading The Cleveland Orchestra last week in works by Shostakovich and Beethoven, Jakub Hrůša returns to the Severance Hall podium this week to conduct the Cleveland premiere of John Adams’ On the Transmigration of Souls and Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 4. Performances are on Thursday, November 14 at 7:30 pm, Saturday the 16th at 8:00 pm and Sunday the 17th at 3:00 pm. Tickets are available online.

John Adams’ On the Transmigration of Souls was commissioned by the New York Philharmonic and Lincoln Center to commemorate the first anniversary of the September 11 attacks in 2001. The composer has written that

“Transmigration means ‘the movement from one place to another’ or ‘the transition from one state of being to another.’ But in this case I meant it to imply the movement of the soul from one state to another. And I don’t just mean the transition from living to dead, but also the change that takes place within the souls of those that stay behind, of those who suffer pain and loss and then themselves come away from that experience.”

The single movement, 25-minute work for orchestra, chorus, children’s choir, and pre-recorded tape was awarded the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Music. [Read more…]

Cleveland Orchestra with Slobodeniouk & Hamelin (Oct. 24)

by

by Nicholas Stevens

Tell a classical fan that you recently heard an ensemble play a piece from the 1920s that features a solo snare drum, and their mind might snap to any of a number of dubious ultramodern experiments of that era. A late October program by The Cleveland Orchestra at Severance Hall, at once offbeat and logical in its selection of delights, short-circuited stereotypical associations of the idiosyncratic with the avant-garde. Ovations for percussionist Marc Damoulakis and clarinetist Afendi Yusuf capped a concert devoted to Romanticism in all its strangeness. [Read more…]

Cleveland Chamber Choir at St. John’s Cathedral (Nov. 8)

by

by Daniel Hathaway

Conductor Scott MacPherson had two things in mind when choosing repertoire for Cleveland Chamber Choir’s first pair of concerts this season. The program had to reflect this season’s concentration on music by women composers, and the works needed to flourish in the lively acoustic of venues in Cleveland and Akron. The first performance, on Friday, November 8 at the Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist, scored high on both counts. [Read more…]

fp Creative launches new season at Snap House Studios November 14

by

by Mike Telin

After an extraordinary debut concert season, Fresh Perspectives founder Devin Hinzo and program manager Justin Gunter spent the past summer thinking about how to bring to fruition the organization’s goal of creating an incubator for area musicians to develop projects. That thinking was turned into action, and this week audiences can experience what the organization now known as fp Creative is all about.

On Thursday, November 14 beginning at 7:00 pm at Snap House Studios in Cleveland, fp Creative will present “Pretty in Green #galaforthepeople.” Audiences are invited to wear their best green-hued or nature-inspired fashion, with prizes for those “with the freshest cuts.” Enjoy earthly delights, take pictures with interactive installations, and hear fp Creative’s inaugural emerging artists-in-residence, Catharsis Winds, in concert.

The program includes Piazzolla’s Libertango (arr. Jeff Scott), Gabriela Ortiz’ Puzzle-tocas, and David Maslanka’s Quintet No. 1. Installation and performance artist Susie Underwood will be on hand creating something special for the event. General Admission costs zero to fifteen dollars at the door. RSVP here. [Read more…]

Contemporary Youth Orchestra: a new piano concerto, without the pianist

by

by Jarrett Hoffman

When the Contemporary Youth Orchestra opens its 25th season this weekend, those in the audience will see players playing, conductor conducting, and a piano whose pedals and keys depress and release, letting out the most artful of sounds, but without anyone laying a finger on it.

A talented ghost? Not exactly. Steinway & Sons has developed a high-resolution player piano known as the Spirio. By measuring hammer velocity and pedaling, it can reproduce a performance that, according to the company, is “utterly indistinguishable” from the original.

Using a Spirio, Antonio Pompa-Baldi has already recorded the solo part to Roberto Piana’s new Concerto Fantastique. That instrument will be onstage in front of the Contemporary Youth Orchestra and music director Liza Grossman, playing back Pompa-Baldi’s performance during the work’s premiere on Saturday, November 16 at 7:00 pm at Mandel Theatre on the Eastern Campus of Cuyahoga Community College. The program also includes Gustav Holst’s The Planets. [Read more…]

Follow ClevelandClassical.com

Contact us