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Archives for November 2019

Cleveland Classical Guitar Society: a conversation with Pablo Garibay 

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by Mike Telin

The Cleveland Classical Guitar Society will continue its International Series this weekend with a performance by Pablo Garibay on Saturday, November 9 at 7:30 pm in Plymouth Church in Shaker Heights. His program will include works by Leo Brouwer, Simone Iannarelli, Manuel Ponce, Eguardo Angulo, and Antonio José. Tickets are available online.

Garibay has been awarded first prize at numerous competitions including the International Manuel Ponce Guitar Competition (Mexico City), the René Bartoli Competition (Aix en Provence, France) the JoAnn Falletta International Guitar Concerto Competition (Buffalo, USA) and the International Guitar Competition Aachen (Germany).

I reached Pablo Garibay at his home in Morelia, Mexico, and began by asking him if he has ever been to Cleveland.

Pablo Garibay: No, this will be my first time and I am thrilled about it.

Mike Telin: Your program includes names of composers that I’m familiar with, and others that I’m learning about for the first time. Could you please say a few words about each of the works. [Read more…]

Jakub Hrůša returns
to Severance Hall

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by Mike Telin

“There are few steps in the history of music as paramount as was the ‘Eroica’ Symphony,” Czech conductor Jakub Hrůša said during a telephone conversation. “It’s a piece from hundreds of years ago, but it’s still stimulating and sometimes shocking music to hear — it just doesn’t make you tired of listening to it.”

On Thursday, November 7 at 7:30 pm, Jakub Hrůša will return to the Severance Hall stage to lead The Cleveland Orchestra in Beethoven’s monumental Symphony No. 3 (“Eroica”). The evening will also include Shostakovich’s Violin Concerto No. 1 with Sergey Khachatryan as soloist. The program will be repeated on Friday and Saturday at 8:00 pm and Sunday at 3:00 pm. Tickets are available online.

Over the past few years, Hrůša has become a wonderful addition to the Orchestra’s guest conductor roster. He said that he never gets tired of conducting the Beethoven Third. “I used to do it a lot, then I took a break from it. Then I did it again and now I’m coming back to it after another break. In my view, I don’t think it’s played too often — it’s a masterpiece with no equal. Within Beethoven’s oeuvre it’s extraordinarily important. Very few symphonies in the history of music caused such a revolutionary shock as this symphony did.”  [Read more…]

Cleveland Chamber Choir to present “Lux Caelestis” concerts this weekend

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by Daniel Hathaway

To begin its fifth season, the professional singers of Scott MacPherson’s Cleveland Chamber Choir will present identical programs at St. John’s Cathedral in downtown Cleveland on Friday, November 8 at 7:30 pm, and at St. Sebastian Church in Akron on Sunday, November 10 at 5:00 pm.

“Our overall theme this season is ‘Women’s Voices Resounding,’” MacPherson said in a telephone conversation. “A good chunk of the repertoire is by women composers and poets. And the first pair of concerts will be given in memory of my dear friend Helen Tremaine Gregory, who passed away last winter. She was a businesswoman and philanthropist who sang in my town-gown Kent Chorale.”

When MacPherson puts a concert program together, he often begins with a central piece out of which companion works spring. “The centerpiece of these programs is Timothy Kramer’s Lux Caelestis, a piece he wrote for me when I was at Trinity University in San Antonio,” the conductor said. “I asked him for a piece we could sing on tour in Cologne Cathedral — one that was appropriate for a watery acoustic.” [Read more…]

Apollo’s Fire: “Echoes of Venice” at Trinity Cathedral (Oct. 18)

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by Daniel Hathaway

The special, spatial music of the Gabrielis and their early Baroque successors at San Marco in Venice has been famous for a long time. But until modern performers took up and mastered the instruments and playing style of the mixed wind and string ensembles that held forth from the galleries of that Byzantine basilica, replicating the timbres of 17th-century polychoral music that drew Northern composers like Heinrich Schütz to the Most Serene Republic just wasn’t possible. [Read more…]

Akron Symphony in “Symphonic Shakespeare” (Oct. 19)

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by Nicholas Stevens

Shakespeare is everywhere these days: not just at the roots of today’s literature, poetry, philosophy, pop culture, and theatre, but as the ultimate canonic figure in the arts. His fame helps keep him famous. Titles of novels riff on the fact that his work remains required reading; Supreme Court justices make headlines for doubting his authorship; tempests in teapots brew when people move his portrait. Classical music, with its piano-adorning composer busts, boasts figures of comparable monumentality. In presenting music on Shakespearean themes and scenarios in a recent concert, however, the Akron Symphony seized a chance to savor works of rarer vintages. [Read more…]

Oberlin Opera Theater: 
A Midsummer Night’s Dream

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by Mike Telin

When Oberon and Tytania, the King and Queen of the Fairies, have a public marital spat, Oberon sets his sights on revenge with the help of his mischievous servant Puck. Chaos ensues for everyone involved: the fairies, the royalty, and the rag-tag theater troupe. And like any good fairy tale, everything gets worked out in the end. It all makes you wonder — is this someone’s dream?   

On Wednesday, November 6 at 8:00 pm in Hall Auditorium, Oberlin Opera Theater will present Benjamin Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Jonathon Field directs, and Christopher Larkin conducts the Oberlin Orchestra. Performances continue November 8 and 9 at 8:00 pm and the 10th at 2:00 pm. Tickets are available online.

“An interesting thing about this piece is the way it’s constructed,” Jonathon Field said during a recent interview. “Shakespeare’s play opens and closes in civilization, so you do feel grounded in our world. But in the opera, it opens and closes in the woods, so the fairies have the first and last word. Britten is almost saying that the irrational and mysterious are going to reign. And that’s where the idea of the dream comes in — that vague difference between reality and illusion.”

[Read more…]

Pianist Till Fellner to return to Cleveland Chamber Music Society

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by Jarrett Hoffman

Till Fellner last came to town in 2011 at the invitation of the Cleveland Chamber Music Society. The Austrian pianist returns to the series for a recital next Tuesday, November 12 at 7:30 pm in Mixon Hall at the Cleveland Institute of Music. Roger Klein will give a pre-concert lecture at 6:30 pm. Tickets are available online.

Fellner’s international career was launched when he won first prize at the Clara Haskil International Piano Competition in 1993. Since then, he has been a guest at major orchestras and music centers of Europe, the U.S., and Japan. Last season brought his debut with the London Symphony, and this season includes his second appearance with the Boston Symphony. He teaches at the Zurich Hochschule der Künste.

The pianist’s Chamber Music Society program is one part Schoenberg and two parts Schubert — who is among the composers Fellner admires most. As he told Kyle MacMillan last year in an interview for the Chicago Symphony’s CSO Sounds and Stories, “…it seems to me that Beethoven, Mozart, Schubert and Bach are so important, and it’s the most interesting music for me.”

[Read more…]

Uchida plays Schubert at Severance Hall (Nov. 3)

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by David Kulma

It is always a delight to hear Mitsuko Uchida play the piano. In many ways, she’s the Platonic ideal of a classical musician. Focusing on Viennese classics and other heavyweights, she plays with finesse and precision. Her touch is always beautiful, never veering into the bombastic or straying into the muffled. Everything is in good taste.

[Read more…]

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