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Archives for July 2021

Cleveland Classical Guitar Society: Creative Fusion from start to finish

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by Jarrett Hoffman

One grant, given to two organizations, presenting three artists-in-residence, joined by over one hundred guest artists, in nine videos designed to increase awareness around an array of social and cultural issues.

The sum of those numbers is a virtual series presented by the Cleveland Classical Guitar Society and El Comité Mexicano de Cleveland (Mexican Committee of Cleveland) through funding from the Cleveland Foundation’s Creative Fusion program. The series is ongoing: six videos have been released since early June — watch them here — with three still to come beginning on Friday, July 30.

First, some background about Creative Fusion in general, and in particular the 2020 edition, delayed twelve months due to the pandemic. The program invites artists from around the world to participate in residencies in Cleveland, and since 2016, each year has been designed around a different theme.

The 2020 edition, titled Contar, was to be centered in Clark-Fulton, which contains the La Villa Hispaña neighborhood, known as an emerging cultural, social, and economic hub for the Hispanic community. The dual meanings of contar — Spanish for both “to count” and “to tell” — were tied into the 2020 Census.

[Read more…]

Cleveland International Piano Competition: Round 1, Session 5, Thursday, July 15

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by Mike Telin

It was a battle of the early twenty-somethings last evening and judging from this impressive group the future of the piano is in good hands.

Suah Ye (20, South Korea) started things off with Haydn’s Sonata in B Minor, Hob. XVI. Setting a jolly tempo, Ye’s Allegro moderato was full of nicely phrased lines, crisp articulations and tight trills. The Tempo di Menuetto had a sense of engaging intimacy, while the Finale-Presto was defined by dynamic contrasts and brisk tempos.

During Liszt’s Étude de concert, S. 144, No. 2 (“La leggierezza”) Ye played with an expansive sound, The cascading, Lisztian scale passages were tasteful and full of charm, like a music box. The concluding major chords — perfectly balanced. Ye concluded her set with a thoughtful performance of Chopin’s Etude in a, Op. 25, No. 11 (“Winter Wind”). Here the thorny technical passages and balances between the left and right hands were well controlled. [Read more…]

Huang duo’s fantastic collaboration opens Kent Blossom season (July 14)

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by Stephanie Manning

The evening of July 14 surely felt like a momentous one for the Kent Blossom Music Festival. Just shy of two years since the Festival’s last live, in-person performance, Kulas Visiting Artists Paul Huang and Helen Huang took the stage at Ludwig Recital Hall to open Kent Blossom’s 53rd season. Performing for both an in-person and virtual audience (I heard the live stream), the violinist and pianist dazzled in sonatas by Mendelssohn, Corigliano, Ysaÿe, and Franck.

[Read more…]

DIARY: Friday, July 16, 2021

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by Daniel Hathaway

TODAY’S EVENTS AND UPDATES:

Chagrin Arts’ 7:00 pm al fresco concert by the Callisto Quartet has been moved indoors at the Solon Center for the Arts. (Picture: before last year’s concert on a baseball diamond in Solon).

Keep an eye on weather updates for the Suburban Symphony’s 7:00 pm performance at the Church of the Western Reserve.

Also at 7:00 pm, the Cleveland International Piano Competition broadcasts the sixth and final session of its First Round, and the Oberlin Como Piano Festival features an interview with Dang Thai Son and master class performances.

And in Wooster, Ohio Light Opera’s Musical Magic features musical theater numbers and swing tunes at City Square Steakhouse.

Details in our Concert Listings.

NEWS BRIEFS:

This week’s WKSU Shuffle podcast with Amanda Rabinowitz features sounds and reflections from The Cleveland Orchestra’s first rehearsal since the shutdown, and a preview of the Orchestra’s summer schedule and beyond with ClevelandClassical.com founder and editor Daniel Hathaway. Listen here on Spotify.

Oberlin piano professor Peter Takács reports that his 2011 recording of the complete Beethoven sonatas has sold out and is being released with a new design by Cambria Master Recordings. Click here for more information.

Early Music America is seeking applicants for its 2021-2022 Emerging Professional Leadership Council. Students, performers, researchers and administrators under the age of 35 are invited to apply by August 9. Read the guidelines here.

And the New York Chapter of the American Guild of Organists has named Paul Jacobs as its 2021 International Performer of the Year. “The only organ soloist ever to have won a GRAMMY Award — in 2011 for Messiaen’s towering Livre du Saint-Sacrèment — Mr. Jacobs is an eloquent champion of his instrument both in the United States and around the world.” Read more here.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

Scottish composer James MacMillan was born on July 16, 1959 in Kilwinning, Ayrshire. I interviewed Chanticleer’s music director Tim Keeler yesterday for a preview of their forthcoming performance on the Tuesday Musical series in Akron on July 27, and one of the works he highlighted was MacMillan’s O Radiant Dawn. It figures importantly in a program titled “Awakenings” that celebrates the re-emergence of vocal music as the pandemic loosens its grip on the choral world. “It’s a prayer to beckon the new day, a prayer for light to shine in darkness.” Listen here to the brief but moving piece as performed by Britain’s Apollo 5 at the VOCES8 Foundation in London, the former St. Anne & St. Agnes Church near St. Paul’s Cathedral that was designed by Christopher Wren.

And American musician and composer Stewart Copeland came onto the scene in Alexandria, Virginia on this date in 1959. Best known as the drummer for the British rock group Police, Copeland wrote his first opera on commission from Cleveland Opera. Holy Blood and Crescent Moon received its debut in the State Theater in October of 1989, directed by David Bamberger and conducted by Imre Palló. The New York Times ran John Rockwell’s candid review of the opening performance (read it here). Later, Anne Midgette mentioned the work in a 2013 Washington Post article about rock musicians who undertake writing opera — by now Copland had finished his fourth theater piece and was working on a fifth.

Midgette quotes the composer: “I think when you do something as engrossing as opera,” says Copeland, who approached his first opera commission in 1989 as a kind of a lark, “every time you figure something out, you want to get it better next time.” Watch his 2010 chamber opera, The Tell-Tale Heart — based on the Edgar Allen Poe story — here.

DIARY: Thursday, July 15, 2021

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by Mike Telin

TODAY’S EVENTS:

At 7:00 pm it’s the Cleveland International Piano Competition Round 1, Session 5. Contestants perform their solo recitals of 20 minutes from around the world. Suah Ye (20, South Korea), Philipp Lynov (22, Russia), Clayton Stephenson (22, United States) and Arsenii Mun (21, Russia). Click here at start time to watch the free videos.

Want to hear the event with others? Pack a picnic and bring lawn chairs to watch performances under the stars on the big screen at the Beachwood Community Center, 25225 Fairmount Blvd., Beachwood.

Also at 7:00 pm is Day 3 of the Oberlin-Como Piano Festival: Master Classes and Interviews. The Marvel of the Baroque on the Pianoforte will feature an interview with William Grant Naboré and performances by Xiaoyu Liu, Leonardo Pierdomenico, Anastasia Vaorotnaya, and Daniela Jiménez Ochoa. The free event is part of Oberlin’s Stage Left series. View here at start time.

IN THE NEWS:

Tuesday Musical is offering a 50% discount on tickets for groups of 6 or more for the concert by Chanticleer (pictured) on Tuesday, July 27, 7:30 pm at Akron’s EJ Thomas Hall. Stay after and celebrate during an audience reception. This offer is only available by calling 330-761-3460 by July 22 at 5 pm — it is not available online. Single tickets can be purchased here.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

July 15 presents a number of noteworthy events beginning with the death of Carl Czerny in 1857 at age 66 in Vienna. For those who only know the celebrated teacher as the person who wrote the many technical studies we all had to endure as piano students, one must remember that he was also a prolific composer  with over one thousand works — sonatas, chamber music, symphonies, and choral pieces — to his credit. Click here to listen to his Variations on a Theme by Rode, Op. 33 (“La ricordanza”) played by pianist Alexis Weissenberg.

Another passing of note is that of violinist Leopold Auer in 1930 at Loschwitz, near Dresden. While he was the dedicatee of many works during his lifetime, perhaps the best known is Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto. Although he initially regarded the work as unplayable and refused to give the concerto’s premiere, he later — after some re-editing of the solo part — became a champion of the piece.

July 15, 1933 saw the birth of English guitarist and lutenist Julian Bream in London. With a career that spanned over a half-century, Bream is credited with transforming the classical guitar — in the eyes of the public —  into an instrument worthy of being performed in the world’s great concert halls. The list of composers who dedicated pieces to Bream include Malcolm Arnold, Richard Rodney Bennett, Leo Brouwer, Hans Werner Henze, Toru Takemitsu, Michael Tippett, William Walton, Peter Maxwell Davies, and Benjamin Britten. Bream plays Britten’s Nocturnal here.

One year later, English composer Harrison Birtwistle was born in Accrington, Lancashire. His 1986 Earth Dances have been compared to Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. Christoph von Dohnányi recorded the work in 1996 with The Cleveland Orchestra for Decca (listen here), but there’s also a video of a performance by Cologne’s Gürzenich Orchestra led by Marcus Stenz.

1946 saw the birth of American singer Linda Ronstadt in Tucson, Arizona. She began her prolific career as a member of The Stone Poneys — Click here to listen to their 1967 hit Different Drum. Never content to be boxed into a genre, Ronsdadt would later star in Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Pirates of Penzance, first with the New York Shakespeare Company, and later on Broadway and in the 1983 film version — listen to Poor Wandering One here. She also toured with The Nelson Riddle Orchestra. She sings Falling in Love Again here.

We conclude today’s list with two local connections. The first is that of Swiss American composer Ernst Bloch, who died on this date in 1959 in Portland, Oregon. Bloch served as founding director of the Cleveland Institute of Music from 1920-1925 before moving on to the San Francisco Conservatory. Among Bloch’s music based on Jewish themes is his tone poem about King Solomon, Schelomo: Rhapsodie Hébraïque. Listen here to a live Blossom Festival performance in 1980 by cellist Janós Starker with The Cleveland Orchestra, led by Eduardo Mata.

And July 15 1988 saw Robert Shannon give the premiere of John Harbison’s Piano Sonata No. 1 In Memoriam Roger Sessions at the Dorothy Taubman Piano Institute in Amherst, MA. The sonata was written for Shannon, a long-time faculty member at the Oberlin Conservatory, and for Ursula Oppens and Alan Feinberg, on a consortium commission from the National Endowment for the Arts. Click here to listen to Shannon’s recording.

Capathia Jenkins returns to Blossom with the Great American Songbook

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by Cait Winston

“They are iconic,” Capathia Jenkins says of the pop and jazz standards that make up the Great American Songbook. “These songs will never go away. They are just so beautiful, they’re so well crafted, and as an artist you want to wrap your brain and your artistry around these songs and what they represent. I think that they will always be regarded as the Great American Songbook. Whether we are in 2021, or 2055 — they will remain.”

Joining guest conductor Lucas Waldin and the Cleveland Orchestra, Jenkins will bring Songbook classics by the Gershwins, Oscar Hammerstein, and more to the Blossom stage on Sunday, July 18 at 7:00 pm.

To Jenkins, the music of the Great American Songbook has stood the test of time not only because it evokes universal emotions and tells timeless stories, but because the songs themselves are so well-crafted. “You have a melody that may be unexpected, or you have a harmony that may be unexpected,” she said during a recent telephone conversation. [Read more…]

DIARY: Wednesday, July 14, 2021

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by Jarrett Hoffman

TODAY ON THE WEB:

At 2:00 pm, Ohio Light Opera presents an outdoor performance of The Fantasticks at Wayne Center for the Arts in Wooster.

7:00 brings two options, one in person and the other virtual: a Summer Concert from Apollo’s Fire at Akron Art Museum, and Day 2 of the Oberlin-Como Piano Festival, featuring an interview and master class with Stanislav Ioudenitch.

And at 7:30, both in person and live-streamed, the Kent Blossom Music Festival presents the opener to its Faculty Concert series: a recital from violinist Paul Huang and pianist Helen Huang. (Read Stephanie Manning’s preview article here.)

Details in our Concert Listings.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

Three prominent composers from three different continents celebrate birthdays today.

Among the broad range of interests of Columbia University faculty member George Lewis (born in Chicago in 1952) is improvisation, particularly as a trombonist. Listen to a brilliant improv between Lewis (trombone) and Yi-Yi Wang (erhu), performed at Florida State University in 1993.

Another long-held interest: the role of computers in composition and performance. That area includes the development of his improvising software Voyager, which reacts in real time to the input of a human performer. Listen to his 2011 Interactive Trio for trombone, two pianos, and interactive music system here, in a performance by Lewis and pianist Amina Claudine Meyers. (Check out Lewis’ virtuosic improvisation around the 9:22 mark.)

He is also a highly respected scholar and musicologist. Among his many publications, his 2008 book A Power Stronger Than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music — which received the American Book Award — explores the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, which Lewis joined at age 19.

Weaving together portraits of many, many musicians, that book led critic Greg Tate to say to Lewis, “It’s like you wrote a Russian family novel of the A.A.C.M.” (Perhaps the rare musicological work that could translate to an audiobook for your next road trip? Voice actors galore.) Read more about the organization and the book in Lewis’ 2008 interview with The New York Times.

As a recipient of both a Guggenheim and MacArthur Fellowship, Lewis isn’t alone as a celebrated living composer on today’s list — he’s joined by Unsuk Chin. Born in Seoul in 1961 but by now a Berliner for over 30 years, she also boasts a bio full of prestigious awards, positions, and associations with a who’s-who of top musicians and ensembles.

Among her most acclaimed pieces are several highlighting soloists. Her 1991-93 Akrostichon–Wortspiel (“Acrostic-Wordplay”) for soprano and ensemble is considered her international breakthrough, while her Violin Concerto won the 2004 Grawemeyer Award. To top it off, her Cello Concerto was ranked by The Guardian in 2019 as the 12th greatest work of 21st-century art music.

“I’m attracted by virtuosity,” Chin said in an interview with Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim for The New York Times in 2014. “This enthusiasm and virtuosity of a player trying to go beyond his or her boundaries: I like that. It’s a situation that I experience all the time as a composer: pushing the limits of your possibilities, not knowing whether you can do it — and then somehow succeeding. I ask every bit as much from a soloist.”

That article also brought a performer’s perspective to the table — in this case, those of Finnish clarinetist Kari Kriikku, who was to give the American premiere of Chin’s Clarinet Concerto with the New York Philharmonic. “A composer asks questions a musician would not think to ask,” Kriiku noted, adding that after the world premiere in Gothenburg, Sweden, Chin’s only advice was to “sound more like a bird.”

Judging by this excerpt, he succeeded.

And Gerald Finzi, born in London in 1901, is most famous for his lyrical, pastoral style, and in particular as a choral composer, a category that includes his Christmas Scene In terra pax.

Finzi blows out candles from the great beyond, where he’s been in residence since 1956 — perhaps finishing what was likely to be a piano concerto. (After his death, two movements of it were published as their own separate works, including the Eclogue for piano and strings, heard here in a performance featuring Roberto Plano.)

Then again, assuming there are no deadlines in the afterlife — and probably many better things to do than work — perhaps the concerto is still on his desk, just one thing in a stack of projects and to-do lists being happily — finally — neglected.

The Cleveland International Piano Competition:
Week Two and beyond

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by Mike Telin

After a three-day break, Competition first-round performances will continue on Thursday, July 15 at 7:00 pm. Audiences can also experience that evening’s session by attending the Watch Party at the Beachwood Community Center. Pack a picnic and bring your chairs to watch performances under the stars and on the big screen. Click here to register for the free event.

New at this year’s competition is the Trivia Night/Watch Party on Thursday, July 22 at 7:00 pm at the The Music Box Supper Club. Hosts Yaron Kohlberg and Zsolt Bognár (pictured) have created questions that are designed to engage every level of piano and classical music enthusiast. Teams can be up to six people, so bring your friends (or make new ones) and enjoy great music and a chance to win a Cleveland musical prize package.

The ticketed event will include the buffet-style menu on the Music Box’s website. The first drink is on CIPC, but after that, for the rest of the evening you can purchase your favorite beverage at the cash bar. Click here to purchase tickets online or call 216.242.1250. [Read more…]

Callisto Quartet returns for a second outdoor concert

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by Daniel Hathaway

UPDATE: Due to weather conditions, this concert will move indoors at 7:00 pm at the Solon Center for the Arts. 6315 SOM Center Road, Solon.

Almost a year to the day, the Callisto Quartet, formed in 2016 at the Cleveland Institute of Music, will return to the scene of their 2020 concert in Solon Community Park for a second al fresco performance. On Friday, July 16 at 7:00 pm, violinists Paul Aguilar and Rachel Stenzel, violist Eva Kennedy, and cellist Hannah Moses will play Haydn and Beethoven in a free, open air concert.

The event, presented again this year by Chagrin Arts in cooperation with the City of Solon, will relax most of the COVID protocols that were in place last year, but audience members should still bring their own lawn chairs or blankets and refreshments.

The Callisto have just completed a two-year appointment as graduate quartet in residence at the Shepherd School of Music at Houston’s Rice University, and will take up a similar position at Yale in September. I reached them via Zoom to catch up on their activities and plans. [Read more…]

Church of the Western Reserve Concert Series: “Johannes Brahms: Late Works” (June 25)

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by Peter Feher

One instrument can make a world of difference. The clarinet took top billing on Friday, June 25, in a free chamber program at Pepper Pike’s Church of the Western Reserve, the first live performance back after more than a year for the CWR Concert Series.

[Read more…]

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