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Archives for October 2022

Thomas Ospital to perform on both Trinity Cathedral organs Nov. 1

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by Daniel Hathaway

When the internationally famous organist and composer Jean Guillou ended his 52-year-long run as tenured organist at the Church of St.-Eustache in Paris in 2015, two successors were named, including Thomas Ospital, who was 20 at the time.

“It’s never simple to follow such a musician as Guillou,” Ospital said in a telephone conversation from Tulsa, where he was due to play a recital on Friday evening. “You have the choice between being yourself or doing something new. I only met him twice, which made it easier.”

Ospital, who spent six months in New Orleans when he was 21 and made regular concert tours until COVID arrived, will play a free recital at Trinity Cathedral on Tuesday evening, November 1 at 7:30 pm. His program, co-sponsored by Music and Art at Trinity and the Cleveland chapter of the American Guild of Organists, includes works by Buxtehude and J.S. Bach on the 1977 Flentrop Orgelbouw instrument of Dutch Baroque design, and music by Ravel, Duruflé and Franck on the Aeolian-Skinner organ in the American romantic style rebuilt by Muller in 2022. [Read more…]

DIARY: Monday, October 31, 2022

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by Daniel Hathaway

IN THIS EDITION:

. Music to raise goose bumps and stand your hair on end

. G. Schirmer’s plans to publish music by Holocaust composers

. Remembering Roget Quilter, Hugo Distler, and Anthony van Hoboken

TODAY’S EVENTS:

2:00 pm – Not Your Grandmother’s Classical Music, Eric Charnofsky, host. A special Halloween-themed program, including music about haunted landscapes, witches, gnomes, apparitions, hallucinations, the moon, and nighttime. Composers include Arthur Bliss, György Ligeti, Robert Gibson, Ottorino Respighi, Lei Liang, Mathew Rosenblum, George Crumb, and John Corigliano. Listen on WRUW (via the internet feed) or at 91.1 FM in Cleveland. [Read more…]

DIARY: Weekend, October 28-30, 2022

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by Daniel Hathaway

IN THIS EDITION:

. Featured: a mix of Korean song & European opera, multiple concert choices all weekend

. Remembering Joseph Pulitzer (what happened to the prizewinners?)

. Choosing spooky music for All Hallows Eve, and remembering Black Tuesday and the New York Stock Exchange crash of 1929 (might make you feel better about 2022)

WEEKEND  EVENTS:

This weekend’s featured event brings Korean and European cultures together in  the physical context of visual art. On Saturday evening at 7:30, Singers Kyung Kim, Hein Jung, and Misook Yun (pictured) will join pianist Younjung Cha in a free  program of Korean songs and Western opera trios at the McDonough Museum of Art at Youngstown State University.

I recently spoke about the event via teleconference with soprano Misook Yun, who has taught at YSU for 24 years (we were joined by her 20-year-old orange tabby cat, a charming if persistent Zoom bomber). [Read more…]

Sords set to resume touring after long hiatus

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by Daniel Hathaway

Before the novel coronavirus blew into the music world in 2020, bringing with it what he calls “the Great Silence,” violinist Andrew Sords was among the busiest touring soloists and chamber musicians in the industry. He reckons that he spent nearly 200 days on the road in 2019, compared to 40 this year.

This Saturday, October 29 at 7:00 pm at the Federated Church in Chagrin Falls, Sords will join colleagues Mari Sato, violin, Eric Wong, viola, John Walz, cello, and Elizabeth DeMio, piano, in works by Brahms, Dvořák, and Rachmaninoff. Dvořák’s Piano Quintet is at the center of the program, a work Sords classifies as “a desert island piece” that should become more of a special undertaking for its performers, rather than just a standard repertory item. “It’s an epic project,” Sords said. “But rehearsing it doesn’t even seem like work.”

That’s a healthy attitude Andrew Sords brings to practicing and rehearsing in general. [Read more…]

Bokyung Byun: striking a balance (Oct. 8)

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by Stephanie Manning

By the time she was a teenager, Bokyung Byun had lived in South Korea, China, and the United States — giving her an international perspective, but also complicating her sense of belonging. And as many musicians do, she grappled with her feelings through music. For her visit to the Cleveland Classical Guitar Society on October 8, Byun brought a program designed around her identity, both as a performer and as a person.

As the guitarist told the audience at Plymouth Church in Shaker Heights, her move to New York at age 16 — to study at Juilliard — inspired her love of music from the Americas, with its flexibility and diversity of style.

[Read more…]

ChamberFest Cleveland:
“Echoes from the Valley”

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by Mike Telin

Whenever three adventurous musicians share a stage, the programming possibilities are endless. On Friday, November 4 at 7:30 pm at the Cultural Arts Center at Disciples Church, ChamberFest Cleveland will present soprano Amanda Powell, clarinetist Franklin Cohen, and pianist Peter Takács in “Echoes from the Valley,” a program of global folk songs. Tickets are available online.

“We’ve programmed concerts like this before during ChamberFest,” Cohen said during a recent telephone conversation. “I’ve admired Amanda’s talent for years. I’ve heard her with Apollo’s Fire and at different clubs and her talent is not confined to one little box. Everyone loves her work, and she’s been a very important part of the ChamberFest family for a number of years.” 

Powell will be featured in Schubert’s Der Hirt auf dem Felsen (“The Shepherd on the Rock”) and Ravel’s Cinq melodies populaires grecques. The trio will also present an exploration of international folk songs — from the Appalachian Mountains to the Greek seaside to a classical Arabic muwashshah — in arrangements by Dave Morgan, as well as Two Ladino Songs arranged by Paul Ferguson. “The arrangements are fantastic and we’re looking forward to playing them,” Cohen said. 

[Read more…]

The Cleveland Orchestra: Strauss and Widmann (Oct. 20)

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by Peter Feher

It was a good thing that preparations for last weekend’s Cleveland Orchestra concerts started seasons ago. The ambitious and challenging program wouldn’t have been possible without some serious planning, and that meant thinking well ahead of the first performance on October 20. A huge ensemble of more than 100 players, including a couple of unusual instruments, came together at Severance Music Center on Thursday — and this was an expert group.

The musicians’ skill and experience went beyond a simple mastery of the evening’s two works, Jörg Widmann’s Viola Concerto and Richard Strauss’s An Alpine Symphony. Pulling off both pieces — each a production in itself — required an instinctive grasp of the composers’ overall styles, and the players had that knowledge in spades.

[Read more…]

DIARY: Wednesday, October 26, 2022

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by Daniel Hathaway

IN THIS EDITION:

. featured keyboard music by (Domenico) Scarlatti & George Walker

. the Beatles and Jacques Lousssier push at stylistic borders

TODAY’S EVENTS:

At 7:30 tonight, pianist Alexandre Dossin takes his program “Piano Soundscapes: A Journey through Six Decades in the Music of George Walker” to Oberlin’s Warner Concert Hall in celebration of the 100th anniversary of the composer’s birth. The program includes his Prelude and Caprice, Variations on a Kentucky Folk Song, Piano Sonata No. 2, Spatials, Spektra, Piano Sonata No. 3, Guido’s Hand — Five Pieces for Piano & Piano Sonata No. 5. Click here to watch a live stream.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

The prolific keyboard composer Domenico Scarlatti was born in Naples on this date in 1685, the son of composer Alessandro Scarlatti, and the third eminent member of the Class of ‘85 that includes Handel and J.S. Bach. [Read more…]

The Cleveland Orchestra:
Beethoven, Bloch & Al-Zand (Oct. 13)

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by Peter Feher 

The Cleveland Orchestra took on a timeless subject, but added a modern touch, last weekend at Severance Music Center. War was the theme of this mostly somber program that started with the disillusionment of a 21st-century composer and ended with the conflict and triumph of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3 (“Eroica”).

In a different ensemble’s interpretation, that trajectory could sound aggressive and even dispiriting. But with guest conductor Nikolaj Szeps-Znaider, the Orchestra committed to finding the beauty in every phrase, redeeming the rough edges of an otherwise excellent performance on Thursday, October 13.

[Read more…]

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