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Archives for April 2023

The Cleveland Orchestra presents Ellis Island: The Dream of America

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by Mike Telin

When writing a new orchestral work, the composer hopes that the piece will have a life after the initial premiere performances. Then you have Peter Boyer’s Ellis Island: The Dream of America. Since its premiere in 2002, the work has been performed 216 times by 114 orchestras.

On Tuesday, April 18 at 7:30 pm, Daniel Reith will lead The Cleveland Orchestra in Boyer’s multimedia work that honors the immigrant experience by combining music, narration, and historic images. Directed by Donald Carrier, Ellis Island: The Dream of America features seven actors who portray the journeys of immigrants from seven countries on their way to America, beginning in the early parts of the past century. The concert is a prelude to the inaugural Mandel Opera & Humanities Festival: The American Dream. Click here for free tickets (required). Following Tuesday’s performance, the work will be performed on the Orchestra’s educational concerts.

[Read more…]

DIARY: Monday, April 17, 2023

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By Daniel Hathaway

IN THIS EDITION:

. Charnofsky’s playlist, new LD episode

. Chamber Choir auditions

. Almanac: remembering Herbert Elwell

HAPPENING TODAY:

2:00 pm – 4:00 pm – Not Your Grandmother’s Classical Music: hosted by Eric Charnofsky. Featured music: John Harbison’s Seven Poems of Lorine Niedecker (soprano/piano), Paul Lansky’s Talking Guitars (guitar duet), Carl Stamitz’s Symphony in C, David Maslanka’s Sonata for Alto Saxophone and Piano, John Carollo’s Awakenings for String Orchestra & Charles Villiers Stanford’ s Sonata Eroica in g for Organ. Click here to listen to the internet feed: or tune in to 91.1 FM in the greater Cleveland area.

7:30 pm – Les Délices — SalonEra 3.7: Ximenez: Music & Politics. Karin Cuellar-Rendon and the Ximenez Quartet trace the early nation-building efforts of 19th-century Latin American composers Pedro Ximénez Abril Tirado (Bolivia-Peru), José Bernardo Alzedo (Chile), and Chiquinha Gonzaga (Brazil) who integrated elements of the European classical tradition with local musical genres. Available online and as a podcast. Episodes stream free from their premiere date thru June 30, 2023. Click here. [Read more…]

DIARY: Weekend, April 14 – April 16, 2023

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by Daniel Hathaway

IN THIS EDITION:

. Concerts upon concerts

. Oberlin grad named Utah Symphony assistant conductor

. Almanac: remembering Handel, Neville Marriner, and Charlie (Sir Charles) Chaplin

HAPPENING THIS WEEKEND:

On Friday at 7, Columbian cellist Santiago Cañón-Valencia plays at the LatinUS Theater, Cleveland’s No Exit plays new music at Spaces Gallery (repeated at Kent State Saturday at 8), and BW’s Symphonic Band and Wind Ensemble perform in Berea. At 7:30 Transient Canvas visits CSU, and at 8, vocalists Christiane Noll and Ben Davis join Cleveland POPS for “The Teams of Broadway” at Severance.

Saturday’s 12:30 matinee features the American Guild of Organists’ Great Lakes Regional Competition for Young Organists at Fairmount Presbyterian, and evening concerts include the Akron Symphony (Christopher Wilkins leads Mahler 3 at 7:30) and The Cleveland Orchestra (with Michael Tilson Thomas at the helm, Leif Ove Andsnes at the keyboard for Debussy and Mahler 1 at 8 — repeated on Sunday at 3). [Read more…]

Storms at Severance Music Center conjured by Sibelius & Adès (Mar. 31)

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by Daniel Hathaway

With apologies to Sir Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, it was a dark and stormy morning at Severance Music Center on March 31, when guest conductor Thomas Adès led The Cleveland Orchestra in a pair of striking atmospheric disturbances, one of his own composition (in The Tempest Symphony), and one by Jean Sibelius (from The Tempest, Op. 109), both originally imagined by William Shakespeare in his play of the same name.

Listed in the First Folio as the first of his comedies, Shakespeare’s magical allegory has recently spurred the invention of a new critical category: romances, although no attempt to file the work under a single heading — or to simplify its plot — has been successful.

Sibelius wrote his incidental music to The Tempest in 1925 on commission from the Royal Theatre in Copenhagen for a lavish production that required 34 separate musical cues. Adès extracted the movements of his symphony from the opera he wrote for the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, that debuted in 2004. [Read more…]

DIARY: Thursday, April 13, 2023

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by Jarrett Hoffman

IN THIS EDITION:

•Today: MTT leads The Cleveland Orchestra in a program featuring pianist Leif Ove Andsnes

•Announcements: YSU summer programs, CSU piano and strings sale, and a pair of CIM students (pictured) heading to the Louisville Orchestra

•Almanac: through the ages on April 13, from Machaut to Van Cliburn

HAPPENING TODAY:

At 7:30 pm at Severance Music Center, Michael Tilson Thomas leads The Cleveland Orchestra in Mahler’s Symphony No. 1 (“Titan”) and two works by Debussy: Jeux (“Games”) and Fantasie for Piano and Orchestra, the latter featuring Leif Ove Andsnes as soloist. Tickets are available online. Read Mike Telin’s interview with Andsnes here.

[Read more…]

Click, Click, Click: ChamberFest Cleveland

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by Mike Telin

There are a few works in the classical repertoire that leave you wondering what is going on. One example that comes to mind is John Cage’s 4’33” where the performers are instructed not to play for the duration of the work’s three movements.

Another is György Ligeti’s Poème symphonique for 100 mechanical metronomes. Written in 1962, during the composer’s brief association with the Fluxus movement, the piece calls for ten performers, each responsible for ten metronomes all of which are wound to their fullest extent and set to different speeds. Then, at the discretion of the conductor, the metronomes are set into action and the performers leave the stage and wait until the last metronome goes silent.

This summer ChamberFest Cleveland, which runs from June 14 through July 1, will present Ligeti’s quirky piece — which begs the question: how does one beg, borrow, or steal 100 windup metronomes?

[Read more…]

The Cleveland Orchestra: Five Questions for Leif Ove Andsnes

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by Mike Telin

This weekend, The Cleveland Orchestra welcomes the return of Michael Tilson Thomas to the Severance Music Center podium to lead a program that includes Debussy’s Jeux (“Games”) and Mahler’s  Symphony No. 1 (“Titan”). The concerts,  presented on Thursday at 7:30 pm, Saturday at 8:00 pm, and Sunday at 3:00 pm, will also include Debussy’s Fantaisie for Piano and Orchestra with Leif Ove Andsnes as soloist.

Andsnes has been a Cleveland audience favorite since making his debut at Blossom in 1990, and although his schedule didn’t permit a telephone interview, the pianist agreed to answer questions by email.

Mike Telin: The Debussy is a beautiful piece, and I don’t believe it has been performed in Cleveland for many years. Please share your thoughts on the work.

Leif Ove Andsnes: It is indeed very beautiful, very sensuous, with wonderful waves of sound. The piano goes in and out of being the soloist, other times accompanying solos in the orchestra, or simply being part of the orchestra colour. It has a three-part structure like a normal concerto. It is a monothematic work, meaning that a lot of the material is being drawn from the very first theme presented, an oboe solo at the introduction of the first movement.

[Read more…]

No Exit: a conversation with composer Chris Neiner

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This weekend, No Exit continues their series of concerts featuring world premieres by Robert Honstein, Victoria Cheah, and Connie Converse. Performances are on Friday, April 14 at 7:00 pm at Heights Arts and Saturday, April 15 at 7:30 pm at Kent State University.

The program also includes the world premiere of Chris Neiner’s Time Machine Hyperboles. I caught up with the Cleveland-based composer by phone and began our conversation by asking him to expand on his composer note, where he says: “….it’s a long title for a short piece, but it captures the underpinning duality of the music and its non sequitur behavior.”

Chris Neiner: The piece has two distinct types of music. One is very fast — kinesthetic and rambunctious. The other is the opposite — very slow and drawn out, fragile and quiet. Going back and forth between the two is almost like a movie with jump cuts between different kinds of music.

Mike Telin: You do compare it to Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey.

[Read more…]

Cleveland Cello Society: a conversation with Santiago Cañón-Valencia

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by Mike Telin

While growing up in Bogotá, Colombia, cellist Santiago Cañón-Valencia knew from an early age that he wanted to be a musician. “My dad plays bass clarinet and other clarinets in the Bogotá Philharmonic. My mom used to play the cello, and my sister plays the violin, so the house was always full of music and people practicing all the time,” he recalled during a Zoom conversation from Bogotá.

“I picked up the cello as a suggestion from mom. I wanted to play the bassoon but I was four and that’s an impossible instrument when you are that age. So they bought me my first little cello and I was completely in love with it, and I kept going from there.”

Kept going indeed. His many awards include being named a 2022 BBC Next Generation Artist, and winner of the Silver Medal and the Audience Favorite Award at the 2019 International Tchaikovsky Competition.

On Friday, April 14 at 7:00 pm at LatinUS Theater at the Pivot Center for Art, Dance, and Expression, Cañón-Valencia will make his Cleveland debut in a concert presented by the Cleveland Cello Society. His program features works from his latest recording, Ascenso, released on the Sono Luminus label.

[Read more…]

DIARY: Wednesday, April 12, 2023

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By Daniel Hathaway

IN THIS EDITION:

. Bach Fest at Trinity, Brent Kirby in Rocky River

. Steven Hough remembers his childhood in a new book

. The Almanac remembers Imogen Holst

HAPPENING TODAY:

12 Noon – Trinity Cathedral begins its spring Bach Fest with a concert by violinist Mari Sato and organist Todd Wilson that includes the E-major Violin Partita and the c-minor trio sonata. It’s free.

1:30 pm – Local #4 Music Fund/Haff-Paluck Chamber Series: Brent Kirby, guitar. Rocky River Senior Center, 21014 Hilliard Blvd. Free. [Read more…]

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