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Archives for October 2023

Akron Symphony celebrates the organ with Robert Mollard (Oct. 21)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

The sound of an organ in orchestral settings is always an aural thrill. A cornucopia of colors and sonorities on its own, the organ, when mixed with strings, winds, brass, and percussion, more than doubles the pleasure and the fun.

In his welcoming remarks, music director Christopher Wilkins drew attention to the evening’s sonic star and focus — a digital impersonator of sounds, painstakingly prepared by Robert Mollard to sound just like a pipe organ. Putting out fullness and variety, if not always the seismic events associated with cathedral organs, Mollard nevertheless created excitement and beauty in his appearance with the Akron Symphony at E.J. Thomas Hall on Saturday, October 21.

Since the first official work on the program, Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson’s Worship: A Concert Overture, takes as its basis the hymn tune Old 100th (“Praise God from Whom All Blessings Flow”), two bonuses were in store to orient us. Principal flute Barbara O’Brien played the unadorned tune in gorgeous, silvery tones, and Mollard let loose with Robert Hebble’s Toccata on Old Hundredth, a festival of organ prowess.

[Read more…]

DIARY: Tuesday, October 31, 2023

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By Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING TODAY:

At noon, organists Jonathan Moyer & Oziah Wales will play a Halloween program at the Church of the Covenant in University Circle. You can watch via livestream. For details, visit our Concert Listings.

Or enjoy a private, 3 hour and 52 minute concert of Halloween selections curated by the folks at Spotify.

INTERESTING READS:

About yesterday’s N.Y. Times review:

The online review of Apollo’s Singers’ performance of Handel’s Israel in Egypt with the New York Philharmonic under the baton of Jeannette Sorrell that we referenced in Monday’s Diary appeared in the paper’s print edition today. One small detail was still missing: any reference to Cleveland! [Read more…]

DIARY: Monday, October 30, 2023

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by Jarrett Hoffman

IN THIS EDITION:

•Interesting reads and announcements: a New York Times review of Jeannette Sorrell (pictured) leading Apollo’s Singers and the New York Philharmonic, the Knight Foundation’s Art + Tech Expansion Fund for Akron-based artists, and CWRU’s Think[box] innovation center

•Almanac: Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge, Peter Warlock, Franz Bruggen, and Emmerich Kálmán

INTERESTING READS & ANNOUNCEMENTS:

Following up on their Messiah collaboration in 2021, Jeannette Sorrell and Apollo’s Singers reunited with the New York Philharmonic last week at David Geffen Hall, this time for Handel’s Israel in Egypt.

In a review for The New York Times, Oussama Zahr praises the performances of Sorrell, the chorus, and the four soloists — soprano Amanda Forsythe, countertenor Cody Bowers, tenor Jacob Perry, and baritone Edward Vogel — while also pointing out the difficult and unexpected context of the performance, coming amid the Israeli-Hamas war:

Written almost entirely for choral forces, with few showpieces for the soloists, [the oratorio] narrates the Jewish exodus that Moses led from Egypt. To modern ears, the text painting of the 10 plagues is so lightweight that it verges on silliness: The orchestra leaps to depict frogs, buzzes for flies and thumps for hailstones.

Still, the melancholy-saturated lamentation that opens the piece, and the triumphant choruses that close it, adds substance. And on Wednesday, the conductor and Baroque specialist Jeannette Sorrell led a sonorous performance, drawing captivating singing from the choristers of Apollo’s Fire and intermittently inspiring the Philharmonic’s players to embrace fleeter, Handelian style on their modern instruments.

Read the review here.

[Read more…]

DIARY: Weekend, October 28-29, 2023

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By Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING THIS WEEKEND:

On Saturday at 5pm, the University of Michigan Men’s Glee Club, Mark Stover, director, will join the Brass Choir from Firestone Community Learning Center, Akron in a concert at St. Paul’s Lutheran in Massillon.

Sunday will feature four orchestra concerts. The Cleveland Institute of Music Orchestra will don costumes for a “Halloween Spooktacular” at Severance Music Center at 2 pm (pictured), the same hour when more than 40 musicians of The Cleveland Orchestra and friends will begin playing A Day of Music for Israel at Temple Tifereth Israel (music continues until 8 pm).

At 3:30 pm, Domenico Boyagian will lead the Suburban Symphony in music from the British Isles at Beechwood High School Auditorium, and at 4 pm, Steven Smith and Cleveland Chamber Symphony will perform Marta Ptaszyńska’s Flute Concerto with Sean Gabriel, Charles Ives’ Set for Theatre Orchestra, and Christopher Auerbach-Brown’s Constellation No. 6 – The Cicadas in Gamble Auditorium at Baldwin Wallace.

Also on Sunday at 4, members of BlueWater Chamber Orchestra (Andrea Belding & Nancy Patterson, violins, James Rhodes, viola & Kent Collier, cello), will play Arriaga, Gershwin & Mendelssohn at St. Noel in Willoughby Hills. [Read more…]

DIARY: Friday, October 27, 2023

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By Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING TODAY:

On Friday at 12:15 noon, Sheryl Modlin, who usually plays the carillon at the Church of the Saviour in Cleveland Heights, will present a program of spooky music on the McGaffin Tower bells in University Circle. You can enjoy it in person, or online.

Also on Friday, Baldwin Wallace Opera will stage Handel’s Giulio Cesare at 8pm in the Helen Theatre in Playhouse Square.

And at midnight between Friday and Saturday in Finney Chapel, Oberlin organ majors will present the annual Halloween Edition of their celebrated Friday Night Organ Pump.

For details, visit our Concert Listings. [Read more…]

Dana Jessen receives Cleveland Arts Prize

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by Mike Telin

Tonight, October 26, the Cleveland Arts Prize will hold its 63rd annual awards ceremony at the Cleveland Museum of Art. The CAP promotes creativity in Northeast Ohio by honoring artists for artistic excellence and recognizing community leaders who help arts flourish in the region.

Among the list of distinguished recipients is Dana Jessen, who will receive a mid-career artist prize for music. Jessen is a trailblazer in the world of new and improvised music. Hailed as a “bassoon virtuoso” (Chicago Reader), she is the recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship and a Huygens Fellowship. In addition to her active solo career, her resume includes world premiere performances with the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, Alarm Will Sound, Ensemble Dal Niente, Anthony Braxton’s Tri-Centric Orchestra, S.E.M. Ensemble, and the Amsterdam Contemporary Ensemble. As an educator she serves as Associate Professor of Contemporary Music and Improvisation at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music.

I caught up with Dana Jessen by phone and began our conversation by congratulating her.

Dana Jessen: Thank you. I am incredibly honored. I was telling somebody that it felt like the Cleveland Arts Prize was actually looking at all of the things that I do. It’s not just that I’m a bassoonist, but that I also write my own pieces, I play with electronics, and I improvise. I also interpret pieces that I’ve commissioned. And I teach. So it’s very humbling to be seen for the entirety of what I do as opposed to one thing or the other.

[Read more…]

Cleveland Orchestra Chorus:
Whitacre’s The Sacred Veil (Oct. 20) 

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by Kevin McLaughlin

The Sacred Veil, as one might expect from an hour-long work about death and grief, is not an easy listen. Eric Whitacre’s music, evocative and emotional, makes potent company with Charles Anthony Silvestri’s words, a chain of poems on the loss of his wife Julia Lawrence Silvestri (Julie), who died of ovarian cancer in 2005 at the age of 36. The inclusion of Julie’s own poetry, along with Whitacre’s, increases the impact.

On Friday, October 20 during a performance by The Cleveland Orchestra Chorus, the Severance Music Center audience, perhaps expecting lighter fare, listened closely, though gloomily. Told through particularities — one couple’s experience of early love and childbirth, the young woman’s diagnosis, prognosis, and ultimately her death — Sacred Veil’s power lies in its wider applicability. The words, projected in supertitles above the stage, penetrated the heart; the music sealed the deal.

[Read more…]

Cleveland Chamber Music Society: Belcea Quartet at Disciples (Oct. 17)

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by Daniel Hathaway

Patrons of the Cleveland Chamber Music Society attending the season opener with the Belcea Quartet at Disciples Church on October 17 found Schubert’s E-flat Quartet stickered over with Beethoven’s Op. l8, No. 4 in their printed programs.

The reason? The Belcea were welcoming Suyeon Kang as their new second violinist this season, and wanted to take the Beethoven out for a final spin before playing it in New York’s Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall two days later.

Last Tuesday’s performance also introduced Disciples as the default venue for CCMS’s 74th season, and the space gets high marks for its accessibility and clear, transparent acoustic — as well as for its comfortable seating (no pews).

That acoustic supported the Belcea’s outstanding playing. [Read more…]

DIARY: Thursday, October 26, 2023

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By Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING TODAY:

At 7:30 pm, the Oberlin Sinfonietta, Timothy Weiss, conducting, with faculty cellist Darrett Adkins (pictured), play Chen Yi’s Duo Ye for chamber orchestra and Philip Cashian’s Concerto for Cello and Strings in Warner Concert Hall. There’s a free webcast as well.

For details, visit our Concert Listings.

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. Scarlatti spent most of his career in Spain churning out some of the most imaginative keyboard music of the period — his 555 Sonatas, which have become favorite program starters for keyboardists ranging from Liszt to Horowitz to Hamelin. [Read more…]

DIARY: Wednesday, October 25, 2023

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by Jarrett Hoffman

IN THIS EDITION:

•Today: Cleveland Chamber Symphony highlights emerging composers, CMA presents Le Poème Harmonique in music that would have been heard by a young Louis XIV, and pianist Gerardo Teissonnière is featured in a CIM faculty recital

•Announcements: a musicological article by BW graduate Chase Castle, young people’s concerts from the Canton Symphony, and a survey from the Ohio Arts Council

•Interesting reads: a new documentary about Fanny Mendelssohn and how her talents were kept quiet

•Almanac: Strauss Jr.’s Blue Danube, Bizet’s Carmen, and the many sides of Midori

HAPPENING TODAY:

At 7:00 at Baldwin Wallace’s Gamble Auditorium, Steven Smith leads the Cleveland Chamber Symphony in a free concert of music by seven of the area’s young and emerging composers: Benjamin Brody (University of Akron), Julia Grady (Baldwin Wallace), Adam Har-zvi (Bowling Green), Gabriel Stossel (CIM), Alexandra Vaduva (Cleveland State), Haider Riaz (Kent State), and Jake Berran (Oberlin). You can also watch a free livestream here.

At 7:30 at Gartner Auditorium, the CMA Performing Arts Series presents Le Poème Harmonique (pictured) in “Music for a Young King,” which explores music that would have been heard in the court of young Louis XIV, including traditional French chansons, works by Moulinié, de Lalande, and Charpentier, and excerpts from the first operas performed in France by Lully and Cavalli. Tickets are available online.

Also at 7:30, at Mixon Hall, a CIM Faculty Recital will feature pianist Gerardo Teissonnière in Schubert’s Four Impromptus and Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 32 in c. It’s free but reservations are required.

[Read more…]

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