ClevelandClassical.com Header
Ad
Ad

Archives for October 2025

DIARY, WEEKEND, Friday-Sunday, October 31-November 2

by

by Daniel Hathaway

WEEKEND HIGHLIGHTS:

Just back from heading up the jury for the Chopin Competition in Warsaw, pianist Garrick Ohlsson turns his formidable interpretive powers to the music of Wolfgang Amadé Mozart in performances of the Viennese genius’s Concerto No. 23 with Franz Welser-Möst and The Cleveland Orchestra. The concerts on Saturday at 7:30 and Sunday at 3 in Mandel Concert Hall at Severance Music Center will also include Tyler Taylor’s Permissions, and Robert Schumann’s Symphony No. 3, “Rhenish.” Tickets are available online.

The Poesis Quartet (pictured) — violinists Sarah Ma and Max Ball, violist Jasper de Boor, and cellist Drew Dansby — return to their ensemble’s birthplace at the Oberlin Conservatory this week for coachings and a performance of John Adams’ Absolute Jest with Raphael Jiménez and the Oberlin Orchestra on Friday at 7:30 in Finney Chapel.  Jiménez has more contemporary music planned for this program, including Carlos Simon’s Fate Now Conquers, Angelica Negrón’s Campos Flotantes, and Zhou Tian’s Transcend. It’s free, and will also be live streamed. [Read more…]

Les Délices: “Bohemian Rhapsody” at West Shore UU Church (Oct. 19)

by

by Daniel Hathaway

Although Les Délices’ most recent subscription program actually featured music by composers from what is now the western part of the Czech Republic, it borrowed its marketing title from an American rock anthem and culminated in a major work by a celebrated Austrian.

Never mind a slight bit of confusion. “Bohemian Rhapsody,” which I heard on Sunday, October 19 in the agreeable space of West Shore Unitarian Universalist Church in Rocky River, provided the welcome opportunity to focus in on the classical oboe artistry of director Debra Nagy, and to make at least a nodding acquaintance with historical composers Franz Krommer, Georg Druschetzky, and Katerina Veronika Dusikova-Cianchettini (whose name should be appear on classical radio hosts’ audition scripts), as well as the more recent Nathan Mondry. [Read more…]

Poiesis Quartet returns to Oberlin

by

by Mike Telin

Since forming at Oberlin Conservatory in the fall of 2022, The Poiesis Quartet have enjoyed a meteoric rise in the ranks of professional string quartets.

In 2023, the Quartet won the Gold Medal and BIPOC Prize at the St. Paul String Quartet Competition and the Grand Prize and Lift Every Voice Prize at the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition.

In May 2024, they joined the roster of Concert Artists Guild and last August were named First Prize and Commission Prize winners at the 2025 Banff International String Quartet Competition. The Poiesis are currently the Graduate Quartet-in-Residence at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music.

On Friday, October 31, violinists Sarah Ying Ma and Max Ball, violist Jasper de Boor, and cellist Drew Dansby will return to their alma mater to be featured in John Adams’ Absolute Jest with the Oberlin Orchestra. Directed by Raphael Jiménez, the program at 7:30 pm in Finney Chapel also includes Carlos Simon’s Fate Now Conquers, Angelica Negrón’s Campos Flotantes, and Zhou Tian’s Transcend. The concert is free.

[Read more…]

DIARY, Thursday, October 30, 2025

by

by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING TODAY:

Tonight at 7:30, pianist Garrick Ohlsson will play the first of three performances of Wolfgang Amadé Mozart’s Concerto No. 23 with Franz Welser-Möst and The Cleveland Orchestra. The concerts on Thursday and Saturday at 7:30 and Sunday at 3 in Mandel Concert Hall at Severance Music Center will also include Tyler Taylor’s Permissions, and Robert Schumann’s Symphony No. 3, “Rhenish.”

Mozart’s 23rd piano concerto will also be performed by Antonio Pompa-Baldi in a 7:30 concert this evening by the Cleveland Institute of Music Virtuosi in Kulas Hall, along with the composer’s Divertimento in D, K. 136 and Tchaikovsky’s Serenade for Strings. Todd Phillips leads the ensemble.

NEWS BRIEFS: 

The Guardian writes that the 9th century manuscript for an Easter rite discovered “hiding in plain sight” in a private collection near Philadelphia may now claim to  contain the oldest extant example of Western musical notation. Read the story here.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

On this date in 1864 American music patroness and composer Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge was born in Chicago. [Read more…]

Cleveland Chamber Choir shines with music to mark the hours and seasons (Oct. 25)

by

by Kevin McLaughlin

Often called The Vespers, Sergei Rachmaninoff’s All-Night Vigil reaches for something beyond an evening service. Its fifteen movements, rooted in Russian Orthodox chant, rise and surround like incense — not to display magnificence, but to deepen the mystery. Rachmaninoff was so fond of the work that he requested the fifth movement, the Nunc dimittis, be sung at his funeral.

On Friday evening, October 25, the Cleveland Chamber Choir, directed by Gregory Ristow, presented this monumental work in Trinity Cathedral — a resonant space of tradition and calm, where the beauty of the setting matched the beauty of the sound.

[Read more…]

Tuesday Musical opens season with epic works from pianist Marc-André Hamelin (Oct. 21)

by

by Kevin McLaughlin

On Tuesday evening, October 21, pianist Marc-André Hamelin opened Tuesday Musical’s 2025–26 season in Akron’s E.J. Thomas Hall with a program of unusual range and scale. He mapped the human mind and heart across an often-epic landscape — Beethoven’s granite Hammerklavier, Robert Schumann’s not merely scenic Waldszenen, and Ravel’s hallucinatory Gaspard de la nuit.

Composed between 1817 and 1818, the Hammerklavier marks Beethoven’s turn toward the monumental and visionary. Deaf by this time, he wrote for some idealized instrument and listener — music indifferent to ordinary technical or emotional limits. Deemed nearly unplayable at its premiere, it later found champions, Liszt foremost among them, who revealed its vast scope.

[Read more…]

Cleveland Orchestra, Chorus, and soloists excel with “Ode to Joy” performance (Oct. 23)

by

by Stephanie Manning

This article was originally published on Cleveland.com

CLEVELAND, Ohio – Few melodies in the classical canon hold as much name recognition as Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy.” The beloved tune, set to the words of German poet Friedrich Schiller, comes from the composer’s Symphony No. 9 — a revolutionary piece both in its form and in its celebration of the indomitable human spirit.

The desire to witness such joyful music making in person is undoubtedly what drove a large audience to Mandel Hall at Severance Music Center on Thursday, Oct. 23. And it’s safe to say that the Cleveland Orchestra, Chorus and soloists did not disappoint.

[Read more…]

Garrick Ohlsson returns to the Severance Music Center stage

by

by Mike Telin

“The thing about playing Mozart concertos, especially with a great orchestra like Cleveland, is that when it goes well, it will leave me on such an adrenaline high I may not be able to sleep,” pianist Garrick Ohlsson said during a recent telephone conversation.

On Thursday, October 30 at 7:30 pm, Garrick Ohlsson will join Franz Welser-Möst and The Cleveland Orchestra at Severance Music Center for a performance of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 23.

“Like Shakespeare, Mozart can find the appropriate way to express the full range of human emotions. He can write the saddest music and the happiest music. He can write an aria for a servant who’s upset because she’s lost a pin. But unlike a 19th century composer, he doesn’t lay it on thick, he doesn’t do what the English call making heavy weather of it.”

[Read more…]

DIARY, Wednesday, October 29, 2025

by

by Daniel Hathaway

HONORED:

The Violin Channel reports that Cleveland violist Samuel Rosenthal is one of 37 artists selected from a pool of more than 200 applicants to advance to the semi-final round of Young Concert Artists’ (YCA) Susan Wadsworth International Auditions, “which differ from a competition, as there are no rankings and each candidate competes against a standard of excellence, not each other.” Read Rosenthal’s bio here.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

Whatever happened to Maria Anna Mozart, “Nannerl,” the composer’s beloved older sister, who died on October 29 in 1829? An accomplished pianist in her own right, she is said to have written music herself, although none survives. Her life was re-imagined in René Féret’s 2010 French language film, Nannerl, la sœur de Mozart. Watch a trailer here, and learn how you can rent the movie. [Read more…]

DIARY, Tuesday, October 28, 2025

by

by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING TODAY:

At 12 Noon, The Pandan Quartet plays music by Jerod Impichchaachaaha’ Tate and Ludwig van Beethoven on the Tuesday noon series at the Church of the Covenant in University Circle.

Tonight at 7:30 in Finney Chapel, the Oberlin Artist Recital Series presents VOCES8 (pictured), the globally-touring British a cappella ensemble that performs everything from early Renaissance music to traditional folk song, contemporary and popular music, plus their own arrangements.

For more information, please visit our Concert Listings.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

by Jarrett Hoffman

Because of his connection to Northeast Ohio — thirteen years as concertmaster of The Cleveland Orchestra under George Szell — we’ll focus today on Josef Gingold, the Russian-born violinist who was born on this date in 1909, and became one of America’s foremost pedagogues of his instrument. [Read more…]

Follow ClevelandClassical.com

Contact us