Archives for October 2025

by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING TODAY:

Tonight at 7:30, on the Lorain County Community College Signature Series in Elyria, violinist Clara Kim (pictured) plays her program People and Places — six works by JunYi Chow, Jessica Ackerley, Anne Leilehua Lanzilotti, Sarah Gibson, and Christopher Stark, each inspired by a location that shaped their creation.

For more information, please visit our Concert Listings.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

Let’s start reflecting on October 27 in music history with the inspiring story of German organist and composer Helmut Walcha, born in Leipzig on this date in 1907. Blinded as a result of a smallpox vaccination at the age of 19, Walcha went on to become assistant organist at the Thomaskirche in Leipzig, moving on to the Friedenskirche in Frankfurt am Main in 1929, then to the Dreikönigskirche there in 1944, where he spent the rest of his career until his death in 1991. [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

WEEKEND HIGHLIGHTS:

Franz Welser-Möst will lead The Cleveland Orchestra and Chorus in Ludwig van Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony three more times this weekend at Severance Music Center — Friday and Saturday at 7:30 pm, and Sunday at 3 pm. The famous work can stand alone, but these performances will preface it with Jean Sibelius’ Tapiola.

Cleveland Chamber Choir (pictured) will give two performances of Sergei Rachmaninoff’s All Night Vigil in its hour-long version — coupling the Russian composer’s choral masterpiece with Reena Esmail’s A Winter Breviary, which celebrates the movement from winter to spring just as Rachmaninoff marks the progress from darkness to light. Friday’s 7:30 concert is at Trinity Cathedral and Saturday’s in Fairchild Chapel at Oberlin College. Gregory Ristow conducts.

No Exit will open its 17th season of new music concerts with “American Descent” on Saturday at 7 pm at Praxis Fiber Workshop. On the menu: Garth Knox’s Viola Spaces, Geoffrey Burleson’s Cryptic Locomotion, June Young Will Kim’s After days of rain, construction fills the air, and the world premiere of Andrew Rindfleisch’s American Descent.

And on Sunday at 2:30, at the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Cleveland Women’s Orchestra will celebrate its 90th anniversary season with a program featuring Fanny Mendelssohn’s Overture in C, Edward Elgar’s Sea Pictures (with mezzo soprano Kira McGirr), Clara-Jane Maunder’s The Coast (U.S. premiere), and Florence Price’s Symphony No. 1. Eric Benjamin conducts.

For more information, please visit our Concert Listings.

WEEKEND ALMANAC:

The prolific keyboard composer Domenico Scarlatti was born in Naples on October 26, 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…]

by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING TODAY:

Tonight at 7 at Kent State University, No Exit new music ensemble will launch its 17th season with American Descent, featuring works by Garth Knox, Geoffrey Burleson, June Young and Will Kim, as well as the world premiere of American Descent, “a passionate rumination on our present time in America” by Andrew Rindfleisch (pictured). Concert repeats Saturday at 7:30 at Praxis Fiber Workshop.

An extended ensemble — Transient Canvas (Amy Advocat, clarinet/bass clarinet and Matt Sharrock, percussion), John Faieta, trombone, Geoffrey Burleson, piano, Ann Yu,violin and David Russell, cello will join No Exit for the Rindfleisch.

Also tonight at 7:30, Franz Welser–Möst will lead The Cleveland Orchestra,  Chorus and solo quartet in Ludwig van Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony in Mandel Hall at Severance Music Center. The Orchestra will pair it with Jean Sibelius’s Tapiola. Concert repeats on Friday and Saturday at 7:30 and Sunday at 3.

For more information, please visit our Concert Listings.

CANCELLATION:

The Cleveland Orchestra has announced the cancellation of Italian pianist Beatrice Rana’s October 29 recital at Severance Music Center due to “personal circumstances beyond her control.” The event will not be rescheduled, and the box office will contact ticket holders about refunds.

INTERESTING  READ:

Writing in Early Music America, Kivie Cahn-Lipman, Oberlin grad, founder of the Baroque String band ACRONYM and cello professor at Lawrence University, asks “Can AI decipher a manuscript better than you?’’ Read about his experiment with ChatGP and a 17th-century motet by Giovanni Valentini here. [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING TODAY:

Continuing the celebration of the reopening of its newly-renovated Kulas Hall, tonight at 7:30 The Cleveland Institute of Music will host Sphinx Virtuosi, the flagship ensemble of the Detroit-based Sphinx Organization, in a program that highlights the breadth and depth of music by Black and Latino composers.

For more information, please visit our Concert Listings.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

Today’s calendar mostly records historic finales, perhaps none so tragic as that of French Baroque composer Jean-Marie Leclair. On this date in 1764, he was murdered in his home, supposedly by his jealous nephew, although no one was ever tried for the crime.

Making a more natural departure, Italian composer Alessandro Scarlatti, father of the prolific keyboard composer Domenico, died on this date in 1725 in Naples at the age of 65. In his memory, we suggest listening to his extraordinary setting of Stabat Mater for ten solo voices and organ, performed here by Ars Nova Copenhagen, led by Paul Hillier and recorded in the Garnisonskirken in April, 2014.

Another in memoriam is due to Spanish cellist Pablo Casals, who was welcomed into the heavenly cello section on this date in 1973 at the age of 96. In a 1955 documentary filmed at his home in Prades, France, he talks with a former student about various subjects including his exile during the Franco regime, and plays one of Bach’s solo suites, in the revival of which he played a central role. [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING TODAY:

An unusually busy Tuesday brings the first of three distinguished British choirs to Cleveland during October. Stephen Layton will lead Polyphony (pictured) in works by William Byrd, Thomas Tallis, Francis Poulenc, Arvo Pärt, Eric Whitacre, Charles Villiers Stanford and others tonight at 7:30 in St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Cleveland Heights.

What amounts to a mini-festival of English vocal ensembles continues on October 28 in Oberlin’s Finney Chapel with Voces8, and on October 30 with The Gesualdo Six at the Church of the Saviour in Cleveland Heights. And later this season, St. Paul’s will present the Westminster Abbey Choir on April 29, 2026.

But getting back to Tuesday: today at Noon, organist Jonathan Moyer will play selections from Olivier Messiaen’s Le Livre du Saint–Sacrement at the Church of the Covenant in University Circle, and tonight at 7:30, the Cleveland Chamber Music Society will host the Belcea Quartet at Disciples Christian Church and Tuesday Musical will present pianist Marc-André Hamelin in major works by Ludwig van Beethoven, Robert Schumann, and Maurice Ravel at E.J. Thomas Hall in Akron.

For more information, please visit our Concert Listings.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

On October 21, 1896 American composer and conductor Howard Hanson was born in Wahoo, Nebraska, 26 years after its founding by Czech, German, and Scandinavian settlers (and named after the eastern wahoo, a shrub indigenous to the area). [Read more…]