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Archives for March 2026

DIARY: Wednesday, March 25, 2026

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by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING TODAY:

This evening at 6 pm, the Cleveland Chamber Choir celebrates both the Madness and Melancholy of March in the Donna and James Reid Gallery at the Cleveland Museum of Art, followed by a concert at 7 pm in Gartner Auditorium by the all-female sextet Maruja Limon (pictured) from Barcelona.

Also tonight in University Circle, the Cleveland Institute of Music will present its CIM Virtuosi at 7 pm, when Todd Phillips conducts music by Mozart, Grieg, and Copland in Mixon Hall.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

by Mike Telin

On March 25, 1881 composer, pianist, ethnomusicologist, and teacher Béla Viktor János Bartók was born in Nagyszentmiklós, Hungary, now Sânnicolau Mare, Romania.

Bartók began studying piano with his mother, and at age nine started composing dance pieces. From 1899 to 1903, he studied piano and composition at the Royal Academy of Music in Budapest. It was there that he met Zoltán Kodály and the two became lifelong friends and colleagues — they both shared an interest in folk music. [Read more…]

CIM Opera Theater’s Hänsel and Gretel: a conversation with JJ Hudson

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by Mike Telin

The first volume of children’s tales published in Germany by the Brothers Grimm in 1812 includes some of today’s most beloved stories — Cinderella, Snow White, Rapunzel, and Rumpelstiltskin. That volume also includes the tale of Hänsel and Gretel in which two children cleverly outwit a witch.

On Friday, March 27 at 7:00 pm and Sunday, March 29 at 3:00 pm, Engelbert Humperdinck’s opera, based on the Brothers Grimm fairy tale, returns to the Kulas Hall stage at the Cleveland Institute of Music in performances by CIM Opera Theatre. JJ Hudson directs and Harry Davidson conducts the CIM Orchestra The production, which has a running time of two hours and twenty minutes with one intermission, will be sung in German with English supertitles. Tickets are available online.

I caught up with JJ Hudson by telephone and began our conversation by asking why they chose this particular title for the spring opera.

JJ: This year we will have produced two operas based on fairytales — Judith Weir’s Blonde Eckbert in late January and now Hänsel and Gretel. Both introduce our students to early German romanticism and its themes: mystery in the forest, witches, birds that speak, and otherworldly things.

[Read more…]

DIARY: Tuesday, March 24, 2026

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by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING TODAY:

Today at 12 Noon, Piano Cleveland Live presents Cleveland International Piano Competition medalist Jiayan Sun & Friends in the Ames Family Atrium at the Cleveland Museum of Art, and on the Tuesday Organ Plus Series, organist Walker Whitehouse plays music by Herbert Howells, J.S. Bach & César Franck at the Church of the Covenant, University Circle.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

by Jarrett Hoffman

On this date in 1721, J.S. Bach dedicated his Six Concerts à plusieurs instruments to Christian Ludwig, Margrave of Brandenburg-Schwedt. That set of concerti grossi has since become known as the Brandenburg Concertos, hailed as some of the greatest works of the Baroque era.

[Read more…]

DIARY: WEEKEND, Thursday-Sunday, March 20-23, 2026

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by Daniel Hathaway

WEEKEND HIGHLIGHTS:

MARCH 20 – FRIDAY

11:00 am – The Cleveland Orchestra at Severance. Elim Chan, conductor, Patricia Kopatchinskaja, violin. Repeated on Saturday at 7:30 pm.

7:00 pm – Cleveland Chamber Choir, BlueWater Chamber Orchestra, & Cleveland Ballet. Gregory Ristow leads a choreographed version of Handel’s Messiah. Repeated Saturday at 7, and Sunday at 2.

7:00 pm – Cleveland Cello Society. i Cellisti! Duos and trios for cello and other instruments performed by Cleveland Orchestra members at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Cleveland Heights.

MARCH 21 – SATURDAY

3:00 pm – Studio Espressivo: Piano Portraits. Favorites from Baroque to Modern and hidden Italian gems. 2026 Murray Hill Rd. #111, Cleveland. Continued tonight at 7.

7:00 pm – CLE Concierto. celebrating Women’s History Month in Federated Church, Chagrin Falls.

8:00 pm – Studio Espressivo: Piano Portraits. Favorites from Baroque to Modern and hidden Italian gems. Music by Bach, Respighi, Saint-Saens, Mozart, Chaminade, Rachmaninoff, Boccerini, Einaud, and Corticelli. Studio Espressivo,. Repeated Sunday at 3.

MARCH 22 – SUNDAY

1:00-5:00 pm – Bach’s 341st Birthday Marathon, celebrating the composer’s 341st birthday. Come and go as you please. Church of the Covenant in University Circle.

3:00 pm – Cleveland Museum of Art. Les Délices illuminates the story of Marianne Mozart, who shared the spotlight with her younger brother through her teenage years.

3:00 pm – CIM Perspectives. Third Coast Percussion. Time Pieces: The New Classical, celebrating 20 years of genre-defying, award-winning music in Mixon Hall, Cleveland Institute of Music.

3:00 pm – Studio Espressivo: Piano Portraits. Favorites from Baroque to Modern and hidden Italian gems. 2026 Murray Hill Rd. #111, Cleveland.

3:30 pm – Heights Chamber Orchestra. Travis Jürgens, conductor, and Mark Kosower, cello. St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, 2747 Fairmount Blvd., Cleveland Heights. Free.

For details of these and other classical events, visit the ClevelandClassical.com Concert Listings.

WEEKEND ALMANAC:

Overshadowing the birth of Russian pianist Sviatoslav Richter on this date in 1915, and the 1948 duel on that date between CBS and NBC to broadcast the first symphony orchestra concert (CBS won by 90 minutes with a Philadelphia Orchestra program, and NBC was the runner up with a Toscanini-led NBC Symphony performance), German composer Johann Sebastian Bach was born in Eisenach in 1685. [Read more…]

DIARY: Thursday, March 19, 2026

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by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING TODAY:

7:00 pm – Trobár at West Shore Church, Rocky River. Songbook for a King. Sacred and secular selections from the lavish thirteenth-century anthology of French music known as the “Manuscrit du Roi.”

7:00 pm – Cleveland Composers Guild. 1776-2026: An American Mosaic. Music faculty at John Carroll University present a program of CCG music that celebrates the United States’ 250th birthday. Saint Francis Chapel, JCU.

7:30 pm – The Cleveland Orchestra at Severance. Elim Chan, conductor, Patricia Kopatchinskaja, violin (pictured). Daniel Kidane’s Sun Poem, Bartók’s Violin Concerto No. 1 & Dance Suite, and Scriabin’s The Poem of Ecstasy. Repeated on Friday at 11 (partly) & Saturday at 7:30 pm.

7:30 pm – Oberlin Artist Recital Series. Linda May Han Oh: “The Glass Hours. Linda May Han Oh, composer, Greg Ward, alto saxophone; Sara Serpa, voice, Fabian Almazan, piano/effects, and Mark Whitfield, Jr., drums. Works based on themes of the fragility of time and life. Finney Chapel, Oberlin.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

By Mike Telin

On March 18, 1927, legendary composer of musical theater John Kander was born in Kansas City, Missouri. [Read more…]

Apollo’s Fire and Alan Choo find riches in “Palace of Versailles” (Mar. 6)

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by Peter Feher

In 1715, the French composer Jean-Féry Rebel had the shrewd idea of combining the most popular Baroque dances of his day into a single crowd-pleasing piece. Les Caractères de la Danse was a hit with Parisian audiences, thanks in large part to the thrill that accompanies recognition.

Modern listeners can surely relate, even if they might struggle to tell a minuet from a musette or a gigue from a gavotte. Take Rebel’s concept, but swap in the music and moves of “Y.M.C.A.” or “Kung Fu Fighting,” and you have “Evolution of Dance,” one of the first viral videos in internet history.

[Read more…]

Pianist Isata Kanneh-Mason stuns at Severance Music Center (Mar. 17)

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by Daniel Hathaway

This article was originally published on Cleveland.com

CLEVELAND, Ohio — Isata Kanneh-Mason, at 29, the eldest of the seven siblings who constitute one of England’s most distinguished musical families, walked onstage at Mandel Concert Hall at Severance Music Center promptly at 7:30 on Tuesday evening to begin her Cleveland solo recital with an immaculate performance of Beethoven’s “Moonlight” Sonata.

Like the program’s theme of darkness moving into light — an attractive forward motion coursed just underneath the surface in everything she played. She began Sonata No. 14 deliberately, with hauntingly beautiful long lines, well-balanced voicing, and subtle dynamics, all of which contributed to a hypnotic effect.

[Read more…]

Cleveland Orchestra tackles Beethoven’s ‘Fateful Fifth’ with conductor Elim Chan, trumpeter Michael Sachs (Mar. 12)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

This article was originally published on Cleveland.com

CLEVELAND, Ohio — The art of conducting is a kind of alchemy — the transformation of inert notes on a page into something vividly alive. A conductor absorbs a composer’s intentions, reimagines them, and releases them again through that remarkable instrument, the symphony orchestra. On a good night the music feels less reproduced than re-created, and the listener senses the thrill of discovery.

In her appearance with The Cleveland Orchestra at Severance Music Center Thursday, March 12, conductor Elim Chan provided such an evening. She honored the distinct language of each score — Stravinsky’s refashioning of Baroque style in Pulcinella, Haydn’s elegant Trumpet Concerto with Michael Sachs as the eloquent soloist, and Beethoven’s enduring Fifth Symphony. But fidelity did not mean routine.

[Read more…]

Leonkoro Quartet traces lineage in Cleveland Chamber Music Society debut (Mar. 3)

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by Peter Feher

Out of Vienna is the title of the Leonkoro Quartet’s latest album, but that phrase could easily stand in for all of the ensemble’s recent performances.

Never mind the specialized focus of the recording, which centers on Second Viennese School composers Alban Berg and Anton Webern. In a program of entirely standard repertoire — Haydn, Beethoven, and Felix Mendelssohn were on the bill for the Quartet’s Cleveland debut — the influence of a certain city proved just as inescapable.

Of course, classical music in the 21st century thrives on cosmopolitanism. The young Leonkoros are based in Berlin, having formed at conservatory there in 2019, and they’ve cultivated utmost cohesion and top-level technique. Worldwide attention came after they swept London’s Wigmore Hall International String Quartet Competition in 2022.

[Read more…]

Third Coast Percussion celebrates its 20th anniversary at CIM

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by Mike Telin

On Sunday, March 22 at 3:00 pm at the Cleveland Institute of Music, the Chicago-based Third Coast Percussion — Sean Connors, Robert Dillon, Peter Martin, and David Skidmore — will present “Time Pieces: The New Classical.” The program celebrates two decades of genre-defying, award-winning music, including many of the ensemble’s 20th anniversary commissions. The concert is sold out.

I caught up with David Skidmore on Zoom and began by asking about the group’s 20th anniversary program.

David Skidmore: The first half is highlights from the past 20 years. And the second half is all pieces that we commissioned for our 20th anniversary, which is some of our favorite music to play right now.

[Read more…]

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