Archives for April 2026

by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING TODAY:

Three events all begin tonight at 7:30. Jörg Widmann (pictured) conducts The Cleveland Orchestra at Severance Music Center in his own works plus Felix Mendelssohn’s Reformation Symphony. Timothy Weiss leads the Oberlin Sinfonietta with faculty soloists Alexa Still, flute, Drew Pattison, bassoon, and Martha Guth, soprano, in pieces by Stephen Jaffe, Stephen Hartke, and Katharina Mueller in Warner Concert Hall. And the Canton Symphony hosts the soul band Apostle Jones in its Divergent Sounds series at the Auricle.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

Today’s honorees include Austro-Hungarian operetta composer Franz Lehár (born on April 30, 1870 in Komárom, now Komárno, Slovakia), American conductor Robert Shaw (born on this date in 1916 in Red Bluff, Iowa), and American composer Ellen Taaffe Zwilich (who entered the world in Miami on this date in 1939). [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING TODAY:

This evening at 6, Chamber Music in the Atrium at the Cleveland Museum of Art will feature young musicians from the Cleveland Institute of Music.

Three concerts tonight at 7:30 will include The Choir of Westminster Abbey, London (pictured) Andrew Nethsingha, conducting, at St. Paul’s, Cleveland Hts.) Singers Company (Samuel Gordon, conducting, in Cuyahoga Falls) and pianist Richard Goode (on the Oberlin Artist Recital Series in Finney Chapel).

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

The Cleveland Museum of Art’s free summer concert series, CityStages, will take place on Wednesdays July 22 and 29 in Ohio City’s Hingetown neighborhood outside Transformer Station. This year’s block party-style events feature the West African group Kaleta & Super Yamba Band and the South Korean group Insun Park & Generals. Concerts begin at 7:30 p.m., and seating is limited.”Bring camp chairs and enjoy an evening of music and dancing in the street.”

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

British conductor Sir Thomas Beecham was born in 1879, the son of a wealthy patent medicine manufacturer.

[Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING TODAY:

At 12 Noon, organist Mikhail Grazdanov (pictured) plays works by J.S. Bach at the Church of the Covenant in University Circle. And tonight at 7:30, the Cleveland Chamber Music Society presents the Verona Quartet with pianist Yaron Kohlberg in works by Alessandro Scarlatti, Philip Glass, Leoš Janáček, and Antonín Dvořák in Gartner Auditorium at the Cleveland Museum of Art.

INTERESTING READS:

6 Podcasts About Classical Music (NY Times) by Emma Dibdin

These shows demystify a genre unfairly perceived as archaic and stuffy with expert analysis, musical selections and pure fun. Click here to read.

How John Dowland Built a Music Career on Tearful Melancholy (NY Times) by Hugh Morris

Dowland, who died 400 years ago, spun out sad songs that were popular in his time and continue to influence artists today. Click here to read.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

On April 28, 1954, composer Michael Daugherty was born in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

INTERESTING READ:

Anthony Tomassini has written a tribute article in the New York Times about the life and career of conductor and composer Michael Tilson Thomas, who died on April 22 at his home in San Francisco at the age of 81.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

On April 27, 1894, Russian-American musicologist, composer and conductor Nicolas Slonimsky entered the world in St. Petersburg. His literary credentials include serving as editor of Baker’s Biographical Dictionary of Musicians (his own bio is priceless) as well as of his Lexicon of Musical Invective, a collection of “critical assaults on composers since Beethoven’s time.” [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

NEWS BRIEFS:

Michael Tilson Thomas, 81

The Washington Post reports that “Michael Tilson Thomas, an American conductor who grew up in public from an imperious wunderkind into one of the grand old men of classical music, died April 22 at his home in San Francisco. He was 81.”

WEEKEND HIGHLIGHTS:

APRIL 24 – FRIDAY

This afternoon at 6, Classically Lake View presents Franz Schubert’s Cello Quintet and Zoltan Kodály’s Duo with Cleveland Orchestra concertmaster Joel Link, cellist Katarina Elise and friends in the Lake View Cemetery Mausoleum.

Tonight at 7:30 pm, Les Délices presents Starstruck, featuring soprano Hannah De Priest in a selection of George Frideric Handel’s rarely-heard Italian cantatas and chamber music, including Mi palpita il cor, Silete venti, and excerpts from Apollo e Dafne, in Westminster Presbyterian Church in Akron. Repeated Saturday at 4 in Heights Theater and Sunday at 4 at West Shore Unitarian Universalist Church in Rocky River.

Tonight at the same hour, in Gartner Auditorium, the Cleveland Museum of Art hosts Memphis-bred, Brooklyn-based composer and bassist Stephan Crump in Slow Water, a sextet and body of work  inspired by science journalist Erica Gies’ book Water Always Wins.

APRIL 25 – SATURDAY

Tonight at 7:30, Klaus Mäkelä leads The Cleveland Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra Chorus, and Children’s Chorus in the second of three performances of Benjamin Britten’s monumental War Requiem, with soprano Tamara Wilson, tenor Andrew Staples, and baritone Ludwig Mittelhammer, in Mandel Concert Hall at Severance Music Center. Repeated Sunday at 3.

APRIL 26 – SUNDAY

This afternoon at 5, Music from the Western Reserve presents a solo recital by pianist Maxim Lando at Christ Church Episcopal in Hudson.

For full details, please visit our Concert Listings.