by Daniel Hathaway
The latest Saturday night snow massacre did little to keep patrons away from music director laureate Christoph von Dohnányi’s return to Severance Hall on March 29 and his looked-strange-on-paper program of two Schumann symphonies with The Cleveland Orchestra. As it turned out, the pairing of the two symphonies was an insightful idea and Dohnányi drew playing of both sweeping grandeur and arresting detail from the ensemble he led with such distinction from 1984-2002.
As usual, Dohnányi moved the furniture for his weekend performances, reseating the strings with second violins on stage left with cellos next to the firsts (basses behind) and violas next to the seconds, a move which subtly changed balances among the string sections, sometimes at the expense of presence from the seconds, whose tone holes were facing inward rather than toward the audience. [Read more…]
[Note: on Friday, April 4, Ms. Graham’s management announced the cancellation of her Oberlin concert and masterclass due to illness. The performance will not be rescheduled.]
Opera is fun! Even if in the end all parties do not live happily ever after. Still, when everything works during a performance, when it all comes together, one would be hard pressed to find a more entertaining way to spend three hours than at the opera. 
“It’s a piece of epic proportions with so many emotions from deep sorrow to sarcasm,” violinist Hristo Popov told us in a telephone conversation. “The Shostakovich Piano Quintet 
The Cleveland Classical Guitar Society (CCGS) concluded its 2013-2014 season on Saturday evening, March 29 at Plymouth Church in Shaker Heights with a performance by the celebrated guitarist, David Russell. Within the span of just four years, under the direction of Erik Mann, the CCGS has gone from offering a handful of small local events per year to presenting high-profile international performers like Grammy-award winning David Russell, arguably the best classical guitarist in the world.
Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 in d (“Choral”) stood alone on the program as a symbol of brotherhood and joy in a concert entitled A Celebration of Community at Severance Hall last Friday evening, March 28. Cleveland Institute of Music president Joel Smirnoff conducted the CIM Orchestra with the combined forces of vocal soloists from CIM and the community, Cleveland School of The Arts instrumentalists (Dianna Richardson, department head and director of the orchestral program) and chorus (William B. Woods, choir director), The Singers’ Club of Cleveland (Dr. Melvin P. Unger, choral director) and members of The Antioch Baptist Church Sanctuary Choir. 
Since performing their first concert in May of 2008, 
Last Sunday afternoon, March 30, Youngstown’s Stambaugh Auditorium hosted a marvelous concert by The Arsenal Duo of organist and Girard, Ohio native Edward Alan Moore and pianist Nathan Carterette.
CWRU music professor Ross W. Duffin has made his name as a scholar in several fields, among them, fifteenth-century Franco-Flemish music, English music of the Jacobean period and the study of historical tuning systems.