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Preview: Antonio Pompa-Baldi talks about his November 24 Tri-C Classical Piano recital and his new Poulenc/Piaf CD on the Steinway label

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by Mike Telin

POMPA-BALDI-AntonioOn Sunday at 2:00 pm in the Cleveland Museum of Art’s Gartner Auditorium, the Tri-C Classical Piano Recital Series presents Antonio Pompa-Baldi in a concert dedicated to Franz Liszt.

“I think it is an interesting program and one that I also recorded in a live recital in Cape Town, South Africa at the end of June for the Two Pianist label,” the pianist told us during a telephone conversation. “It’s a program dedicated to Liszt — but not entirely of his music.”

Sunday’s program opens with Sergei Lyapunov’s Transcendental Etude No. 12 (Elegy in memory of Franz Liszt). “Lyapunov composed twelve Transcendental Etudes just like Liszt, and the set is dedicated to him. I’ll complete the first half with the Twelve Etudes, op. 10, of Chopin – which as a set are also dedicated to Liszt.”

The second half of the program features Liszt’s Ballad in b minor and Sposalizio (Years of Pilgrimage, Book II). “Sposalizio was inspired by Raphael’s painting of the Marriage of the Virgin, and since this is also the Verdi year I’m also including Liszt’s Paraphrase of Verdi’s “Ernani.” [Read more…]

Review: CMA’s “Masters of the Fiddle” — MacMaster and Leahy (November 15)

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by Daniel Hathaway

MacMaster-&-Leahy“Never work with children or animals,” said W.C. Fields. Good advice — unless of course you have such a reliable brood as Natalie MacMaster and Donnell Leahy, who closed the first half of their sold-out concert at the Cleveland Museum of Art on Friday evening with an adorable parade of child fiddlers, beginning with 4-year-old Clare, then 6-year-old Michael, then 7-year-old Mary Frances, and eventually a cameo by 2-year-old Julia, who didn’t fiddle but gamely joined in a step dance. (1-year-old Alec stayed behind, while a sixth MacMaster-Leahy protègé was definitely involved in the show but hasn’t been born yet).

That gesture reflects the wholesome, family-values nature of MacMaster’s and Leahy’s show in Gartner Auditorium on November 15, an engaging, 2-1/2 hour festival of Cape Breton-infused music that took traditional fiddling to new heights of sophistication while preserving its down-home charm. At the beginning, MacMaster quipped that this was their last stop on a 12-city tour, “so you got us fresh,” and later narrated a long but charming account of how she and her future husband met. [Read more…]

Preview: Cleveland Classical Guitar Society — a conversation with Carlos Perez

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by Mike Telin

Perez-formal“I have chosen music from the late nineteenth and early twentieth century composers because they were all guitar performers and composers. And all of the composers that are represented on my program toured Europe and Latin America a lot,” Chilean classical guitarist Carlos Perez told us about his forthcoming concert via Skype from his home in Santiago.

“They all wrote in the romantic style and at that period of time, the classical guitar school in South America was very influenced by the Spanish school. Many Spanish guitar players went to Buenos Aires and began to develop and spread the technique as well as the music of this period across Latin America. I’ve been reading the old newspapers about those concerts and the reviews and all of the composer/players on this program were very successful at that time.”

On Saturday, November 23 beginning at 7:30 pm in Plymouth Church in Shaker Heights, the Cleveland Classical Guitar Society presents Carlos Pérez in a concert featuring the music ofAntonio Jiménez Manjón, Emilio Pujol, Tomás Damas, Agustin Barrios, Julio Sagreras and Ernesto Nazareth. As part of CCGS’s Educational Outreach programs, middle school students from Buchtel Community Learning Center of Akron will give a special guitar orchestra performance beginning at 6:50 pm. [Read more…]

Review: BlueWater Chamber Orchestra at Plymouth Church (November 16)

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by Guytano Parks

TANG-Jieming2BlueWater Chamber Orchestra, conducted by founder and Artistic Director Carlton R. Woods presented an enlightening and entertaining program of works by John Corigliano, Carl Maria von Weber, Beethoven, Mendelssohn and Peter Maxwell Davies on Saturday evening at Plymouth Church in Shaker Heights. The featured soloists were Amitai Vardi, principal clarinet of BWCO, and fifteen year-old St. Ignatius High School sophomore Jieming Tang, violin, who made his orchestral debut on this occasion.

Opening the program was Corigliano’s Voyages for Strings, an instrumental version of an a cappella choral work that was a setting of Baudelaire’s L’Invitation au voyage. Plymouth Church proved to be the ideal space for this sensual music — beautifully played with wondrous blend and balance — to breathe and soar. Points of resolution were heavenly as the players mused and ambled through Corigliano’s sometimes ambiguous harmonic territory.

Jieming Tang impressed with his lovely, lyrical playing of Beethoven’s Romance No. 2, Op. 50. Projecting clearly and effortlessly above the orchestra at all times, his tone was sweet and clear in the upper register and deep and rich in the lower. Beethoven’s well-crafted piece benefitted from Mr. Tang’s expressive delivery of every detail, and Woods and the orchestra gave him fine and graceful support. [Read more…]

Preview: Oberlin Artist Recital Series — a chat with cellist Yo-Yo Ma

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by Mike Telin

MA-Yo-Yo“I can’t say that I don’t lead an interesting life,” cellist, humanitarian and Silk Road Project founder Yo-Yo Ma says with a laugh. “It’s sometimes a little crazy and when that happens I just need to look at myself and say, I am the one responsible for it and I can’t blame anybody but myself.”

On Wednesday, November 20 beginning at 8:00 pm in Finney Chapel, the Oberlin College Artist Recital Series presents Yo-Yo Ma and his long time collaborator, pianist Kathryn Stott, in a concert featuring the music of Stravinsky, Villa Lobos, Piazzolla, Guarnieri, de Falla, Messiaen and Brahms. The concert is sold out.

Yo-Yo Ma is a person who enjoys building relationships and finding common ground with everyone he meets, and it their mutual love of travel that he attributes to the long collaborative relationship he has enjoyed with Kathryn Stott. Ma and Stott have been sharing stages since 1985 and together won Grammy Awards in 1999 and 2004.

“Kathy loves adventures and we get along famously well. She is an incredible person and musician and she probably loves traveling or has traveled more then I have,” Ma says. [Read more…]

Preview: CMA’s Masters of the Fiddle — a conversation with Persian spiked fiddle virtuoso Kayhan Kalhor

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by Mike Telin

Kalhor“I think that being back in Cleveland is a very beautiful déjà vu. I have been there many times with various projects and it’s so nice to return and play for the audience in the same place again,” kamancheh player Kayhan Kalhor told us by telephone from the west coast. “As a touring musician it’s always very nice when you develop that relationship with a venue. It builds a trust that they want to hear your new projects and I’m glad that I have this relationship with the Museum.”

On Wednesday, November 20 Persian spiked fiddle virtuoso and three-time Grammy nominee Kayhan Kalhor returns to the Cleveland Museum of Art’s Gartner Auditorium for a concert beginning at 7:30 pm. Kalhor will be joined by Ali Bahrami Fard, santoor. The performance is part of the Museum’s Masters of the Fiddle series.

Kalhor, a member of Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Project, is known around the globe for his performances of traditional Persian music as well as for his multiple collaborations. In addition to Silk Road, Kalhor has appeared as soloist with various ensembles and orchestras including the New York Philharmonic, the Orchestre National de Lyon and the string quartet Brooklyn Rider, and was recently featured on the soundtrack of Francis Ford Copolla’s Youth without Youth in a score on which he collaborated with Osvaldo Golijov.

Kahlor says that his CMA program is the result of an experimental project that began after meeting instrument maker Peter Biffin in Germany. [Read more…]

Review: Opera Western Reserve — La Bohème at Stambaugh Auditorium (November 15)

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by Robert Rollin

Boheme-PosterLast Friday night Opera Western Reserve presented Puccini’s La Bohème in a beautiful Stambaugh Auditorium production, replete with excellent singing, fine dramatic pacing and superlative orchestral accompaniment. Music director Susan Davenny Wyner’s effective conducting, and director/scenic designer David Vosbergh’s attractive sets and lively staging contributed greatly. Now in its tenth year, the company continued to wisely schedule only one performance annually, ensuring houses bursting at the seams. The Friday performance was no different.

Soprano Marian Vogel, who sang the title role in OWR’s 2011 production of Tosca, was terrific as the tragic seamstress Mimi. Tenor Alex Richardson, who sang Cavaradossi in the aforementioned production, returned as the intense poet Rodolfo, expertly tossing off the difficult role.

Soprano Lauren Frey, as Musetta, the sophisticated woman of the world, paired with baritone Michael Young, as Marcello, the painter. Both sang brilliantly, with Frey negotiating the intricacies of her bel canto role with sparkling ease, while Young enlivened the performance with his lovely vocal color. [Read more…]

Review: Apollo’s Fire: “Tangos and Fandangos” at Fairmount Church (November 15)

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by Timothy Robson

Schiffer-&-BrinkmannOne of the best things about Apollo’s Fire’s programs is that director Jeannette Sorrell and her musicians plan programs that are entertaining. They are scholarly, but not pedantic; instructive, but not condescending; and the expert musicians give every appearance of enjoying the act of performance, with awareness of their fellow musicians.

Such was the case again on Friday night, November 15, at Fairmount Presbyterian Church in Cleveland Heights, for the first of four performances of “Tangos and Fandangos,” an exploration of the Mediterranean musical styles from 18th century Spain that crossed the Atlantic and evolved into those sexy South American dances, the fandango and the tango. The full house responded enthusiastically to this unfamiliar music by Santiago de Murcia, Luigi Boccherini, Carl Friedrich Abel, and Apollo’s Fire regular René Schiffer (writing under the nom de plume René Duchiffre).

Baroque guitarists Simon Martyn-Ellis and William Simms opened the concert with 18th century Spanish composer and guitarist Santiago de Murcia’s Fandango (c.1730). The performers entered from opposite sides of the stage, bowed to each other and commenced a musical “duel,” trading phrases in increasing virtuosic variations above the descending bass line that is the hallmark of the fandango. The tension increased until the music dramatically stopped without warning. [Read more…]

Preview: Apollo’s Fire’s “Tangos and Fandangos” features concertos by René Schiffer

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by Mike Telin

Schiffer-&-Brinkmann“A lot of people play the gamba very softly and delicately,” said Apollo’s Fire gambist and cellist René Schiffer, “and I always thought that was wrong. You need to get what you can out of the instrument, and the gamba can be loud, especially when you play chords.”

Apollo’s Fire audiences will experience that brasher voice of the viola da gamba this week, as Cleveland’s baroque orchestra presents five performances of “Tangos and Fandangos with Boccherini and Friends” in area churches. The program includes René Schiffer’s “notorious” Tango Concerto for two gambas featuring Schiffer and his colleague Mime Y. Brinkmann. Elsewhere on the program the two soloists will swap out gambas for cellos to duel away in Schiffer’s Fandango.

“I chose the tango because I thought it was the perfect way to end a baroque concerto,” Schiffer said in a telephone conversation. “It has the strict rhythm of the baroque and an ostinato which relates it to the chaconne or any long piece with the same bass line played over and over again. Of course it is a total joke that two gambas are playing a tango — but at the same time, I think that when they are playing together they often sound like a bandoneón. And the noise that they can make — you never get to do that in a baroque piece.” [Read more…]

Preview: Arts Renaissance Tremont — Daniel Shapiro and Friends

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by Mike Telin

SHAPIRO-Daniel“I absolutely love the Franck Piano Quintet,” pianist Daniel Shapiro told us by telephone. “There’s a mystical quality to it similar to what you find in Bruckner, almost as if the clouds part and one can see God or something like that. It’s beyond everyday passion. Yes I do love the music of Franck although I think his detractors are noisy.” On Sunday, November 17 beginning at 3:00 pm in Pilgrim Congregational Church, Arts Renaissance Tremont presents pianist Daniel Shapiro with Jinjo Cho and James Thompson, violins, Leah Ferguson, viola and Carlyn Kessler cello in performances of the piano quintets by Dvořák and Franck.

Performing chamber music has and continues to be an important part of Shapiro’s musical life. He has performed regularly with members of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Chicago Symphony and Cleveland Orchestras, and has also performed with the Cavani, Mirò and Linden Quartets. And he has very kind things to say about his colleagues for Sunday’s concert, all of whom are students at the Cleveland Institute of Music. “I don’t think of them as students, we are equal colleagues — we share ideas and talk about what we think would make things better.” [Read more…]

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