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Review: Credo Chamber Music Finale at Severance Hall (July 20)

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by Daniel Hathaway

Credo-SeverancePeter Slowik’s Credo Chamber Music summer programs — a blend of musical training and performance and service opportunities with an evangelical Christian foundation — are in expansion mode. This summer’s sessions in Oberlin increased from three weeks to four and the grand finale concert at Severance Hall, which last year featured works for chamber ensembles plus a full orchestra performance of Tchaikovsky’s fifth symphony, morphed this time around into a challenging symphonic program including a Rossini overture, a string suite by Gustav Holst and a Dvořák symphony.

Most summer music camps culminate in a celebratory concert, but few have the luxury of holding that event in such an opulent venue as Severance Hall. The young musicians of Credo seemed positively giddy with the robust sounds they could produce there, and the small but enthusiastic crowd who turned out applauded their efforts ardently. [Read more…]

Preview: Three soloists to make their debuts with The Cleveland Orchestra at Blossom: Part one — Cédric Tiberghien

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by Mike Telin

Tiberghien-CedricIt’s always a special occasion when a musician has the opportunity to perform as a soloist with The Cleveland Orchestra, and if it’s your own debut there is even more excitement added to the occasion. This summer three young musicians will be making their Cleveland Orchestra debuts — pianist Cédric Tiberghien (Saint-Saëns’s Concerto #2 in g minor on Saturday, July 27); violinist Ray Chen (Vivaldi’s Four Seasons on Sunday, August 11); and pianist Martin Helmchen (Beethoven’s Piano Concerto #1 in C major on August 24). All three gentleman are lively conversationalists who had plenty to say about being part of the new generation of artists committed to engaging with and attracting new audiences to classical music.

And what does a performance with the Cleveland Orchestra mean to the three? “It’s one of the things that when I look at my calendar it’s a little bit unbelievable,” says Martin Helmchen. For Ray Chen, the opportunity brings on extra excitement: “I remember going to concerts at Blossom and sitting on the lawn when I was a student in 2006 and 2007 at the Encore School for Strings. So this performance has a very personal connection. To have been there as a kid and now to be on the other side, it’s just great!” Cédric Tiberghien calls it “absolutely amazing. It’s an incredible opportunity for me and I’m really looking forward to it.” Today is the first of three features spotlighting the debuting soloists. [Read more…]

Oberlin Cooper Violin Competition: ten advance to concerto round

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OberlinCooperLogoThe following ten players will perform concertos with piano on Tuesday, July 23 in Warner Concert Hall at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music. Both the 1:30 pm and 7:00 pm sessions will be streamed live (click here to access the feed).

1:30 pm — Kyumin Park: Tchaikovsky’s Concerto in D Major, Op. 35; Ashley Park: Brahms’s Concerto in D Major, Op. 77; Shuaishuai Lin: Tchaikovsky’s Concerto in D Major, Op. 35; Ming Liu: Prokofiev’s Concerto No. 2 in G Minor, Op. 63; Gallia Kastner: Brahms’s Concerto in D Major, Op. 77; Angela Wee: Sibelius’s Concerto in D Minor, Op. 47

7:00 pm — Jieming Tang: Mendelssohn’s Concerto in E Minor, Op. 64; William Ching-Yi Wei: Tchaikovsky’s Concerto in D Major, Op. 35; Naoko Tajimi: Dmitri Shostakovich’s Concerto No. 1 in A Minor, Op. 77; Ava Bahari: Sibelius’s Concerto in D Minor, Op. 47

Review: Cleveland Orchestra at Blossom with Nicholas McGegan and Joshua Smith (July 20)

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by Robert Rollin

McGEGAN-NicholasDespite muggy weather, many Northeast Ohio music enthusiasts turned out for last Saturday evening’s Cleveland Orchestra Classical Era concert directed by British conductor Nicholas McGegan. McGegan has directed San Francisco’s Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra for over 27 years, and made over 100 recordings of Handel, Vivaldi and other Baroque composers. He is also a flutist and harpsichordist. McGegan’s musical energy and imagination are infectious. He conducted enthusiastically without a baton and constantly molded musical flow with his gestures.

Notwithstanding the presence of the Mozart Flute Concerto, the evening’s highlight was Haydn’s Symphony No. 103, The Drum Roll. Like the later Beethoven Seventh, this is a truly great symphony that charms listener with its melodic beauty, invention, and humor. The first movement, Adagio – Allegro con spirito, justifies the symphony’s subtitle by opening with a powerful rolled timpani solo that surprisingly reappears near the final section. Otherwise it is a conventional first movement, serving up a slow introduction followed by two highly animated themes in rapid six-eight meter. [Read more…]

Review: Ohio Light Opera — Cole Porter’s Silk Stockings (July 19)

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by Robert Rollin

OLOLast Friday evening the Ohio Light Opera performed Cole Porter’s 1955 Broadway musical, Silk Stockings in Freedlander Theater at The College of Wooster. The show jumps between Paris and Moscow to depict a love story between Stephen Canfield, a sophisticated and somewhat world-weary American theatrical agent, and Comrade Ninotchka Yaschenko, a Soviet apparatchik.

Yaschenko is sent to Paris to bring back famous Russian composer Peter Ilyich Boroff, who has overstayed his official visit. Canfield manages Borof and also the dim-witted American diva Janice Dayton, who is in Paris to make an independent film about Tolstoy’s War and Peace. Canfield’s plan is to use Boroff’s communist party-approved Ode to a Tractor in the movie for $50,000, and to take a large cut for his commission.

Porter and his librettists George S. Kaufman, Leueen McGrath, and Abe Burrows add three bumbling but good-natured Soviet agents, several other minor characters, and a troop of chorus girls to the Paris mix to create a frivolously amusing and complex entertainment. [Read more…]

Oberlin Cooper Violin Competition: a chat with two members of the jury and four competitors

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by Mike Telin and Daniel Hathaway

OberlinCooperLogoThe first round of the Oberlin Cooper International Violin Competition got underway on Saturday, July 20 — the first step in the process that begins with twenty-four young violinists aged 13-18 and will ultimately bring three finalists together for concerto performances with Jahja Ling and The Cleveland Orchestra next Friday evening, July 26 at Severance Hall. On Friday, we spoke with jury members Gregory Fulkerson and David Bowlin and four of the competitors — Gallia Kastner, Kristie and Karen Su and Jieming Tang — to gain their insights into what makes music competitions worthwhile and to learn a bit more about what makes four of the young players tick (links to audio at the end).

Oberlin violin professor Gregory Fulkerson, who is chair of the competition, is excited about the field of competitors. “We could not be happier with the quality of this year’s contestants,” he told us in his studio at the Oberlin Conservatory. “These are the future stars of the violin world.”

We asked David Bowlin, assistant professor of violin at Oberlin, why it’s important for young musicians to play in such competitions. “Good question, because on the surface it’s easy to think that competitions are something that brings out the worst in us, but I think that’s the wrong way to look at it. If students go in with the idea that they are entering a competition as a challenge to themselves – to learn repertoire, to perform in front of an audience, to perform in front of a jury from whom they have the opportunity to receive feedback — the intensity of a competition makes it powerfully educational.” [Read more…]

CD Review: Yolanda Kondonassis: American Harp

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by Mike Telin

Kondonassis-American-Harp-CD-CoverWith sixteen recordings to her credit, one could wonder what harp music there could possibly be left to record, but once again the musical genius of Yolanda Kondonassis has prevailed with her latest release, American Harp, on the Azica Records label.

In her liner notes, Kondonassis writes, “The compositions on this album were chosen to highlight the range and dimension of the harp’s voice in American music from the middle 20th-century to present.” Indeed, the album showcases pretty much everything the harp is capable of doing — and that’s much more than merely glissandos.

The album visits eight works by such well-known composers as John Williams, Lowell Liebermann, Stephen Paulus, John Dello Joio, John Cage and Elliott Carter, as well as a ninth by the young composer/harpist Hannah Lash.

Three of the pieces are world premiere recordings. Lash’s six-minute Stark from 2008 opens strikingly with a colorful use of harmonies and melodic twists and turns — an evocative journey through the emotions of a “beautiful” nightmare. [Read more…]

Review: Ohio Light Opera — George & Ira Gershwin’s Lady, Be Good! (July 14)

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by Timothy Robson

OLOGeorge and Ira Gershwin’s 1924 Broadway show Lady, Be Good!, currently in the repertoire of Ohio Light Opera, resident at the College of Wooster, falls into the category of “They don’t write ‘em like that anymore.” Depending on one’s point of view, the response to that characterization might be either, “What a shame,” or “I’m really grateful.”

I saw the Sunday, July 14, matinee performance. As an example of musical theater of the time, Lady, Be Good! can’t really be faulted; however, we can be grateful for the revolutionary changes to the Broadway musical form by Jerome Kern’s Showboat in 1927 and Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma in 1943, which much more closely integrate the show’s book, music and lyrics into a unified whole. That evolution of musical theater reached its apotheosis in the works of Stephen Sondheim, in which individual songs melt into the flow of the story.

Lady, Be Good!, on the other hand, has a flimsy and immensely convoluted storyline that requires considerable suspension of disbelief. [Read more…]

Preview: Cooper International Violin Competition begins this week at the Oberlin Conservatory

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by Mike Telin

Top Three

On Thursday of this week twenty-four aspiring violinists between the ages of thirteen and eighteen will arrive at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music all hoping to be one of only three finalists who will have the opportunity to perform a full concerto with The Cleveland Orchestra in Severance Hall on Friday, July 26.

In 2010, the Oberlin Conservatory of Music joined with the Cleveland Orchestra to offer the first Thomas and Evon Cooper International Competition, an important new international competition for young musicians (the competition alternates annually between piano and violin). In addition to getting a chance to perform with The Cleveland Orchestra, contestants are also vying for cash prizes of $10,000 for the first-place winner, $6,000 for second place, and $3,000 for third place winner, fourth, fifth, and sixth prizes of $1,000, and the Audience Prize of $500.

Reading the resumes of these twenty-four young players, it’s difficult to call them young — perhaps in age but not in accomplishments. All have been highly successful in competitions in their home regions, nationally and internationally. All have performed in master classes with some of the world’s most noted teachers and performers. And, as a result, many perform regularly with orchestras as well as performing chamber music and solo recitals. [Read more…]

Preview: Joshua Smith and Franklin Cohen to be featured soloists in next weekend’s Cleveland Orchestra concerts at Blossom

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by Daniel Hathaway

SMITH-COHENViolinists and pianists — with cellists not so close behind — are the usual suspects for concerto soloists with a symphony orchestra, but this weekend, The Cleveland Orchestra will reach into its own wind section for soloists in concertos by Wolfgang Amadè Mozart and Oscar Navarro. Principal flutist Joshua Smith will play Mozart’s Flute Concerto No. 1 in G under Nicholas McGegan on Saturday, July 20 at 8 pm and principal clarinetist Franklin Cohen will join his colleagues for Navarro’s II Concerto on Sunday, July 21 at 7 pm under the baton of James Feddeck, taking over for Robert Porco, who is indisposed.

Joshua Smith finds Mozart’s first concerto entirely delightful. “Is it on the same level of writing as the piano concertos? No, but it’s Mozart in a young, charming, good mood,” he told us on the phone. “It’s frothy, really operatic in the slow movement, and the minuet is completely fun. The finale is a real gas to play with lots of things bouncing back and forth between the soloist and the orchestra.”

Mozart wrote the two flute concertos as part of a commission for the Dutch flutist Ferdinand de Jean but he never got around to a promised third concerto. [Read more…]

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