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CD Review: Piano two ways: new recordings by Alexander Schimpf and Jenny Lin

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by Daniel Hathaway

OnSchimpf-CD February 1, shortly after his appearance with the Akron Symphony this weekend, 2011 Cleveland International Piano Competition winner Alexander Schimpf will release his new CD on the OEHMS Classics label. Simply titled “Ravel, Scriabin, Schubert” and recorded at the Munich studios of Bayerischer Rundfunk (Bavarian Radio) not far from Schimpf’s home in Würtzburg, the album is devoted to three works: Ravel’s Le tombeau de Couperin, Scriabin’s Five Preludes, op. 74, and Schubert’s Sonata in B-flat.

Though Schimpf confesses in his thoughtful liner notes that “the only determining idea for this CD” was “recording works that are particularly dear to my heart”, once his program was chosen, he noticed interesting bits of connective tissue between the pieces. They happen to be each composer’s final compositions for the piano, “late works” even for those who, like Schubert, died young. For Scriabin, op. 74 was the last music he wrote. Additionally, Ravel and Scriabin’s pieces date from 1914, “a highly charged period in Central Europe in every respect — socially, artistically and philosophically.” And the “dance-like elements” in Ravel’s suite “also determine large sections of the 3rd and 4th movements of the Schubert Sonata.”  [Read more…]

Review: Organist James Feddeck at Cleveland Museum of Art (January 13)

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 by Daniel Hathaway

ForFeddeck-at-organ many decades, regular organ concerts were part of the weekly routine at the Cleveland Museum of Art, both when the 1920 E.M. Skinner instrument could be heard throughout the building from its position in the loggia of the Garden Court and then after the organ, completely rebuilt by the Holtkamp company, came to live in the new Gartner Auditorium in 1971.

In 2010, after spending five years in mothballs during the Gartner renovation, the organ played out once again in a rededication recital by David Higgs, but except for a special recital by former musical arts curator Karel Paukert a month later and a young artist competition sponsored by the American Guild of Organists last Spring, the instrument has been more often seen than heard. [Read more…]

Preview: CMA VIVA! & Gala: a conversation with David Harrington of the Kronos Quartet

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by Mike Telin

ForKronos-Quartet nearly forty years, the Kronos Quartet — David Harrington and John Sherba violins, Hank Dutt, viola and Jeffrey Zeigler, cello — have been a potent force in the advancement of contemporary classical music. On Friday, January 18 beginning at 7:30 this celebrated quartet returns to Cleveland for a concert on the VIVA! & Gala series in the Cleveland Museum of Art’s Gartner Auditorium.

In the words of David Harrington, “I’ve always wanted the string quartet to be vital, and energetic, and alive, and cool, and not afraid to kick ass and be absolutely beautiful and ugly if it has to be. But it has to be expressive of life. To tell the story with grace and humor and depth. And to tell the whole story, if possible.” Now, with over 750 works written for Kronos Quartet by an impressive list of composers, how does a quartet with so many repertoire possibilities go about programming a concert?  [Read more…]

Review: Canton Symphony principals strike an exotic chord (January 11)

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by Tom Wachunas

TheDeJongh-&-Beck January 11 Casual Series chamber concert by the Canton Symphony Orchestra at Cable Recital Hall was an utterly fascinating aural adventure. Principal flutist Katherine DeJong and principal percussionist Matthew Beck combined their remarkable skills to deliver a captivating program of works with scintillating textures, intriguing melodies, and infectious rhythms.

Two of the seven works on the program were duets for flute and percussion: Henri Tomasi’s Le Tombeau de Mireille, and Lou Harrison’s First Concerto for Flute and Percussion. The Tomasi piece, with Beck steady on drum and DeJong pure and piercing on piccolo, is at many points a frolicsome dance, at others a slow, solemn march. The performance conjured the spirit of medieval troubadours traversing the French countryside. [Read more…]

Preview: Cleveland Orchestra: a conversation with pianist Garrick Ohlsson

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by Mike Telin

AfterOHLSSON-Garrick winning the 1970 Chopin International Piano Competition, pianist Garrick Ohlsson has built a reputation for being a musician of magisterial interpretive and technical prowess. Beginning on Thursday, January 10 in Severance Hall, the celebrated pianist will join The Cleveland Orchestra under the direction of Franz Welser-Möst for three performances of Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 2 in G Major.

Boasting a repertoire of over eighty concertos, it was not until this past fall that Ohlssohn gave his first performances of Tchaikovsky’s lesser known concerto. And while he admits to having some initial reservations about the piece, Ohlsson says he has grown to like the concerto very much. We reached the always engaging pianist by telephone at his home in San Francisco. [Read more…]

Review: Quire Cleveland: Carols for Quire from the Old and New Worlds at Trinity Cathedral (December 23)

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by Nicholas Jones

QuireTrinityThose of us who love choral music have much to be grateful for at the holidays. When else in the year do we hear so much wonderful ensemble singing?

For at least six hundred years, Christmas has been the occasion for composers to write for choirs. Last weekend, Ross Duffin and Quire Cleveland brought us a rich program of mostly unfamiliar treasures. I attended Sunday afternoon’s concert, for which Trinity Cathedral’s seats were mostly full, and during which the sun streamed through the stained-glass windows.

Quire, now in its fifth year, is an ensemble of twenty highly accomplished singers. Their sound was crystal clear, with crisp diction and uniform vowels. They sang with remarkable ease in five languages—Latin, German, French, Spanish, and English—sometimes at breakneck speed, as in Michael Praetorius’s delightful German/Latin “patter song,” Psallite, unigenito. [Read more…]

Review: Pink Martini returns to Severance Hall for joy-filled evening with The Cleveland Orchestra (December 18)

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by Daniel Hathaway

pink-martiniPortland’s “Little Orchestra,” Pink Martini, made a big impression when they first appeared with The Cleveland Orchestra in March of 2010. The ensemble, anchored by the inimitable pianist Thomas Lauderdale and the charismatic vocalist China Forbes (back after a successful operation on her vocal chords) returned to spread a lot of sophisticated holiday cheer last night at Severance Hall with The Cleveland Orchestra as its distinguished backup band. The delectable program, stylishly conducted by James Feddeck (and to be repeated on Wednesday evening), was enhanced by two special guests with Portland roots: NPR commentator Ari Shapiro and clarinetist Norman Leyden, whose performances added special personality to some of the nearly twenty songs — music both for the season and for all seasons. [Read more…]

Review: No Exit at the Maltz Museum (December 12)

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by Mike Telin

Currently onNoExit view at The Maltz Museum of Jewish Heritage is Bezalel on Tour, an exhibition that celebrates the 106th anniversary of Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, Israel’s oldest institute of higher education and a leading international academy of art, design and architecture. On Wednesday, December 12, members of the No Exit New Music Ensemble and guest performers presented an engaging concert of music by Shulamit Ran, Morton Feldman, Andrew Rindfleisch and Corey Rubin, all of whom are Jewish and/or Israeli composers.

The only non-Jewish composer represented on the program was Maurice Ravel, whose setting of Kaddish, arranged for cello and piano by Nick Diodore, was given a heartfelt performance by Diodore and pianist Nick Underhill to open the program. For some reason it seems as though the area has recently enjoyed a number of recitals of works for solo cello; Diodore continued the program with a vibrant performance of the first and second movements of Ernst Bloch’s Second Suite for Cello. [Read more…]

Review: CityMusic Cleveland with Stefan Willich, Rebecca Schweigert Mayhew and Mount Zion Choir at Fairmount Church (December 12)

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by Daniel Hathaway

CityMusic Cleveland’sCityMusicFairmountPews free sets of orchestral concerts — each given in multiple locations around town — have proven to be so popular that Fairmount Presbyterian Church in Cleveland Heights began filling up forty-five minutes before curtain time on Wednesday evening, December 12. Anybody who arrived shortly before the downbeat and expected to find a place in the pews was out of luck. Extra chairs in the church’s narthex permitted overflow listeners to hear the concert through opened windows.

The crowd on Wednesday evening came out to hear an overture and a concerto by Mozart and a symphony by Mendelssohn, with a holiday add-on of spirituals and “Holiday Songs” sung by the Mount Zion Choir. The excellent soloist was principal oboist Rebecca Schweigert Mayhew. Guest conductor for the evening was Stefan Willich, whose day job is Professor of Medicine in Berlin, but who moonlights as conductor of the World Doctors Orchestra, an ensemble of a hundred physicians from twenty countries who gather twice a year to play benefit concerts — the ensemble made its U.S. debut in Severance Hall in February, 2009. [Read more…]

Review: Apollo’s Fire: Handel’s Messiah in Rocky River (December 16)

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by Nicholas Jones

Handel’s MessiahApollo'sFireOutside premiered in a music hall, not in a church. The lead singers included at that first Dublin benefit included some of the most important eighteenth-century names in musical theater. And yet we continue to think of the work as if it belonged in a church service.

This year’s performance by Apollo’s Fire shook off that preconception about Messiah. Jeannette Sorrell led a highly dramatic rendering of the piece that made the most of the theatrical basis of the music.]

In the very first recitative, the expressive tenor Karim Sulayman (singing, as did all the soloists, from memory) embodied the contrast between the salvation that Messiah was to bring—”Comfort ye,” he sang, with heart-piercing compassion—and the world’s “iniquity” that is in such need of salvation. [Read more…]

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