by Daniel Hathaway
Last Tuesday evening, December 5, the Emerson String Quartet visited the Cleveland Chamber Music Society series at Plymouth Church in Shaker Heights for the first time in several years. They made up for that hiatus with performances of striking works by Haydn, Britten, and Shostakovich, the last of the three all the more intense for having been played with most of the lights out. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
With echoes of Bruckner’s Fourth Symphony still lingering in the corners of Severance Hall from their elder ensemble’s concert on Thursday evening, the Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra (COYO) made an impressive showing in works by Beethoven, Barber, and Prokofiev on Friday, December 1, marking the debut of their new conductor Vinay Parameswaran at the beginning of their 32nd season. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Salvatore Sciarrino’s Piano Concerto: Il sogno di Stradella and Anton Bruckner’s Symphony No. 4 (“Romantic”) shared Thursday evening’s Cleveland Orchestra program on November 30 at Severance Hall, conducted by Fabio Luisi and featuring pianist Jonathan Biss. Perhaps the two works were related on a deep, metaphysical level. Perhaps they merely provided extreme contrasts in scale. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
On Tuesday, December 5, the Emerson String Quartet will return to the Cleveland Chamber Music Society Series for the first time since 2011. Violinists Eugene Drucker and Philip Setzer, violist Lawrence Dutton, and cellist Paul Watkins will play Joseph Haydn’s Quartet Op. 20, No. 2, Benjamin Britten’s Quartet No. 2, and Dmitri Shostakovich’s Quartet No. 15 in a 7:30 pm concert at Plymouth Church presented in cooperation with the Cleveland Institute of Music’s Winter Chamber Music Festival.
The Emerson need no introduction to fans of chamber music. Now one of the most venerable quartets on the international circuit, the group has been active for over four decades since its founding in 1976, with only one change in personnel — cellist Paul Watkins joined the Emerson in 2013, replacing David Finckel. On a personal note, I vividly remember hosting them on the Gund Concert Series at Groton School in Massachusetts very soon after they first got together, and when their practice of alternating first and second violins was still an innovation.
The repertory for the Emersons’ December 5 performance may also need no introduction for diehard chamber music aficionados, but other listeners might appreciate knowing a bit about the music and getting some of it in their ears before Tuesday evening. [Read more…]
Theodore Albrecht, professor of musicology at Kent State University, was awarded the Beethoven Medal by the Austrian city of Baden at the end of last summer in recognition of his contributions to Beethoven studies. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Conductor Daniel Meyer and soprano Laura Pederson were the featured guests for the first of two weekend concerts by BlueWater Chamber Orchestra on Saturday, November 11 at Plymouth Church in Shaker Heights. The Saturday performance was a ticketed event, while a repeat performance the following afternoon at Pilgrim Church in Tremont was free, thanks to Cuyahoga Arts and Culture — perhaps accounting for a rather slim audience on Saturday. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Italian pianist Roberto Plano, who won the Cleveland International Piano Competition in 2001, returned to open the Tri-C Classical Piano Series in Gartner Auditorium at the Cleveland Museum of Art on Sunday afternoon, October 15. His arresting program of music by Liszt, Piazzolla, Villa-Lobos, and Ginastera culminated in the premiere of his own solo arrangement of George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
The menu for The Cleveland Orchestra’s Thanksgiving Weekend concerts may have resembled a potluck more than a well-balanced meal, but the main course, Stephen Paulus’s continuously imaginative Grand Concerto for Organ and Orchestra with Paul Jacobs at the Severance Hall E.M. Skinner, left you wanting a second helping of the late composer’s music. [Read more…]
by Mike Telin
When pianist Jonathan Biss pitched the idea to the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra of commissioning five composers to write new concertos, each inspired by one of Beethoven’s five concertos, he thought it was a “pie in the sky” suggestion. Much to his surprise the SPCO ran with the idea. “It’s so exciting because I could imagine an organization thinking, ‘Great idea but it’s just too daunting,’ but they were undaunted by it,” Biss said by telephone.
The pianist said that he was equally surprised at the rate at which the Beethoven/5 project expanded. “It’s mushroomed beyond what I could have ever imagined. Something like fifteen different orchestras have joined as partners with one concerto or another, and The Cleveland Orchestra is a co-commissioner of this one.”
On Thursday, November 30 at 7:30 pm at Severance Hall, Fabio Luisi will lead the Cleveland premiere of Salvatore Sciarrino’s Piano Concerto: Il sogno di Stradella with Jonathan Biss as soloist. The concert will also include Bruckner’s Symphony No. 4 (“Romantic”). The program will be repeated on Saturday, December 2 at 8:00 pm. Tickets are available online. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
The distinguished German violinist Christian Tetzlaff has visited Northeast Ohio several times recently as soloist with The Cleveland Orchestra and to appear on the Oberlin Artist Recital Series. On Tuesday, November 14, he returned to town in a different role — as primo violin with his quartet in a remarkable concert on the Cleveland Chamber Music Society Series at Plymouth Church. (Since this photo was taken, the violinist has acquired both a Van Dyke and a ponytail.) [Read more…]