by Daniel Hathaway
“Pictures at an Exhibition” was the title of the Akron Symphony’s concert in E.J. Thomas Hall on Saturday evening, November 18, but there were more pictures on the wall than those by Victor Hartmann that inspired Mussorgsky’s famous musical stroll through a gallery. The other two artists whose work was projected on either side of the stage were Charles E. Burchfield and Matthias Grünewald, their art the catalysts for pieces by Morton Gould and Paul Hindemith.
by Daniel Hathaway
Depending on which of the three Cleveland Orchestra concerts led by Nicholas McGegan you attended last weekend, you got a different combination of pieces. For the Fridays@7 iteration on November 17, there were only two works, Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 9 (“Jeunehomme”) with Marc-André Hamelin, and Symphony No. 36 (“Linz”), both presented in spectacular, flawless performances. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Though filicide is one of the more distasteful varieties of murder, the story of Medea, who slew her children in revenge for the deceit of her husband Jason, has attracted the attention of numerous playwrights, authors, filmmakers, and composers since ancient times. Luigi Cherubini’s opera on the subject, regarded as his masterpiece, received a strong and confident production by the Cleveland Institute of Music Opera Theater in Kulas Hall on Friday, November 10. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
New York-based concert organist Paul Jacobs played solo works by Johannes Brahms and Johann Sebastian Bach on the first half of a Cleveland Orchestra program in February of 2015 and was featured with the Orchestra in Aaron Copland’s Organ Symphony in September of 2016. Jacobs will return to Severance Hall this weekend to take the solo role in Stephen Paulus’ Grand Concerto for Organ and Orchestra with Giancarlo Guerrero on the podium.
“Some composers find the organ daunting — understandably so — and will avoid writing for it altogether,” Jacobs said in a telephone conversation from his studio at the Juilliard School, where he heads the organ department. “But Stephen was someone who embraced the instrument, understood it, and composed very beautifully for it.”
Paulus, a prolific composer who lived and worked in the Twin Cities, wrote four concertos for organ and orchestra before he died of a stroke in 2014. “I premiered the fourth concerto with the Phoenix Symphony a year or two before he passed away, so I got to interact with him a bit — and what a tragedy his death was for us all,” Jacobs said. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
OBERLIN – At 25, British pianist Benjamin Grosvenor is a deep thinker whose touring recital program this season highlights historical-stylistic contrasts between composers such as Ravel and Berg, Brahms and Brett Dean. Click here to read the article on Classical Voice North America, the website of the Music Critics Association of North America.
by Daniel Hathaway
Before dedicated conductors began standing in front of orchestras and wielding batons, ensembles used several means to coordinate their playing. The least subtle and most dangerous — as Jean-Baptiste Lully found out — was to pound on the floor with a staff. (He managed to wound himself in the foot and eventually died of gangrene.) More safely, ensembles were cued from the keyboard or by the first violinist, as Cleveland Orchestra audiences have experienced in past performances led by Mitsuko Uchida and William Preucil, who guided the proceedings while playing the piano and violin. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Johann Sebastian Bach’s 200 surviving church cantatas (some think he may have written even more) usually get performed out of context in modern times. Fifth-year Oberlin student Matt Bickett and friends created the Oberlin Cantata Project to surround one of these important works with other liturgical music that would have been experienced in the same service by Bach’s congregations in Leipzig. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Just back from its triumphant European tour, The Cleveland Orchestra joined two old friends — guest conductor Vladimir Ashkenazy and pianist Emanuel Ax — for resplendent performances of Elgar and Beethoven at Severance Hall on Sunday afternoon, November 5. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
What does it take to create a sparkling production of Mozart’s opera buffa The Marriage of Figaro? The music, of course, comes first, and you need a fine group of vocalists to put the composer’s engaging arias and brilliant finales across, a flexible conductor and orchestra in the pit, and a sure hand at the keyboard for recitatives. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Nicholas Phan will certainly be no stranger to Northeast Ohio when he arrives to guest direct and perform in Apollo’s Fire’s next production. The versatile tenor has appeared with The Cleveland Orchestra in Orff’s Carmina Burana in 2013, and in Bach’s B-minor Mass in 2014. In his previous engagements with Apollo’s Fire in 2016, he covered both the Evangelist and the tenor solos in Bach’s St. John Passion. He got off a bit easier in the Cleveland Orchestra’s St. John last March, only singing the role of the Evangelist. And in between those gigs, Phan stepped in for John Relyea on Oberlin’s Artist Recital Series in February, 2016.
This time around, Phan will be performing a program adapted from A Painted Tale, a 2015 recording of Elizabethan lute songs in which he collaborated with lutenist Michael Leopold and gambist Ann Marie Morgan. The album takes its name from the Thomas Morley piece that introduces it, and Phan wrote in a preview that “The songs are structured so that when one listens to them in order, they tell the story of a young man who falls passionately in love for a woman and who is ultimately destroyed by the fire of that passion.” [Read more…]