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Belgian choir Vox Luminis at St. John’s Cathedral (April 26)

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by Daniel Hathaway

Vox-Luminis-GermanyAt the end of Vox Luminis’s flawlessly-sung program of British royal funerary music at St. John’s Cathedral on April 26, artistic director Lionel Meunier said to the audience, “I have to confess: we do have happier programs.” Indeed, this repertoire, largely taken from Thomas Morley’s and Henry Purcell’s obsequies for Queen Elizabeth and Queen Mary, might have added up to a dreary evening if this fine Belgian choir hadn’t pulled it off with such commitment and finesse. [Read more…]

May 14 recital by Owens and Huang marks Art Song Festival’s return to CIM

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by Daniel Hathaway

OWENS-EricAfter a fourteen-year sojourn at Baldwin Wallace, the Cleveland Art Song Festival will return to the Cleveland Institute of Music in 2018, the school where it was founded by longtime voice faculty George Vassos in 1985. The every-other-year Festival involves ten singer-pianist teams in a week of intensive coaching, including master classes and artist recitals by well-known singers and collaborative pianists.

In alternate years, the Festival brings in a renowned singer for a solo recital. On Sunday, May 14 at 4:30 pm in Kulas Hall, CIM will celebrate the Art Song Festival’s homecoming with a concert by Metropolitan Opera bass-baritone Eric Owens and pianist Myra Huang. [Read more…]

Akron Symphony & Choruses to present Mendelssohn’s Elijah

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by Daniel Hathaway

mendelssohnconductingelijahAt least one scholar has pointed out that the British entered the 19th century as a nation of folk singers, but emerged as a nation of oratorio singers. The Birmingham Triennial Festival, founded in 1787, became one of the principal commissioners of new works for large choruses and orchestras, and one of that festival’s favorite composers was Felix Mendelssohn.

Also a favorite of Queen Victoria and her Prince Consort Albert, Mendelssohn wrote and conducted St. Paul and his Second Piano Concerto for the 1837 Festival, and composed Elijah for the 1846 event, the year before he died. Elijah became so popular that it was performed at every successive festival until the series ended in 1912.

On Saturday, May 6 at 8:00 pm, Christopher Wilkins will conduct the Akron Symphony and the combined voices of the Akron Symphony Chorus, the Summit Choral Society’s Masterworks Chorale, and the University of Akron choruses, prepared by Marie Bucoy-Calavan, in Mendelssohn’s famous oratorio. [Read more…]

Apollo’s Fire: “Beethoven the Revolutionary” at CMA with Noah Bendix-Balgley (Apr. 28)

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by Daniel Hathaway

AF-Bendix-Balgley-CMATo cap off its 25th anniversary season, Jeannette Sorrell and Cleveland’s Baroque Orchestra, Apollo’s Fire, made a big leap across historical and stylistic boundaries into the early Romantic music of Beethoven. In the second of four performances on Friday evening, April 28 at the Cleveland Museum of Art, Sorrell fielded an orchestra of 49 players (huge by AF standards) and joined forces with violinist Noah Bendix-Balgley (making his period instrument debut) to lead a spirited foray into music premiered in the first decade of the 19th century. [Read more…]

Apollo’s Fire caps off its 25th season with “Revolutionary Beethoven”

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by Daniel Hathaway

afjsconductingHistorical performance groups have revitalized Baroque music by performing 17th- and 18th-century works on the instruments for which they were written. More recently, a number of those ensembles have made forays into the classical world of Haydn and Mozart and the early Romantic era of Beethoven and Mendelssohn, expanding their musical rhetoric and stretching the capabilities of their instruments.

Now add Jeannette Sorrell and Apollo’s Fire to that list. Cleveland’s Baroque Orchestra will conclude their 25th-anniversary season with “Beethoven and Schubert Rediscovered,” a festival that includes four Beethoven concerts, a “Schubertiade,” a dance workshop, and lectures and panel discussions.

The Beethoven programs, which run from April 26-29, will feature Berlin Philharmonic first concertmaster Noah Bendix-Balgley performing the Violin Concerto. The program includes the Egmont Overture and the Fifth Symphony.

[Read more…]

Les Délices: tragic stories inspire beautiful cantatas at Plymouth (April 9)

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by Daniel Hathaway

LesDelicesPlymouth012217You can count on Les Délices, Cleveland’s French Baroque specialists, to curate inspired programs and perform them with consummate skill. “Fated Lovers,” featuring cantatas by Louis-Nicolas Clérambault and Jean-Philippe Rameau, continued that tradition on Sunday afternoon, April 9 in Herr Chapel at Plymouth Church. The tragic stories of Hero and Leander, Pyramus and Thisbe, and Hippolyte and Aricie inspired gorgeous music expressively sung by soprano Clara Rottsolk and tenor Jason McStoots, supported by the instrumentalists of Les Délices. [Read more…]

Quire Cleveland sing Davy’s St. Matthew Passion (April 9)

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by Timothy Robson

Quire-Davy-1This past weekend, as the culmination of a three-decade labor of love, Cleveland scholar, professor, and conductor Ross Duffin conducted his reconstruction of 15th-century English composer Richard Davy’s St. Matthew Passion. Performances were given in Akron and Cleveland by Duffin’s own Quire Cleveland with Jeffrey Strauss and Owen McIntosh as the soloists. I heard the Sunday afternoon performance on April 9 at Historic St. Peter’s Church in downtown Cleveland. [Read more…]

Stambaugh Auditorium Organ Series: catching up with Christopher Houlihan

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by Daniel Hathaway

Houlihan-Christopher-by-SteinerNew York-based organist Christopher Houlihan returns to the restored E.M. Skinner organ at Youngstown’s Stambaugh Auditorium on Sunday, April 23 at 4:00 pm for a program of music by Louis Vierne, Olivier Messiaen, J.S. Bach, and César Franck.

Houlihan is well-known in Northeast Ohio, having played Bach, Franck, and Vierne at Stambaugh in November 2012, Vierne and Liszt at Fairmount Presbyterian Church in Cleveland Heights in April 2013, and most recently, Bach, Franck, and Vierne at Christ Presbyterian Church in Canton on March 19 of this year.

That repertoire list gives a big hint about Houlihan’s musical tastes, which run heavily toward French Romantic music, a national tradition the organist imbibed first-hand during a year he spent in Paris serving as assistant organist at the American Cathedral. [Read more…]

Cleveland Chamber Music Society: prepping to hear Beethoven with the Takács Quartet

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by Daniel Hathaway

TakacsQuartetOne of the Cleveland Chamber Music Society’s favorite ensembles, the Takács Quartet, will return to Plymouth Church on Tuesday, April 18 at 7:30 pm for a program of works by Ludwig van Beethoven — one quartet each from his early, middle, and late periods.

On Tuesday, violinists Edward Dusinberre and Károly Schranz, violist Geraldine Walther, and cellist András Fejér will play the quartets in B-flat, Op. 18, No. 6, in F, Op. 135, and in C, Op. 59, No. 3, the “Razumovsky,” arranged not in chronological order, but in an uplifting spiral of rising fifths from B-flat to F, to C.

It’s common knowledge that Beethoven turned music on its ear during his creatively eventful career, but it’s worthwhile reminding ourselves from time to time exactly how he changed the course of musical composition and performance. [Read more…]

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