by Daniel Hathaway
For the second recital in its 2017 Concert Series, the Cleveland International Piano Competition presented Marc-André Hamelin at the Cleveland Museum of Art on Tuesday evening, March 21. The Montréal-born pianist gave outstanding performances of works by Haydn, Feinberg, Beethoven, Scriabin, and Chopin that could teach future competition contestants a lot about how to prick up the ears of juries and audiences. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
This week’s Cleveland Orchestra concerts will feature Baroque music by Handel, Rameau, and Purcell, led by British guest conductor Harry Bicket, who has established a distinguished operatic career at Glyndebourne, Covent Garden, The Met, and Santa Fe. Since 2007, he has served as artistic director of The English Concert, an early music ensemble founded by Trevor Pinnock, who led the group for 30 years.
Bicket’s career trajectory might have gone in quite a different direction. After posts as organ scholar of St. George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle and Christ Church Oxford, he was appointed sub-organist at Westminster Abbey at the age of 23. Well on his way to becoming organist at a major English cathedral, Bicket had doubts. “I thought, OK, I could stay at the Abbey for the next 40 years, considering it’s just about the best job ever,” Bicket said by telephone from his home in London, “but is that really what I want to do?”
He left Westminster Abbey without any real plan in mind. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
On Friday, March 31 at 7:30 pm, Oxford’s New College Choir will make a stop at Trinity Cathedral for a concert including both Anglican Church Music favorites and new works as part of the Choir’s six-city American tour.
The choir of boys and men dates from 1379, when William of Wykeham, the founder of Winchester College, established an educational outpost named The Warden and Scholars of St. Mary’s College of Winchester in Oxford. That title being both unwieldy and confusing (there was already a college of St. Mary in Oxford), the institution soon came to be known as New College.
New College Choir now has a relatively new director in Robert Quinney, who in 2014 replaced Edward Higginbottom after the latter’s four decades serving New College. Quinney assumed the directorship of the 30-voice ensemble after an organ scholarship at King’s College, Cambridge; an assistantship at Westminster Abbey (where he played for the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton); and a brief tour of duty as organist of Peterborough Cathedral. [Read more…]
by Timothy Robson
Johann Sebastian Bach’s monumental Clavier-Übung III is arguably the greatest collection of organ works of all time. Comprised of twenty-one chorale preludes and four duets, and bookended with a prelude and fugue in E-flat major, the Clavier-Übung III is the final distillation of Baroque organ counterpoint. American organist Jonathan Ryan played Bach’s longest, most complex, and most difficult organ work Tuesday evening, March 21 on Trinity Cathedral’s 1977 Flentrop organ. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Some 1,200 patrons gathered at Severance Hall on Friday evening, March 17 to hear details of The Cleveland Orchestra’s 100th-anniversary season in 2017-2018. The evening began with a sumptuous reception in the lobbies accompanied by string music from members of the Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra playing alongside Cleveland Orchestra musicians.
Moving to the main auditorium, the crowd heard remarks from executive director André Gremillet and newly-elected Musical Arts Association president Richard K. Smucker, and reflections from Orchestra musicians Massimo La Rosa, Martha Baldwin, and Joshua Smith on their experiences. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Those who say they like or don’t like the music of Igor Stravinsky risk being detained for further questioning: which of the different styles the composer took on and discarded during his long 20th-century career are you referring to? There were several to be heard on The Cleveland Orchestra’s all-Stravinsky program on Thursday evening, all masterfully performed under the direction of Franz Welser-Möst with the help of the Cleveland Orchestra Chorus and Miami’s Seraphic Fire. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Having devoted its most recent concerts to Johann Sebastian Bach’s orchestral music, Apollo’s Fire will dedicate its next set of performances to three categories of works he wrote for the churches of Leipzig, where he served as Cantor from 1723 until his death in 1750.
The programs, which run from March 23-26 in Fairlawn, Cleveland Heights, and Rocky River, will include two Cantatas, a Motet, and a Missa Brevis.
Apollo’s Fire and Apollo’s Singers will be led by guest conductor and harpsichordist Joseph Gascho, who teaches on the faculty at the University of Michigan. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Despite its unassuming title, the idea of the Clavier-Übung — a collection of pieces exploring the practice of keyboard music — inspired a number of Baroque composers to some of their best compositional efforts. First among them was Johann Sebastian Bach, whose four-part published collection included the Six Partitas (collected in 1731), the Italian Concerto and French Overture (1735), the German Organ Mass (1739), and the aria with thirty variations we’ve nicknamed the “Goldberg Variations.”
Organist Jonathan Ryan, who pursued his undergraduate studies with Todd Wilson at the Cleveland Institute of Music before moving on to Eastman, will play the German Organ Mass, or Clavier-Übung III, on the Flentrop Organ in Trinity Cathedral on Tuesday, March 21 at 7:30 pm. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Hungarian conductor Iván Fischer’s Eine Deutsch-Jiddische Kantate: Die Stimmen der Geister is on the next program of the Chagrin Concert Series on Sunday, March 19 at 3:00 pm in Valley Lutheran Church in Chagrin Falls. Mezzo-soprano Lara Nie and trumpeter Richard Fields will be featured in the rarely-performed work.
“Marlon Daniel, who will conduct works on Sunday’s program, has worked with Fischer and is a great admirer,” Nie said in a telephone conversation from her home in New York. “Marlon and I were students at the Manhattan School of Music twenty years ago, and when he heard this piece, he thought of me. I finally got hold of the music, and it’s absolutely stunning.”
Nie described the work as a combination of cultural and folk poetry set to music that ranges in style from Bach to modal Jewish folk song to Yiddish theater music. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Montréal-born pianist Marc-André Hamelin will play a recital on the Cleveland International Piano Competition Concert Series at the Cleveland Museum of Art on Tuesday, March 21 at 8:00 pm. His first local recital since 2010 includes sonatas by Haydn, Beethoven, Scriabin, and Chopin, in addition to works by a lesser-known Russian composer, Samuel Feinberg.
I reached the affable pianist-composer by telephone at his home in Boston to ask about his current activities, and to collect some insights into his Cleveland program.
Daniel Hathaway: You’re having a very busy year that includes an extensive tour with Leif-Ove Andsnes, serving on the jury of the Van Cliburn Competition — for which you’ve written a required piece — and performances of one of your compositions with the Pacifica Quartet. [Read more…]