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DIARY: Thursday, October 10, 2024

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by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING TODAY:

Two Finnish musicians — conductor and composer Esa-Pekka Salonen and cellist Senja Rummukainen — will be featured in tonight’s Cleveland Orchestra concert at 7:30 pm at Severance Music Center. The program includes Maurice Ravel’s Le Tombeau de Couperin, Salonen’s Cello Concerto, and Jean Sibelius’ Symphony No. 5. Tickets available online. Read a preview interview with Rummukainen on this page.

SOME HEADLINES IN THE NEWS:

Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra experiments with creative experiences for next-gen audiences — Cincinnati Business Courier

Decoding the Trend Busters: How Some Arts Organizations Are Increasing Participation as National Figures Decline — National Endowment for the Arts

In Salt Lake City, Sports Drive a New Vision for Downtown: A proposal to remake the area would please the owner of the city’s N.B.A. and N.H.L. teams. But others, including classical musicians, aren’t so thrilled. —New York Times

TODAY’S ALMANAC: [Read more…]

DIARY: Tuesday, October 8, 2024

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by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING TODAY: 

At 12 Noon on Tuesdays at the Covenant series, organist Bernhard Klapprott (pictured left, from Weimar, Germany) will play 17th and 18th century music on the Newberry organ in the Church of the Covenant in University Circle. Click here to view the concert program.

And at 7:30 pm, the Cleveland Institute of Music Orchestra will travel down the street to Severance Music Center, where Jake Taniguchi will lead a program of Beethoven, J.S. Bach, and Florence Price, featuring violinists Jaime Laredo and Jessica Lee.

BOP STOP TURNS TEN:

The BOP STOP will celebrate its tenth anniversary with a week of performances from October 15-20 including innovative jazz, local and national acts, experimental works and fan favorites. Donated to The Music Settlement in 2014, BOP STOP schedules more than 300 concerts and events each season in its Hingetown venue that reach some 12,000 audience members and engage more than 7,000 local and national artists.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

German composer Heinrich Schütz was born in Bad Köstritz on this date in 1585. [Read more…]

DIARY: Weekend, October 4-6, 2024

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by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING THIS WEEKEND: 

We list 21 events from Friday through Sunday, including multiple performances by several organizations. Visit our Concert Listings for details, and read previews on this page for

  • BlueWater Chamber Orchestra (Saturday at 7:30 at the Church of the Covenant, and Sunday at 4 at St. Noel Church)
  • Les Délices in “Moonlit Mozart” (Saturday at 7:30 at Disciples Church, and Sunday at 4 at West Shore Unitarian Universalist Church
  • Conrad Tao premiering Adam Roberts’ Book of Flowers (pictured) on the Kent Keyboard Series (Sunday at 5 in Ludwig Recital Hall)
  • Salar Nader and Homayoun Sakhi bring Afghan music to Oberlin (Sunday at 7:30 in Finney Chapel).

INTERESTING READ:

The October issue of Gramophone includes a feature about Swedish violinist Johan Dalene, who has released a new album paying tribute to virtuoso icons from the past. Dalene won first prize in the 2017 Thomas and Evon Cooper International Competition in Oberlin, after performing the Tchaikovsky concerto with Jahja Ling and The Cleveland Orchestra at Severance Hall. Click here to explore the issue.

WEEKEND ALMANAC: [Read more…]

Elim Chan sculpts endless varieties of glorious sound from Yefim Bronfman, Cleveland Orchestra (Sept. 27)

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by Daniel Hathaway

This article was originally published on Cleveland.com.

CLEVELAND, Ohio — In the symphonic world, a change of conductor often means a change of repertoire as well. When Elim Chan stepped in to lead four Cleveland Orchestra concerts this weekend featuring Yefim Bronfman in Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3 (1909), she swapped out Stravinsky’s Petrushka for another Rachmaninoff work, his Symphonic Dances (1940).

On paper, that looked like an overabundance of Rachmaninoff, but Chan and the Orchestra made the Russian super-melodist’s lavish scores sound freshly minted, transparent, and teeming with exquisite detail.

After hearing numerous performances of “Rach 3” by piano competition hopefuls, it was revelatory on Thursday evening, September 26, to experience the work interpreted by a mature artist who is fully in control of its musical content, and whose transitions can make sense of the composer’s mercurial changes of direction.

[Read more…]

Conrad Tao to premiere Adam Roberts’ Book of Flowers on Kent Keyboard Series

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by Daniel Hathaway

A new collection of solo piano miniatures by Kent State University composition professor Adam Roberts will be unveiled by its dedicatee, Conrad Tao, during his upcoming solo recital on the Kent Piano Series on Sunday afternoon, October 6, at 5:00 pm in Ludwig Recital Hall.

Book of Flowers is a collection of sixteen character pieces for piano. Roberts writes in his composer notes that “each piece aims to capture a particular energy, from the playful and rhythmic, to the fragile and breakable, to the brutal and ferocious.”

I arranged for a recent Zoom conversation with the composer and the pianist to learn more about the project. Adam Roberts was in his studio at Kent State, and Conrad Tao was on tour in Iowa.

Daniel Hathaway: How did Book of Flowers come about?

Adam Roberts: I don’t usually just write pieces randomly, but I had written a couple of miniatures and for a long time I had yearned to write a book of my own piano music to see if I could get my language into that form. [Read more…]

DIARY: Thursday, October 3, 2024

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by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING TODAY: 

Doug Droste conducts the Baldwin Wallace Symphony with violist Ashley Gordon, founder, Castle of our Skins (Gamble Auditorium, at 7), Les Délices presents Moonlit Mozart — wind band music including serenades and opera selections (First Methodist in Akron at 7:30), Canton Symphony musicians join rapper Marcus Smith for a hip-hop and R&B-influenced program at The Auricle, and a huge cast of performers including the Tulsa Ballet, Cleveland Ballet, Cleveland Pops, tap dancers, and vocalists will invoke the golden age of Hollywood (7:30 at Key Bank State Theater).

Visit our Concert Listings for details of upcoming performances.

NEWS BRIEFS:

WFMT reports that “Giancarlo Guerrero has been announced as the new artistic director and principal conductor of Chicago’s Grant Park Music Festival. [Read more…]

DIARY: Tuesday, October 1, 2024

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by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING TODAY: 

Two organ programs to highlight today,

At 12 Noon, Charlotte Beers Plank plays 17th and 18th century music on the Newberry organ at the Church of the Covenant.

And tonight at 7:30, organist David von Behren, who earned his undergraduate degree at CIM while serving as organ scholar at Plymouth Church in Shaker Heights, and now serves as assistant organist and choirmaster at Harvard University’s Memorial Church, plays a recital on the Schantz organ in Fairmount Presbyterian Church in partnership with the Cleveland Chapter of the American Guild of Organists. His program includes solo works and his own transcriptions for violin and organ (he plays both at the same time).

Visit our Concert Listings for details of upcoming performances.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

On this date in 1965, French composer Paul Dukas was born in Paris. [Read more…]

Pavel Kolesnikov dazzles with J.S. Bach’s “Goldberg” Variations in Severance recital (Sept. 24)

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by Daniel Hathaway

This article was originally published on Cleveland.com

CLEVELAND, Ohio — When Johann Sebastian Bach had his “Keyboard exercise, consisting of an ARIA with diverse variations for harpsichord with two manuals” published by Balthasar Schmid in Nuremberg in 1741, he noted in the preface that the work was “composed for connoisseurs, for the refreshment of their spirits.”

Whether or not the sizeable crowd in Reinberger Chamber Hall at Severance Music Center on Tuesday evening, September 24 regarded themselves as connoisseurs, the powerful ovation at the end of Pavel Kolesnikov’s 75-minute program suggested that their spirits had surely been refreshed — if not profoundly touched — both by the composer’s genius and the pianist’s captivating performance of the Variations. [Read more…]

DIARY: Thursday, September 26, 2024

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by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING TODAY: 

  • 12 Noon – CIM Museum Melodies, one-hour programs featuring pianists from the Cleveland Institute of Music at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History
  • 7:00 pm – Chagrin Arts & Cleveland Metropolitan Bar Association present “Freedom Rocks,” a concert to end wrongful conviction, featuring trumpeter Dominick Farinacci at Cleveland Metropolitan Bar Association
  • 7:00 pm – Nightingale Opera. Jake Heggie’s Two Remain, based on the true stories of Holocaust survivors Krystyna Żywulska, a political dissident, and Gad Beck, a Jewish gay man, at Congregation Mishkan Or
  • 7:30 pm – Oberlin Sinfonietta with soprano Katherine Jolly (pictured) in Warner Concert Hall
  • 7:30 pm – CIM Faculty Recital: Gerardo Teissonnière plays the complete Impromptus of Schubert at the Maltz
  • 7:30 pm – The Cleveland Orchestra with Elim Chan, conductor and Yefim Bronfman, piano, at Severance Music Center.

Visit our Concert Listings for details of upcoming performances.

SEASON ANNOUNCEMENT:

Heights Arts has announced details of its new season, including its intimate Close Encounters chamber music series and community-focused ARTbar and Gallery Concerts. Read an announcement here. [Read more…]

DIARY: Tuesday, September 24, 2024

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by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING TODAY: 

At Noon, organist Christa Rakich plays original works & music by J. S. Bach at the Church of the Covenant.

And three concerts are on the docket for tonight, all beginning at 7:30.

The Cleveland Chamber Music Society launches its 75th season with the all-male vocal ensemble Chanticleer (pictured). “Music of a Silent World,” at The Cultural Arts Center at Disciples Church celebrates the music of nature in works by Majel Connery, William Byrd, Heinrich Isaac, Robert Schumann, Tom Petty, Lawrence, and Ayanna Woods, and a gala reception follows.

Meanwhile, two masters of the keyboard go head to head. The London-based, Siberian-born pianist Pavel Kolesnikov will present J.S. Bach’s complete “Goldberg Variations” in Reinberger Chamber Hall at Severance Music Center, and British-born organist David Briggs, currently artist-in-residence at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York, will make the Holtkamp organ in the Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist, sound orchestral in a program that includes his own Improvised Symphony in 4 Movements.

Visit our Concert Listings for details of upcoming performances.

SEASON ANNOUNCEMENT:

No Exit New Music has announced details of its 16th season, “New Season, New Sounds,” which begins with performances from October 17-19 at Cleveland State University’s Drinko Auditorium, Waterloo Arts, and SPACES. See the detailed schedule here.

TODAY’S ALMANAC: 

British conductor and musical scholar Christopher Hogwood died of a brain tumor in Cambridge on this date in 2014. One of the forerunners in the early music revival movement, Hogwood relaunched the 18th-century Academy of Ancient Music in 1973, clearing a pathway for such later conductors as Roger Norrington, John Eliot Gardiner and Trevor Pinnock. The AAM eventually outgrew its concentration on Baroque music and recorded the complete symphonies of Mozart and Beethoven, as well as all of Mozart’s piano concertos with Robert Levin.

Hogwood was also noted for transforming Boston’s Handel and Haydn Society into a period instrument ensemble, along with his influential guest conducting appearances with a number of symphony orchestras. His career is detailed in Barry Millington’s obituary in The Guardian.

Click here to watch Hogwood’s performance of Haydn’s last symphony with the NHK Symphony Orchestra (misidentified as the AAM!), and here to watch a performance he led of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 15 with Robert Levin, who provided his own improvised cadenzas.

To see Christopher Hogwood in action as a musical scholar who served on the faculty of London’s Gresham College, here are two lecture-concerts: London: Music Under the Shadow of Handel, and an analysis of Messiaen’s Quatuor pour la fin du Temps.

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