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DIARY: Wednesday, May 3, 2023

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By Daniel Hathaway

IN THIS EDITION:

. Lunchtime concert, a Rimsky one-act, pianist Maria Pires at Severance, percussion and gospel at Oberlin

. La Scala expands online programming, farewell to Gordon Lightfoot

. Almanac: how Heinrich Biber ended up in Salzburg

HAPPENING TODAY:

Trinity Cathedral’s free Bach Fest continues both in-person and online at noon, when Julie Andrijeski will play the G Major Violin Sonata and organist Todd Wilson will follow with the E-flat Trio Sonata (webcast available).

[Read more…]

DIARY: Monday, May 1, 2023

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By Daniel Hathaway

IN THIS EDITION:

. Charnofsky’s latest discoveries, and the challenges of producing Don Giovanni

. Almanac: remembering Leo Sowerby (pictured)

HAPPENING TODAY:

As he does every Monday from 2-4 pm, Eric Charnofsky goes searching for unusual and underperformed works for his program Not Your Grandmother’s Classical Music. Featured today: Anton Arensky’s Suite No. 3 “Variations” for Two Pianos, Yelena Firsova’s Misterioso (in memoriam Stravinsky) for string quartet, Charles Ives’ selected songs for baritone and piano, John Heiss’s Whimsies (flute and piano), Nino Rota’s Cello Concerto No. 2 & Dietrich Buxtehude’s Sonata in G for violins, gamba, and basso continuo. Click here to listen to the internet feed: or tune in to 91.1 FM in the greater Cleveland area. [Read more…]

Johansen to solo with Women’s Orchestra on Sunday in Dvořák Cello Concerto 

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by Daniel Hathaway

The Cleveland Women’s Orchestra will make its 88th annual visit to Severance Music Center on Sunday, April 30 at 3:30 pm when Cleveland Orchestra cellist Dane Johansen will be featured in Antonin Dvořák’s Cello Concerto in b minor. Filling out the program, Jungho Kim will lead the ensemble in Dolores White’s Celebration, Salute to the Arts, and Jean Sibelius’ King Christian II Suite, Op. 27.

Johansen, a native of Fairbanks, Alaska,  joined the cello section of The Cleveland Orchestra in March of 2016, after studying at the Cleveland Institute of Music, the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Paris, and at the Juilliard School, and touring for five seasons with the Escher String Quartet.

In addition to performing Elliott Carter’s concerto during the composer’s centennial celebrations at Lincoln Center, Johansen made his Carnegie Hall debut as first winner of the Juilliard Leo Ruiz Memorial Award and appeared in William Walton’s Concerto with the London Philharmonic Orchestra. [Read more…]

DIARY: Weekend, April 28-30, 2023

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By Daniel Hathaway

IN THIS EDITION:

. Weekend concert agenda (by category)

. Maltz Family Foundation gifts $10 million to Blossom, Memory is a muscle, writes Angela Hewitt

. Almanac: highlighting Michael Daugherty, “Duke” Ellington & Robert Shaw

HAPPENING THIS WEEKEND (BY CATEGORY):

Orchestras: The Cleveland Orchestra continues its set featuring the premiere of Wynton Marselis’s Trumpet Concerto (Michael Sachs, Franz Welser-Möst on the podium, Friday at 7:30 & Saturday at 8), the Oberlin Sinfonietta and Oberlin Chamber Orchestra perform on Friday at 7:30, the Cleveland Women’s Orchestra makes its 88th annual trip to Severance (Jungho Kim conducting, with cellist Dane Johansen in the Dvořák Concerto, Sunday at 3:30), and the Canton Symphony and Chorus present a program featuring the Dvořák Requiem (Gerhardt Zimmermann, conducting, Sunday at 7). [Read more…]

Singers Club of Cleveland to take its spring program on tour to the Baltics

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by Daniel Hathaway

One of Northeast Ohio’s oldest continuing ensembles, The Singers Club of Cleveland, made its debut in the chapel of First Baptist Church on April 19, 1894.

The all-male chorus, which had tallied up 1,663 members by the time its entry in The Encyclopedia of Cleveland History was written in 1995, will return to First Baptist Church for a spring concert on Friday, April 28 at 7 pm  — not to the edifice where the chorus sang its first concert, but to its new Gothic building designed by Walker and Weeks and dedicated in 1929.

Friday’s concert will also set the distinguished ensemble off on a new course. Having stayed close to home for over a century, the Singers Club will embark on a week-long tour of Latvia, Estonia, and Finland in June.

“We’re going to be there during the Summer Solstice, which is a huge celebration in the Baltics,” music director Don Verkuilen said in a telephone conversation. [Read more…]

DIARY: Wednesday, April 26, 2023

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By Daniel Hathaway

IN THIS EDITION:

. Bach at noon

. Liu at Oberlin, Apple finally speaks classical music

. Remembering Margaret Bonds

HAPPENING TODAY:

Trinity Cathedral’s BachFest continues at noon today with violinist Andrew Sords performing the B-Minor Partita, and organist Todd Wilson playing the E-minor Trio Sonata. It’s free and you can enjoy it both in person and as a live stream.  Details in our Concert Listings.

INTERESTING READ:

San Francisco Chronicle critic Joshua Kosman writes about Apple’s new classical streaming service, which finally speaks the language of classical musicians and solves many of the search problems that the latter have found so frustrating when using other sources of streaming music. [Read more…]

Chopin Competition Winner Bruce Liu To Perform on Oberlin Artist Recital Series

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This article is posted with the permission of the author and Oberlin Conservatory 

by Cathy Partlow Strauss

Rising Canadian pianist Bruce Liu, winner of the 18th Chopin International Piano Competition in Warsaw, Poland, will perform the closing program on the Oberlin Artist Recital Series 2022-23 season. The concert is at 2:30 p.m. on April 30 in historic Finney Chapel.

Liu will play pieces by Frederic Chopin and Franz Liszt—two great pianist-composers who expanded the piano repertoire in ways that still astound and move artists and audiences.

He describes the music on his spring recital programs as “operatic and full of romantic scenes.”

This concert features Chopin—the poet of the piano—at two distinct stages in his tragically brief career: his early time in Poland in the 1820s, and his artistic maturity during the following decade in Paris. [Read more…]

DIARY: Monday, April 24, 2023

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By Daniel Hathaway

IN THIS EDITION:

. The latest playlist from Charnofsky’s Monday show

. The Hammond B-3 story and its jazz stars (pictured: Jones, Baccus Sr., DeFrancesco)

HAPPENING TODAY:

Bored with the usual classical radio fare? Try Eric Charnofsky’s two-hour CWRU program “Not Your Grandmother’s Classical Music” which  airs every Monday from 2-4 pm. This week’s featured music includes Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s String Quartet #1, Olivier Messiaen’s Hymn for Orchestra, Cliff Eidelman’s Night in the Gallery, Tom Lopez’s The Piper’s Son (piano and electronics, Reynaldo Hahn’s Violin Sonata in C & Don Walker’s Cummings Country (SATB chorus, vibraphone, contrabass). Click here to listen to the internet feed, or tune in to 91.1 FM in the greater Cleveland area.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

Chicago inventor Laurens Hammond filed a patent on April 24, 1934 for a new electric organ, an event that produced consequences he couldn’t have imagined at the time. [Read more…]

DIARY: Weekend, April 21-23, 2023

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By Daniel Hathaway

IN THIS EDITION:

. BW Bach Festival heads a long list of weekend performances

. Almanac: A Handel disaster, a Margaret Brouwer environmental cantata premiere, Shakespeare + Vaughan Williams, a perfect marriage of words and music

HAPPENING THIS WEEKEND:

Multiple performances include the 91st Baldwin Wallace Bach Festival, which begins on Friday evening when the Boston-based Baroque string band ACRONYM plays an all-Bach concert featuring two of J. S. Bach’s six Brandenburg Concertos, along with one of his cantatas, and more. The special guest is Catharina Meints, viola da gamba.

Guest conductor Bernard Labadie continues a four-concert run with The Cleveland Orchestra featuring soprano Lucy Crowe on Friday evening (through a Sunday matinee), Les Délices salutes Renaissance patron Isabella D’Este in Akron Friday evening, program repeated Saturday evening in Lakewood and Sunday afternoon in Shaker Hts.

The Cleveland Philharmonic presents competition winner Marina Ziegler (violin, in the Sibelius concerto) on Friday evening at CSU and Sunday afternoon in Westlake, Jay White leads Quire Cleveland in multiple settings of the Lord’s Prayer on Friday evening in downtown Cleveland, repeated Saturday evening in Chesterland and Sunday afternoon in Rocky River, and Cleveland Ballet premieres Anna Segal’s new score Symphony of Life on Friday evening in Playhouse Square, repeated Saturday evening. [Read more…]

Quire Cleveland: creating an entire program of “Our Fathers”

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by Daniel Hathaway

Well-known for crafting interesting programs, Quire Cleveland’s artistic director Jay White has done that once again for the 19-voice professional ensemble’s forthcoming concerts in Cleveland, Chesterland, and Rocky River from April 21-23.

“Pater Noster” will feature seventeen settings of Christianity’s most famous prayer in six languages by known and anonymous composers dating from the last 400 years.

The Lord’s Prayer is the supplication that Jesus taught his disciples when they asked him how they should pray to God the Father. His answer is preserved in slightly different versions in two of the Gospels: Matthew 6:9–13 and Luke 11:1–4.

To learn more, I reached Jay White by telephone in his studio at Kent State University, where he had just celebrated the first balmy breezes of spring by opening all the windows. [Read more…]

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