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DIARY: Weekend, October 21 – 23, 2022

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by Daniel Hathaway

IN THIS EDITION:

.  Concerts in all flavors to choose from

. R.I.P. violinist Geoff Nuttall (pictured), news from Piano Cleveland

. Howard Hanson & Franz Liszt celebrate birthdays, Jean-Marie Leclair & Alessandro Scarlatti take their leave

WEEKEND  EVENTS:

Today, at 12:15 pm, McGaffin Carillon Concert & Live Stream presents Sheryl Modlin, guest carillonneur (Church of the Saviour, Cleveland Hts.). Her program of Halloween favorites includes themes from The Adams Family and the Munsters, “the” Bach Toccata & music by Gounod, Chopin, and John Williams. McGaffin Tower, 11205 Euclid Ave., Cleveland. Free. Click here for live stream.

At 7:30 the imaginative period ensemble Les Délices unveils their new program, Winds of Change, at the Akron Public Library (downtown). The all-instrumental concert features chamber works from the eve of the French and Haitian Revolutions, inspired by philosophical ideals of liberty and equality and early abolitionist writing. Classical Era works by Joseph Bologne Chevalier de St. Georges and Luigi Boccherini will be paired with Haitian composer Sydney Guillaume’s commission A Journey to Freedom. [Read more…]

DIARY: Wednesday, October 19, 2022

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by Daniel Hathaway

IN THIS EDITION:

. Farewell to Gabriel’s horns at Trinity

. Scottish Chamber Orchestra soloist Nicola Benedetti profiled, anniversaries of Ravel’s Pictures, Gershwin’s Lullaby, and the premature departure of Jacqueline du Pré

TODAY’S  EVENTS:

At noon, Trinity Cathedral’s Brownbag Concert features the popular big band Gabriel’s Horns (pictured). If you’re a fan, you should know that bandleader James Mays is retiring, so this will be the horns’ final appearance on the lunchtime series at Trinity Cathedral, 2230 Euclid Ave., Cleveland. Freewill offering.

IN THE NEWS:

Violinist Nicola Benedetti, who will appear on Akron’s Tuesday Musical Series on Thursday with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra in the Max Bruch Concerto, is profiled in The Guardian in conjunction with her recent appointment as director of the Edinburgh Festival. [Read more…]

DIARY: Monday, October 17, 2022,

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by Daniel Hathaway

IN THIS EDITION:

. Sphinx Virtuosi visit CIM, Charnofsky interviews bassist Ruth Cavano

. Anniversaries, some tragic, and invitations to explore some overlooked chamber music

TODAY’S  EVENTS:

2:00 pm – Not Your Grandmother’s Classical Music, Eric Charnofksy hosts a new episode that includes. Michael Nyman’s Where the Bee Dances for soprano saxophone and chamber orchestra, Sara Feigin’s Variations for piano, Ivor Gurney’s Five Elizabethan Songs, Joseph Martin Kraus’s Riksdags March for orchestra, plus a special interview with prize-winning CWRU double bass student Ruth Cavano, discussing her upcoming recital on campus and playing a sampling of her repertoire by J.S. Bach and Andrés Martín. Join the broadcast on WRUW.

7:30 pm – CIM welcomes Sphinx Virtuosi, featuring Tommy Mesa, cello & Hannah Whitc, violin, in the program “Songs for our Times,” featuring Jessie Montgomery’s Strum, & Divided for Solo Cello & Orchestra,Michael Dudley’s Prayer for our Times, Valerie Coleman’s Tracing Visions, Carlos Simon’s Between Worlds, Heitor Villa-Lobos’ Bachianas Brasileiras No. 9, Ricardo Herz’s Sísifo na Cidade Grande & Ludwig van Beethoven’s Violin Sonata No. 9 in a, arr. Rubén Rngel. Kulas Hall, Cleveland Institute of Music, 11021 East Boulevard, Cleveland. Free but seating passes required. [Read more…]

DIARY: Weekend, October 14-16, 2022

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by Daniel Hathaway with Mike Telin

IN THIS EDITION:

. The weekend concert calendar gives you a multiplicity of options.

. CIM ventures outside University Circle in an expanded series of community concerts.

. Hamilton C. MacDougall and William Barclay Squire (who?) make their debuts while Leonard Bernstein and Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck (pictured above on a Dutch 25 guilder banknote) exit the scene.

WEEKEND EVENTS: 

On Friday, October 14 at 11:00 am Nikolaj Szeps-Znaider leads The Cleveland Orchestra with cello soloist Mark Kosower in Canadian-American composer Karim Al-Zand’s timely Lamentation On The Disasters of War, Ernst Bloch’s Schelomo (Solomon, Hebraic Rhapsody for Cello and Orchestra) & Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3 (“Eroica”) at Severance Music Center, 11001 Euclid Avenue, Cleveland. Tickets are available online for this program, which will be repeated Saturday at 8:00 pm and Sunday at 3:00 pm. Read our preview article here.

On Friday at 7 pm, The Singers’ Club of Cleveland reprises a concert of reflective choral music in recognition of the global impact of the COVID pandemic. The featured work is British composer David Briggs’ Requiem for men’s voices and organ.. First Baptist Church, 3630 Fairmount Boulevard, Cleveland Heights. Tickets available online. [Read more…]

From Trafalgar Square to Shaker Square: CCMS presents St. Martin’s Chamber Ensemble

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by Daniel Hathaway

On Tuesday, October 18, London’s Academy of St. Martin in the Fields Chamber Ensemble will return to the Cleveland Chamber Music Series at Plymouth Church in Shaker Square to play works by Purcell, Brahms, and Enesco.

Not many musical groups are so closely associated in spirit and substance with a building as is the Academy of St. Martin with the grand parish church built to the plans of architect James Gibbs in 1720.

Only the second church to occupy its central London site on Trafalgar Square, St. Martin’s, inspired by Greek and Roman temples, established a style that was widely applied to ecclesiastical buildings during the restoration of the City churches after the Great Fire of 1666 by such architects as Christopher Wren. And made its mark on American Protestant church buildings like Plymouth UCC in Shaker Heights (below).

St. Martin’s has shared its real estate with the monument to Admiral Horatio Nelson after the Battle of Trafalgar in 1808, with the National Gallery of Art, completed in 1838, and until their eviction at the turn of the 21st century, with a flock of 35,000 feral pigeons, not to mention protesters demonstrating en masse for multiple causes (like the 100,000 Pakistanis who poured into Trafalgar Square one Sunday in the 1970s when I decided to visit St. Martin’s for the first time).

Determined to serve as a cultural center as well as an organization dedicated to religious, societal, and justice issues, St. Martin’s became a thoroughly modern Anglican organization in the mid-20th century. As its website notes, “ From London’s first free lending library to the first religious broadcast, St. Martin’s has broken new ground in defining what it means to be a church.” [Read more…]

DIARY: Wednesday, October 12, 2022

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by Daniel Hathaway

IN THIS EDITION:

. An engaging ritual celebrated nightly since 1549

. Contemporary  music at Oberlin

. Revisiting the music of Ralph Vaughan Williams

TODAY’S EVENTS: 

At 6pm, Trinity Chamber Choir will sing the traditional Anglican service of Choral Evensong commemorating Edith Cavell +1915, nurse and martyr. with Jeremy Jackman’s responses, William Byrd’s Fauxbourdon Service, and Ralph Vaughan Williams’ Valiant-for-Truth. The Rev. Peter Faass officiates and Todd Wilson conducts.

This 45-minute service will be sung by Trinity’s resident choirs and guests every Wednesday from October through May at Trinity Cathedral, 2230 Euclid Ave., Cleveland. On his blog, concert pianist and polymath Stephen Hough (himself a Roman Catholic), wrote about the engaging British ritual, which has been sung nightly around the world sinc 1549:

Evensong hangs on the wall of life like an old, familiar cloak passed through the generations. Rich with prayer and scripture, it is nevertheless totally nonthreatening. It is a service into which all can stumble without censure – a rambling old house where everyone can find some corner to sit and think, to listen with half-attention, trailing a few absentminded fingers of faith or doubt in its passing stream. [Read more…]

DIARY: Monday, October 10, 2022

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by Daniel Hathaway

IN THIS EDITION:

. Tatsuya Nakatani CUSP concert, Charnofsky playlist

. Why orchestras flourish in the American Midwest, and a few births, deaths, and premieres for the record

TODAY’S EVENTS: 

8:00 pm – Cleveland Uncommon Sound Project presents Tatsuya Nakatani, avant-garde percussionist, composer, and artist of sound, with CUSP Improvisation Orchestra in “a spatially presented, structured improvisation.” Convivium 33 Gallery, 1433 E. 33 St,, Cleveland. $15 recommended ticket price or pay what you can. No one will be turned away for lack of funds.

Eric Charnofsky’s playlist for Not Your Grandmother’s Classical Music today from 2-4 pm: Charles Wakefield Cadman’s Sonata for Violin and Piano, Henri Dutilleux’s: Mystère de l’instant (string orchestra, cimbalom, and percussion), Jules Massenet’s Poème d’Octobre (baritone voice and piano), Paul Creston’s Symphony No. 4 (in celebration of his birth anniversary), Nicolas Flagello’s Electra (piano, celesta, harp, and percussion) & Erik Satie’s: solo piano selections. [Read more…]

DIARY: Weekend, October 7-9, 2022

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by Daniel Hathaway

IN THIS EDITION:

. Something for everyone to enjoy in this weekend’s concert listings

. The guest list for this weekend’s birthday anniversaries could spin off some fascinating conversations (about that missing opera, Herr Schütz…)

WEEKEND EVENTS: 

On Friday, October 7, three intriguing concerts all begin at 7:30 pm. 

An Evening of Czech Vocal Music features students preparing to compete at the 10th annual American International Czech and Slovak Voice Competition in Wisconsin. Guzzetta Recital Hall at the University of Akron. Free.

Conductor Thierry Fischer leads The Cleveland Orchestra in Boulez’s Notations, Stravinsky’s Violin Concerto with Leila Josefowicz, violin (replacing Vilde Frang, who will not appear due to travel complications), and Saint-Saëns Symphony No. 3 (“Organ”) with Todd Wilson at Severance Music Center. The program is repeated on Saturday at 8:00 pm. Tickets available online.

The third is a guest recital by The Unheard of Ensemble, Ford Fourqurean, clarinet, Matheus Souza & Erica Dicker, violins, Iva Casian-Lakoš, cello & Daniel Anastasio, piano, who plan an adventurous, free program of music using technology and interactive multimedia at Oberlin’s Birenbaum Innovation and Performance Space. [Read more…]

Boston’s Balourdet String Quartet opens Rocky River series (Sept. 26)

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by Daniel Hathaway

The Rocky River Chamber Music Society opened its 64th season on Monday, September 26 at West Shore Unitarian Universalist Church with a performance that symbolized part of what the organization is all about.

RRCMS regularly ferrets out ensembles that have only recently arrived on the world stage and presents them free of charge. The Balourdet String Quartet, which hangs its shingle in Boston at the New England Conservatory, is such a group, having been formed at Rice University in 2018 and quickly built a following and an impressive list of engagements.

Well-earned, because they’re terrific. Named after Antoine Balourdet, the celebrated head chef at the Hotel St. Bernard in Taos, New Mexico near the Taos School of Music, the Balourdet offer up well-curated, delectable musical menus that are apparently analogous to the chef’s wizardry in the kitchen. [Read more…]

DIARY: Wednesday, October 5, 2022

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by Daniel Hathaway

IN THIS EDITION:

. a diverse mix of performances this afternoon and this evening

. the almanac notes an entrance and an exit

TODAY’S EVENTS:

At 12:00 pm, the Trinity Brownbag Concert features César Franck’s Piano Quintet in his 200th birthday year. Violinists Mari Sato & Andrew Sords, cellist Henry Peyrebrune, and pianist Elizabeth DeMio. Trinity Cathedral, 2230 Euclid Ave., Cleveland. Freewill offering.

Four free events begin at 7:30 pm:

The University of Akron Wind Symphony, Galen Karriker, conducting, performs at Guzzetta Recital Hall in Akron.

A CIM Faculty Recital features pianist Antonio Pompa-Baldi (pictured) in Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s La Sirenetta e il Pesce Turchino, Ottorino Respighi’s “Andante Espressivo” from Violin Sonata in b (trans. A. Pompa-Baldi), Howard Ferguson’s Piano Sonata in f, and Roberto Piana’s Glances on the Divine Comedy, Part I. Mixon Hall, reservations required.

Down the street at Severance Music Center, Carlos Kalmar leads the Cleveland Institute of Music Orchestra in Ligeti’s Atmosphères, Ginastera’s Variaciones Concertantes, and Brahms’ Symphony No. 4.

In Oberlin, faculty members David Bowlin, violin, and Tony Cho, piano, perform Charles Ives’ Violin Sonata No. 2, Gabriel Fauré’s Violin Sonata No. 1 in A, and Sergei Prokofiev’s Violin Sonata No. 1 in f, Op. 80 in Kulas Recital Hall. Click here for live stream. [Read more…]

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