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Oberlin Opera Theater: Secret Marriage, Public Hilarity (Mar. 26)

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by Daniel Hathaway

It’s been said that six is the magic number of guests to invite to a dinner party. Fewer than that reduces the likelihood of witty repartée, and more than that risks having the party break up into multiple conversations. That principle also applies to casts of comic operas that depend on scintillating conversations and wild misperceptions to fuel the plot.

Saturday evening’s Oberlin Opera Theatre performance of Cimarosa’s Il Matrimonio Segreto at Hall Auditorium brought exactly half a dozen talented singer-actors together in a tightly-woven plot that left its characters and relationships in a quandary right before intermission. [Read more…]

Diary: Friday, April 1, 2022

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by Daniel Hathaway

ON TODAY:

Five operas will receive their premieres in Northeast Ohio today, four of them composed by students at the Cleveland Institute of Music, the fifth marking the return of the Baroque ensemble Les Délices to live performances.

CIM’s Opera Theater and New Music Ensemble are up first tonight at 7 with “A Pocketful of Operas,” four short chamber works in Mixon Hall. A Storm We Call Progress by Emma Cardon features an original libretto by Kirsten Barker and Laurana Wheeler Roderer. Ruth by Daniel DiMarino, with libretto by the composer, is based on the eponymous story in the Hebrew bible. Arseniy Gusev’s The Blind has been adapted by Tikhon Antonov from the Maurice Maeterlinck play. And Yoav Sadeh’s Loneliness is based on a short story by Bruno Shulz.

At 7:30 this evening at the Akron Public Library, Les Délices will present the first of four performances of The White Cat, a Baroque opera pastiche with puppets and projected imagery based on Catherine D’Aulnoy’s 17th century feminist retelling of Puss in Boots. [Read more…]

Dames Jane Glover and Imogen Cooper bring eloquence and elegance to Severance (Mar. 27)

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by Daniel Hathaway

Half Mozart and half British, the repertory at Severance Music Center on Sunday afternoon, March 27 gave The Cleveland Orchestra multiple opportunities to shine under the baton of Dame Jane Glover, who organized the proceedings with a keen sense of style and narrative. And Dame Imogen Cooper, her compatriot in the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, crafted a memorable account of Mozart’s richly symphonic Piano Concerto No. 22.

The geography of the event was established immediately with Benjamin Britten’s Suite on English Folk Tunes, a collection of five pieces completed in 1974, two years before the composer’s death. With folksy titles like “The Bitter Withy” and “Hankin Booby” (the latter commissioned for the 1967 opening of the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London), you expect rustic charm, which Britten delivers along with his own batterie of compositional devices and orchestral effects. [Read more…]

Berta Rojas to make long-awaited Cleveland debut for Guitar Society

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by Mike Telin

Although Paraguayan guitarist Berta Rojas was set to make her Cleveland debut on March 14, 2020, the coronavirus had other plans.

In August of that year, Rojas gave a free, pre-recorded online concert for the Cleveland Classical Guitar Society: a program entirely devoted to the music of fellow Paraguayan Agustín Barrios Mangoré.

Now, after a two-year wait, Berta Rojas will make her in-person Cleveland debut on Saturday, April 2 at 7:30 pm at Plymouth Church in Shaker Heights. The program celebrates Argentine guitarist-composer Maria Luisa Anido and French guitarist-composer Ida Presti, both of whom were pioneering virtuosos during a time when concert stages were dominated by men. Tickets are available online. [Read more…]

Diary: Wednesday, March 30, 2022

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by Daniel Hathaway

ON TODAY:

Faculty and student musicians at Youngstown State and Oberlin are featured in a trio of performances today.

YSU’s Music at Noon features select woodwinds from the Dana School of Music.

This evening, the Dana Trio — Misook Yun, soprano, Sean Yancer, horn, and Caroline Oltmanns, piano — perform “Beyond Auf dem Strom,” featuring commissioned music by James Wilding, Margaret Griebling-Haigh, Cara Haxo, and Elliot Bark, and the preview of a work by Andres Weinkemeyer in advance of its future premiere.

And an Oberlin Faculty Recital by the Verona Quartet (pictured) — Jonathan Ong and Dorothy Ro, violins, Abigail Rojansky, viola, and Jonathan Dormand, cello, with pianist Peter Takacs — includes Shostakovich’s String Quartet No. 9 and Dvořák’s Piano Quintet No. 2, with an introduction by Professor Vladimir Ivantsov of the Russia and East European Studies Department. You can watch a live stream. [Read more…]

Diary: Monday, March 28, 2022

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by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING TODAY:

They moved my station!
Beginning today, Monday, March 28, WCLV, Ideastream Public Media’s classical music service, will migrate from 104.9 FM to 90.3 FM. This frequency change will extend classical music access to approximately 1 million additional listeners. National Public Radio news will now come from WKSU, which will begin broadcasting at 89.7 and 104.9 on March 28. Click here to read more about the changes, which are designed to expand coverage for the region.

Eric Charnofsky is spending his two-hour Monday slot on WRUW radio in the company of Karl Goldmark, James Primosch, Charles Wakefield Cadman, Sofia Gubaidulina, and Jacob Druckman. Join him for the internet feed at 2 pm.

Tonight at 7:30 pm, and for the first time in a long while, Oberlin’s jazz faculty will share the stage with their students in the Oberlin Jazz Ensemble in a side-by-side from Finney Chapel. The program featuring music by Ray Brown, Marian McPartland, Ivan Lins, and Jay Ashby will be livestreamed. [Read more…]

Diary: Weekend, March 26-27, 2022

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by Daniel Hathaway

ON THIS WEEKEND:

You’d have to clone yourself several times over to take in all this weekend’s live concerts. Here’s a bucket list to help you choose.

Orchestras: Canton with pianist Sarah Davis Buechner (Sat.), Cleveland with Dames Jane Glover & Imogen Cooper (Sat. & Sun.), and Firelands with Ilya and Olga Kaler (Sat.)

Operas: Last chances for The Secret Marriage at Oberlin (Sat. & Sun.) and The Marriage of Figaro at BW (Sat. & Sun.)

Recitals: David Bowlin and Tony Cho at Oberlin (Sat.), Karim Sulyman (pictured) and Yi-heng Yang at Youngstown (Sat.), Elizabeth Frey, Brian Skoog, and Karel Paukert in Cleveland Hts. (Sun.) & Alistair Howlett, Katherine Jolly, and Tatiana Lokhina at Oberlin (Sun.)

Pianists: Brian Wallick at CMA (Tri-C series, Sun.), Inna Faliks in Akron (Holy Trinity Lutheran, Sun.), Nicholas Underhill in Painesville (Sun.) and Jiarui Cheng in Hudson (Sun.)

Plus organist Damin Spritzer in Oberlin and the Mozart Requiem in Painesville (Sun.)

Details in our Concert Listings. [Read more…]

Contrapunctus & King’s Counterpoint return to Cleveland for joint concert

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by Daniel Hathaway

Contrapunctus Early Music, a vocal project launched in Cleveland by British countertenor David Acres, has been absent from the local musical scene for four years now.

The high-voice chorus of sopranos, altos, and countertenors will reanimate itself this weekend to join The King’s Counterpoint from Charleston, S.C. in a joint performance on Friday, March 25 at 7:30 pm at St. John’s Cathedral in downtown Cleveland.

In February 2018, before Contrapunctus’ last concert here, Acres told this publication that his involvement with King’s Counterpoint had kept him so busy that Cleveland had temporarily fallen off the calendar.

“A series of Baroque Messiahs and the inaugural concert in our exploration of Handel’s Oratorios, commencing with Judas Maccabaeus — both with members of the North Carolina Baroque Orchestra, a critically acclaimed performance in the Piccolo Spoleto Series and an invite to return, together with over 16 performances in South Carolina, have stopped us from returning to Cleveland to explore more high-voice repertoire with Contrapunctus.” [Read more…]

DIARY: Friday, March 25, 2022

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by Daniel Hathaway

In today’s entries:

• the British invasion at Severance features two recently appointed Dames

• choral concerts return to Gartner Auditorium & St. John’s Cathedral

• BW and Oberlin continue their opera runs with Mozart and Cimarosa

• Composers Guild repackages new music in old containers

TODAY’S EVENTS:

Two Englishwomen recently named dames of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire are in charge of The Cleveland Orchestra concert tonight at Severance Music Center. Dame Jane Glover will lead works by Mozart (the 22nd Piano Concerto), Vaughan Williams (the Tallis Fantasia) & Britten (the Suite on English folk tunes), and Dame Imogen Cooper will be featured in the concerto.  [Read more…]

DIARY: Wednesday, March 23, 2022

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by Daniel Hathaway

TODAY’S EVENTS:

Events in Ukraine are on everyone’s mind, but musicians are engaging with the crisis through consciousness-raising and fundraising performances.

Oberlin Conservatory Faculty pianists Scott Cuellar, Peter Takács, Tony Cho, Yulia Fedoseeva and Haewon Song, clarinetist Richard Hawkins, French hornist Jeff Scott, bassoonist Drew Pattison, violinists Francesca dePasquale and David Bowlin, violist Kirsten Docter, cellists Dmitry Kouzov and Andrei Ionita, bassist Derek Zadinsky and members of the Verona Quartet will play a benefit concert tonight at 7:30 in Oberlin’s First Methodist Church. Donations will be directed to UNICEF Ukraine, Red Cross Ukraine, and Razom.

The CIM Orchestra will perform at Severance Music Center tonight under Carlos Kalmar in a program featuring pianist Jacob Bernhardt in Prokofiev’s Third Concerto, as well as the first outing of a new piece by CIM’s Keith Fitch, Charles Ives’ amusing The Unanswered Question (the Druids have no comment) and Vaughan Williams’ Fourth Symphony. [Read more…]

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