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DIARY: Monday, March 21, 2022

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by Daniel Hathaway

TODAY’S EVENTS:

Tonight at 7:30 pm, harpist Parker Ramsay will play Johann Sebastian Bach’s Aria with Thirty Variations, popularly known as the Goldberg Variations, in a Bach’s Birthday Bash at Trinity Cathedral.

IN THE NEWS:

Applications are now open for singer-pianist team auditions for the 2022 edition of the Cleveland Art Song Festival, to be held at the Cleveland Institute of Music from May 23-28. In addition to masterclasses and a final concert, the event (which has been on hiatus thanks to the pandemic) features performances with the festival guest artists: soprano Tamara Wilson and tenor David Portillo, and pianists Warren Jones and Craig Terry. Read more here. [Read more…]

DIARY: Weekend, March 19-20, 2022

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by Daniel Hathaway

THIS WEEKEND’S EVENTS:

The big thing to mention is the official arrival of spring. For Cleveland, the Vernal Equinox arrives on Sunday at 11:32 am.

In his 1987 New York Times essay “Welcoming the Sun,” MacDonald Harris wrote about the importance of observing the day when the sun appears again, assuaging our fears that it just might not make it this time around. Gotta do something to celebrate!

Indoors events on Saturday include the Weilerstein Duo at Oberlin, CityMusic Cleveland at St. Stanislaus, and Apollo’s Fire at CIM.

On Sunday, organist and harpsichordist Christa Rakich takes on J.S. Bach’s Art of Fugue (complete) at the Church of the Covenant, Cleveland Chamber Collective performs “Music for America” in Ohio City, and Apollo’s Fire takes its “Virtuoso Bach and Vivaldi” program to Rocky River. (And a head’s up for Monday, when harpist Parker Ramsay will play Bach’s Goldberg Variations at Trinity Cathedral.

Check our Concert Listings for details. [Read more…]

DIARY: Friday, March 18, 2022

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by Daniel Hathaway

TODAY’S EVENTS:

Beginning today and running through the weekend, the 50th annual Lakeland Jazz Festival takes over the campus of Lakeland Community College. Click here for the complete schedule.

Friday’s agenda offers chamber music by CityMusic Cleveland in Lakewood, and the Euclid Quartet in Canton, orchestral music by Apollo’s Fire featuring violinist Francisco Fullana (pictured, preview here) in Shaker Heights, the Oberlin Orchestra at home with the Oberlin Contemporary Music Ensemble, and Cleveland Pops at Severance.

Plus a screening of CIM Opera Theater’s Dido and Aeneas project in Mixon Hall.

Check our Concert Listings for details. [Read more…]

Apollo’s Fire: 20 minutes with Spanish violinist Francisco Fullana

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by Daniel Hathaway

Born in Palma de Mallorca, raised in Madrid, and having spent a few summers in Aspen where he learned English, violinist Francisco Fullana was turned loose on New York City at the tender age of 16.

He made the most of that experience. Now 32, and one of the friendliest interviewees you can imagine, he told me in a telephone conversation that he was very lucky to have finished high school early so he could spend six months exploring and taking lessons in New York before his Juilliard School audition in March.

“By chance, I met this wonderful lady in Aspen — we were just sitting near each other and talking,” he said. “Susan Beckerman loved classical music, and ended up hosting me for a year in her beautiful house in New York. I had the most incredible time. I went to concerts and opera with her, but most of the time, since I didn’t know anybody, I went to museums, got into photography, and walked around taking in the whole city and falling in love with it. Then I got to Juilliard where they put you in a dorm with 200 freshmen. I was a bit wild for a little while, but it was a great life experience. No regrets!”

Fullana, who is now artist-in-residence with Cleveland’s Baroque Orchestra, will be featured with Apollo’s Fire this week in two local performances of Johann Sebastian Bach’s Violin Concerto in d, on a program that will be repeated in Weill Hall at New York’s Carnegie Hall. [Read more…]

DIARY: Wednesday, March 16, 2022

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by Daniel Hathaway

TODAY’S EVENTS:

Piano Cleveland, Cleveland School of the Arts and the Cleveland Museum of Art will come together tonight at 7:30 pm in Gartner Auditorium at CMA for a collaborative, multi-disciplinary performance of Camille Saint-Saëns’ Carnival of the Animals. Details in our Concert Listings.

R.I.P. TIMOTHY ROBSON:

The sad news reached us yesterday of the unexpected passing of our longtime colleague and friend Timothy Robson, one of the first people I met when I came to work at Trinity Cathedral in 1977, and one of the original correspondents for ClevelandClassical.com when the website was founded in September of 2008. [Read more…]

DIARY: Monday, March 14, 2022

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by Daniel Hathaway

ON TODAY:

This week’s episode of Eric Charnofsky’s “Not Your Grandmother’s Classical Music” on WRUW radio from Case celebrates the birthday of Telemann, and includes a Monteverdi madrigal, a J.S. Bach Cello Suite performed on double bass, excerpts from Handel’s musical ode Alexander’s Feast, and a Divertissement by Lully. Click here to listen to the internet feed.

New York’s Metropolitan Opera is hosting a 70-minute Concert for Ukraine tonight at 6:00 pm, featuring its singers, orchestra, and chorus (pictured) led by Yannick Nézet-Séguin in music by Valentin Silvestrov, Barber, Verdi, and Richard Strauss, culminating in the finale from Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9. Ukrainian bass-baritone Vladyslav Buialskyi will lead the Met Chorus in a performance of the Ukrainian national anthem. Click here at start time for the free internet stream (audio only). [Read more…]

DIARY: Weekend March 12-13, 2022

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by Daniel Hathaway

This weekend’s entries:

• Concerts at Oberlin, Severance Music Center, and Kent State, and on the road in Fairlawn and Coventry Village

• Coverage of reactions by the classical music community to the Russian invasion of Ukraine from The Violin Channel, and report of a construction miracle for the New York Philharmonic (Thank you, pandemic)

• Marking the birthdate of American choral conductor and composer Hall Johnson [Read more…]

DIARY: Friday, March 11, 2022

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by Daniel Hathaway

Today’s entries:

• Cleveland Orchestra matinee, piano concerts at Fine Arts Willoughby and U. of Akron, Chinese traditional music for sheng at CMA

• Touching announcement by Michael Tilson Thomas, controversial cancellation in Montréal

• A single summer concert brings today’s Almanac celebrations of Mendelssohn, J.S. Bach, Bobby McFerrin — and a large outdoor crowd — together in the Marketplace in Leipzig [Read more…]

Jonathan Moyer & BlueWater in “Fantastical Machines” concert (Mar. 5)

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by Daniel Hathaway

BlueWater Chamber Orchestra’s concert at the Church of the Covenant on Saturday evening, March 5 checked all the boxes for a memorable concert experience.

It lasted 80 minutes and nixed an intermission, developed a clever theme through unusual repertoire (although it didn’t take itself too seriously there), and featured an engaging soloist in organist Jonathan Moyer as well as a communicative conductor in Daniel Meyer, both of whom spoke briefly and informatively without simply recycling program notes.

[Read more…]

DIARY: Wednesday, March 9, 2022

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by Daniel Hathaway

TODAY’S EVENTS:

12:00 pm – Trinity Brownbag Concert: Music and Meditation. Todd Wilson & Nicole Keller, organ & piano. Trinity Cathedral, 2230 Euclid Ave., Cleveland. Freewill offering. Hybrid concert will also be livestreamed.

NEWS BRIEFS:

Every day brings news of the latest fallout for Russian artists from Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Catch up with this story (“Conductors Stand Down from Posts Amidst Russian Invasion”) on the Violin Channel. [Read more…]

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