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Cleveland Orchestra channels all things merry, bright in Holiday Concert at Severance (Dec. 13)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

Photo by Roger Mastroianni

This article was originally published on Cleveland.com

CLEVELAND, Ohio — Holiday concerts trade on familiarity, but the best of them feel less like ritual and more like reunion.

On Saturday evening, Dec. 13 at Mandel Concert Hall, The Cleveland Orchestra welcomed a full house for the second of its twelve annual Holiday Concerts, a tradition that dates back to 1919.

Led by guest conductor Sarah Hicks, with soprano Meredith Wohlgemuth and the Cleveland Orchestra Chorus, and members of the Blossom Festival Chorus under the direction of Lisa Wong, the evening unfolded with easy charm.

Throughout the performance, Hicks proved an ideal guide. Her conducting was clear and unshowy, her rapport with the audience unaffected and delightful.

[Read more…]

M.U.S.i.C. Shines at Cleveland Museum of Art (Dec. 12)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

By six o’clock on December 12, winter light was already draining from the Ames Family Atrium at the Cleveland Museum of Art. Museumgoers crossed paths with concertgoers as chairs were added for late arrivals.

The pale stone space, faintly scented with art,  shifted from public square to indoor gathering place — a civic thoroughfare briefly claimed for music and dance.

Much of the evening’s ease was due to Stars in the Classics artistic director Jodi Kanter, who assembled the roster of rising artists and guided the program with a light touch — offering brief remarks and filling a transition while the stage was readied for the dancers.

[Read more…]

Singers’ Club of Cleveland: To Dwell in Harmony (Dec. 9)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

The Singers’ Club of Cleveland brought the joy of the season to Trinity Cathedral on Tuesday evening with a program titled To Dwell in Harmony, a holiday offering both polished and good-humored. The venerable all-male chorus — whose lineage stretches back to 1891 and includes collaborations with conductors from Beryl Rubinstein to Robert Shaw — now finds itself under new leadership.

Christopher Clark, appointed in August as Artistic Director (while serving concurrently as Director of Choirs at Case Western Reserve University), led his first Singers’ Club concert with easy command. The chorus appeared to trust him from the first downbeat, and the audience received him just as warmly.

Trinity Cathedral, whose acoustics can flatter or expose a chorus in equal measure, proved an asset. The evening opened with one of its most effective moments: Veni, Veni Emmanuel in John Englert’s arrangement. Clark placed the choir on three sides of the audience, creating a surround-sound of chant that was silky and assured — a confident beginning. [Read more…]

Cleveland Chamber Choir: In Four Voices (Dec. 3)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

Renaissance polyphony can bloom in resonant spaces, but the Donna and James Reid Gallery at the Cleveland Museum of Art presents particular challenges: hard surfaces and a long reverb tend to blur consonants into watercolor. The Cleveland Chamber Choir’s four-voice ensemble met those conditions head-on during its “In Four Voices” program on December 3. What emerged was an evening of consistently beautiful vocal timbre shaped by a group navigating the sonic characteristics of the room.

The concert, to be followed in January and March by appearances of various-sized ensembles, is part of a new development for the Cleveland Chamber Choir, called the Camerata Series — more information here.

To improve their chances of hearing one another, the quartet — soprano Lauren Vanden Broeck, mezzo-soprano Kira McGirr, tenor Joel Kincannon, and bass Dominic Aragon — stood in a traditional “part book” formation, like a diamond, facing inward. This meant that their sound was directed toward each other, rather than outward to the listeners around them. [Read more…]

CityMusic Cleveland: Three Eras, One Conversation (Dec. 5)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

“We love coming here!” CityMusic Cleveland’s managing director Henry Peyrebrune said in his opening remarks on Friday at St. Noel Catholic Church. Open and modern and warmly lit, St. Noel proved a welcoming setting for December 5th’s  well-attended concert. Many pews had been claimed early, and finding a seat required a bit of roaming. As always with CityMusic, admission was free, with only a suggested ticket price and friendly greeters at the door.

The program, titled Three Eras, One Conversation (although I only counted two) traced a through-line from Mozart to Haydn to Stravinsky, with conductor James Feddeck clarifying the connections across style and time. [Read more…]

Oberlin Artist Recital Series presents the Danish String Quartet (Nov. 21)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

There’s an old adage about the Danes: they are an amiable people, quick to embrace hygge and humor, yet they hide a deep streak of seriousness when it matters. The Danish String Quartet has made a career out of embodying that balance. Their concerts feel open-hearted, even playful, but the music-making is etched with an intensity as real as an icy wind — one they would probably shrug off if you asked them about it later.

On Friday evening, November 21, in Oberlin’s Finney Chapel, three Danes (Frederik Øland & Rune Tonsgaard Sørensen, violins and Asbjørn Nørgaard, viola) and a Norwegian (Fredrik Schøyen Sjölin, cello) using, in their words, “four simple instruments made of wood” brought ease and gravity to a program that moved from Stravinsky and Jonny Greenwood to late Beethoven and to the folk traditions of their northern homes.

Their spoken introductions were casual in the best way: well-crafted, low-key, and quietly funny. In introducing the first half, Sørensen introduced Stravinsky’s Three Pieces and Jonny Greenwood’s Suite from There Will Be Blood, followed by the Beethoven, as if that were the most natural sequence in the world.

[Read more…]

Cleveland Classical Guitar Society: Duo Noire at the Maltz (Nov. 15)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

Duo Noire — Thomas Flippin and Christopher Mallett — returned to the Cleveland Classical Guitar Society stage at the Maltz Center on Saturday evening, November 15, with a program that spoke as much to their values as to their technique. The Duo prizes an inclusive repertoire that gives space to new and underrepresented voices.

While everyone settled in, Flippin announced a surprise guest. Damien Goggans, a rising professional and alumnus of the CCGS Education Program, stepped forward to sing Thomas Flippin’s “Etude #1, Oh Mother Glasco (Lullaby)” from 14 Études on the Music of Black Americans. Goggans then joined the Duo for the same piece in a trio arrangement, also by Flippin.

[Read more…]

The Cleveland Orchestra: Vertigo (Nov. 7)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

At Severance Music Center on Friday, November 7, the lights dimmed, Saul Bass’s spirals began to spin, and The Cleveland Orchestra launched into Bernard Herrmann’s score for Vertigo, the second Alfred Hitchcock film (after Psycho) they’d played live-to-picture that week.

Film purists who regard cinema primarily as a visual art argue that live music, especially when it emanates from something as grand as a symphony orchestra in a space like Mandel Concert Hall, upsets the balance. Dialogue and car horns stay neatly in the soundtrack, while music — and the emotion it carries — grows enormous and takes over the experience.

Then again…

A live orchestra intensifies the emotions of the soundtrack, heightening everything that touches flesh and spirit. We become newly sensitized to the score. In Herrmann’s case, harmonies and Wagnerian endless melodies compel us to listen more deeply and, in the process, transform the experience.

[Read more…]

Cleveland Orchestra at Severance with Yo-Yo Ma delights (Nov. 6)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

This article was originally published on Cleveland.com

CLEVELAND, Ohio — Yo-Yo Ma was the picture of cello perfection on Thursday evening, Nov. 6 at Severance Music Center, performing with The Cleveland Orchestra as if for the thousandth time — or the first.

Relaxed, head tilted in his familiar way, he seemed tuned to some private channel of truth and beauty. When not playing, he listened with delight, urging on the musicians around him.

Ma offered Dvořák’s Cello Concerto at the end of “An Evening with Yo-Yo-Ma,” beautifully wrapped like an early holiday gift. He strode onstage with purpose, revealing a heart as large as the hall, making his entrance not as a soloist demanding attention, but as a voice rising from within. He answered the horn heroics with warmth, then crooned the second theme like a benediction.

[Read more…]

Cleveland Orchestra with pianist Garrick Ohlsson at Severance (Oct. 30)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

This article was originally published on Cleveland.com

CLEVELAND, Ohio — Frequent guest pianist Garrick Ohlsson returned to Severance Music Center on Thursday, Oct. 30, 50 years after his first appearance with The Cleveland Orchestra.

The concert, conducted by Franz Welser-Möst, reminded us why we cherish these performances year after year: consistent excellence, both familiar and new music, and the company of an artist whose quiet dignity and calm brilliance have become a reliable part of the city’s musical life.

The program opened with “Permissions,” a ten-minute churn by Tyler Taylor, the Orchestra’s new Daniel R. Lewis Composer Fellow. The Louisville, Kentucky-born composer and horn player brings a performer’s instinct for timbre and ensemble dynamics to his writing.

[Read more…]

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