by Kevin McLaughlin
Imagine a small band of musicians, each skilled but of dissimilar traditions, combining their talents for a banquet of world styles — Celtic, flamenco, Brazilian, and French — and you have an idea of the artistry of Miguel Espinoza Fusion. Presented at Holy Trinity Lutheran Church in Akron on Sunday, October 8, this was the inaugural concert of Arts @ Holy Trinity’s 40th season.
Photo: Roger Mastroianni
This article was originally published on Cleveland.com
by Kevin McLaughlin
The world premiere of a percussion extravaganza stole the show on Thursday night in Mandel Hall at Severance Music Center, and may have set a record for the most percussion ever assembled on one stage.
Beginning the concert, Franz Welser-Möst’s account of Mozart’s Symphony No. 29 was airy and buoyant, despite larger-than-fashionable forces (42 strings). The outer movements were joyous and rhythmically meticulous, and the Orchestra’s ability to coalesce and balance was uncanny.
by Kevin McLaughlin
It’s certainly not something you hear every day: a concert-lecture of Korean traditional music played on the modern violin. Can this kind of thing work? Should it?
It turns out the answer to both questions is absolutely, yes. Born and raised in Korea, and a violin graduate of Peabody Institute and the Cleveland Institute of Music, Soh-Hyun Park Altino was the perfect guide and persuader during her concert at the Cleveland Museum of Art on Friday afternoon, September 29.
by Kevin McLaughlin
In a program of Cleveland discoveries on Monday, September 25, a lively crowd at West Shore Unitarian Universalist Church got to hear Richard Stout’s new work, Songs of Correspondence, based on letters of early 20th-century American author Willa Cather.
Featured performers were mezzo-soprano Nancy Maultsby, faculty at Baldwin Wallace, and the Poiesis Quartet (Sarah Ma and Max Ball, violins, Jasper de Boor, viola, and Drew Dansby, cello), who formed at Oberlin Conservatory and were Grand Prize winners of the 2023 Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition. The concert kicked off the Rocky River Chamber Music Society’s season. [Read more…]
by Kevin McLaughlin
The concert by CityMusic Cleveland on Thursday, September 21 in Fairmount Presbyterian Church was a reminder of two things: that there is an abundance of appealing music yet to be heard or played out, and there are exceptional performers in Cleveland ready to play it. The consistently splendid CityMusic (now in its twentieth year) maintained its high standard with a program of infrequently heard works by George Walker, Joseph Bologne, Tōru Takemitsu, and W.A. Mozart, aided by guest solo violinists Kyung Sun Lee and Jung-Min Amy Lee (pictured at another venue).
Walker’s Lyric for Strings has the quiet solemnity of Barber’s famous Adagio for Strings, and like that piece, it started life as the second movement from an early string quartet. Walker added the title Lament (later Lyric for Strings) and dedicated it as an elegy to his grandmother. From the first notes the ensemble, led by concertmaster Laura Hamilton, conveyed the right mood and established a bath of tonal beauty that benefitted every piece to come.
by Kevin McLaughlin
The Australian guitarist Stephanie Jones brought passion and clarity to the opening concert of the Cleveland Classical Guitar Society’s 2023-24 International Series, in a program of mostly German and South American works at the Maltz Performing Arts Center on September 17. This was the first concert since CCGS moved from their cozier confines of Plymouth UCC. Whatever the acoustical challenges in the Maltz, the charisma of Jones’ playing made a clear and lasting impression.
Beginning with two movements from J.S. Bach’s Violin Partita No. 3, she employed precision and a rubato musical line, breathing life into the familiar Gavotte en Rondeau movement. [Read more…]
by Kevin McLaughlin
The late Gerhardt Zimmermann was remembered with affection by family and friends in a concert given by the Canton Symphony Orchestra at Umstaddt Hall on Sunday, September 10.
Former conducting students and colleagues took turns at the podium, and soloists whose careers Zimmermann had touched also took part in a program of works by Mahler, Brahms, Mozart, and Tchaikovsky, among others.
Possibly the most shining example of Zimmermann’s legacy is the orchestra that he developed and led for 43 years. In an age of peripatetic conductors and short-lived musical directorships, the Canton Symphony Orchestra, an ensemble of ninety mostly young professionals, has remained remarkably excellent and intact over the years.
by Kevin McLaughlin
The Cleveland Orchestra’s final classical concert at Blossom Music Center on Saturday, like the last rose of summer, was the unexpected apogee of the season. Transforming a generic-sounding program titled “Impressions of France and Spain,” conductor Fabien Gabel captivated in works of Ravel, de Falla, and Saint-Saëns’ Violin Concerto No. 3, with which soloist Simone Lamsma won everyone’s heart.
This article was originally published on Cleveland.com
(Photo by Roger Mastroianni)
by Kevin McLaughlin
If there is a more complete singing-and-acting talent than Audra McDonald, I can’t think of one. For a generation she has poured her heart out and done so with such vocal and dramatic authority it is difficult to imagine what we did before she came along. The near-capacity crowd at Blossom Music Center on Sunday was treated to a delightful program of Broadway standards and unguarded reflections on life and living. [Read more…]
by Kevin McLaughlin
The variety of titles that make up Ohio Light Opera’s annual summer series is its secret sauce. Go to a few shows and you’re bound to find something you’ll like, or maybe in this case a dark horse to love. Emmerich Kálmán’s Arizona Lady is an unknown in these parts — an OLO premiere this summer, which I heard on July 6 at Freedlander Theatre. It stumbles a little at times, but in the end she’s a winner.
Kálmán, who was born in Hungary, always sounds middle European to me, no matter the setting of a particular show or scene. Though the music and setting in Arizona Lady occasionally seem at odds, it’s fun to hear Hungarian-tinged folksong one minute, Viennese tradition the next, and Western cowboy songs the next.