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Elim Chan directs Cleveland Orchestra at Blossom Music Center in Maurice Ravel’s Shéhérazade with Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 1 (Aug. 9)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

This article was originally published on Cleveland.com

CUYAHOGA FALLS, Ohio — The Cleveland Orchestra on Saturday offered a summer evening of musical storytelling that was alluring and colorful without excess.

Under the elegant and incisive direction of Elim Chan at Blossom Music Center, the program paired Maurice Ravel’s Shéhérazade with Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 1 in performances redolent of perfume and sonic splendor.

Coinciding with the 150th anniversary of Maurice Ravel’s birth, the opener was Shéhérazade, a 1903 song cycle with words by Tristan Klingsor, the pen name of French poet, painter, and composer Léon Leclère.

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Lisztomania ignites Blossom as Rustioni and Bax dazzle in Cleveland Orchestra debut (Aug. 2)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

This article was originally published on Cleveland.com

CUYAHOGA FALLS, Ohio — The marketing department of The Cleveland Orchestra seized on two works by the 19th-century “rock star” composer and pianist Franz Liszt on its programs at Severance and Blossom to advertise the weekend events as “Lisztomania” — with a nod to “Beatlemania,” the 20th century craze for the music of The Beatles by their adoring fans.

On Saturday night, August 2, at Blossom Music Center, Daniele Rustioni made his Cleveland Orchestra debut, conducting with clarity and joy but also with a flair reminiscent of Liszt’s charismatic presence. His physical expressivity drew a palpable response from the ensemble, an experience of shared energy between conductor, soloist and orchestra that recalled how Liszt could drive his fans into a frenzy.

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Utsav Lal at Piano Days: Indian classical music with new interpretations (July 22)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

Pianist Utsav Lal’s solo concert at the Lorraine and Bill Dodero Center for the Performing Arts in Gates Mills on Tuesday evening July 22 offered “Indian classical music reimagined for the Western grand piano.” The experience was a gradual one: you became aware of a rare sensual and spiritual atmosphere — and then, if you allowed it to, a gently meditative state overtook you.

One of Indian classical music’s defining traits is the irregularity of intervals and pitches — something you might hear from a sitarist or a vocalist — yielding a broader expressive palette. To fully appreciate Lal’s work, one had to set that convention aside and receive his Western reinterpretation on its own terms.

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Guest conductor Jonathon Heyward presents captivating program in Cleveland Orchestra debut (July 26)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

This article was originally published on Cleveland.com

CUYAHOGA FALLS, Ohio — The July 26 concert at Blossom Music Center marked the exciting Cleveland Orchestra debut of conductor Jonathon Heyward — the music director of the Baltimore Symphony and the Festival Orchestra of Lincoln Center. His program should have captivated even the most distant lawn loungers with works by Dvořák and Beethoven, as well as a recent concerto by London-born composer Anna Clyne, who now resides in the United States.

The centerpiece of the evening was Clyne’s Glasslands, a haunting, kaleidoscopic concerto for soprano saxophone, written for the 27-year-old British saxophonist Jess Gillam, who premiered it with the Detroit Symphony in 2023 and performed it on Saturday with beauty and authority.

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Ohio Light Opera: The Cousin from Batavia (July 23)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

Last seen in Wooster in 2002, The Cousin from Batavia (1921) — with its tangle of mistaken identities, impromptu romance, and Southeast Asian impostures — may be less familiar to English-speaking audiences than other Golden Age operettas. But Ohio Light Opera’s sweet-tempered, farcical revival at Freedlander Theatre on July 23 proved charming enough to win over even the staunchest devotees of the present-day and plausible. The late operetta scholar Richard Traubner rendered the text into vivid English.

Composed by Eduard Künneke with a witty libretto by Hermann Haller and “Rideamus” — “Let us laugh,” the Latin pseudonym of German-Jewish satirist and lawyer Fritz Oliven — Batavia blends the lyricism of Viennese operetta with the slapstick of farce. Wilson Southerland’s crisp conducting and the orchestra’s fine playing brought out all the color and buoyancy in Künneke’s sparkling score. [Read more…]

Ohio Light Opera: Noël Coward’s Bitter Sweet (July 17)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

Noël Coward’s Bitter Sweet was a grand hit in 1929, but its large cast, relatively complex plot, and throwback operetta format have kept it out of the regular repertoire in recent years.

Thank goodness for Ohio Light Opera’s polished new staging, seen on July 17 at The College of Wooster’s Freedlander Theatre. This elegant — and yes, bittersweet — tale of love, loss, and the passage of time was elevated by superb singing, splendid orchestral playing under Michael Borowitz’s baton, and all the wit, warmth, and visual splendor one hopes to find at the theater.

Structured as a memory play, Bitter Sweet is a deeply personal work. According to biographers, the love story — particularly as expressed through the character of Carl Linden — puts Coward’s romantic ideals on full display.

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ChamberFest Cleveland: “Inventions of Memory” (June 27)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

ChamberFest Cleveland’s June 27 program, “Inventions of Memory,” offered three distinct meditations on musical remembrance. Presented in the tranquil setting of Harkness Chapel at Case Western Reserve University, eight of the festival’s standout artists illuminated works by Claude Debussy, Brett Dean, and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky.

The program opened with Debussy’s Trois Chansons de Bilitis, a cycle of idealized and slightly prurient visions of antiquity. Mezzo-soprano Fleur Barron and pianist Roman Rabinovich offered a reading attuned to the music’s erotic undertow and bathed in Lydian and whole-tone harmonies.

In La Flûte de Pan, Rabinovich’s shimmering textures evoked the strumming of a lyre as Barron spun out the tale of a young girl’s intimate flute lesson. Her voice, pliant and sumptuous, moved easily between innocence and seduction.
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ChamberFest Cleveland: “Starry Night” (June 21)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

On June 21, ChamberFest Cleveland presented “Starry Night” at Federated Church in Chagrin Falls. The program’s nocturnal theme included works by ChamberFest composer-in- residence Errollyn Wallen, Ludwig van Beethoven, and Arnold Schoenberg.

The performance of Wallen’s Dervish for cello and piano was spellbinding. Like a trained actor, cellist Oliver Herbert took on a distinct persona: intensely expressive, earthy, and rapturous. Pianist Roman Rabinovich was not merely a counterpart, but a force that Herbert seemed at times either to resist or to be swept up by. Together, the duo sustained an inward intensity that made Wallen’s music feel at once intimate, expansive, and hypnotic.

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Ohio Light Opera: George & Ira Gershwin’s Tip-Toes (June 26)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

On a sunny Thursday afternoon in Wooster on June 26, Ohio Light Opera’s revival of the Gershwin brothers’ Tip-Toes (1925) made its premiere during a carefree two hours at the College of Wooster’s Freedlander Theatre.

Director Jacob Allen embraced the show’s silliness — mistaken identities, romantic mix-ups, and a heroine with amnesia — while keeping the action kinetic and the comedy light on its feetThe production succeeds due to excellent staging and choreography, but also thanks to sharp acting, nimble dancing, heartfelt singing, and general razzle-dazzle. Proof that even the more neglected musicals of the Jazz Age can still charm a modern audience. [Read more…]

ChamberFest Cleveland: “Variations on Love and Loss” (June 20) 

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by Kevin McLaughlin

At the Cleveland Institute of Music’s Mixon Hall on Friday, June 20, ChamberFest Cleveland presented “Variations on Love and Loss.” Complemented by a friendly acoustical space and a convivial throng, the program spanned a wide emotional range, from deep grief to luminous joy.

Witold Lutosławski and fellow composer Andrzej Panufnik originally performed Lutosławski’s Paganini Variations in cafés around Warsaw during the German occupation of Poland in World War II, where public concerts were banned.

The duo wrote it partly to showcase their talents, and pianists James (Zijian) Wei and Roman Rabinovich brought fearless bravura to the work. The performers tore through each variation, trading volleys of octaves and whiplash runs. It was part sorcery, part acrobatic display — and entirely exhilarating. [Read more…]

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