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Cleveland Orchestra Opera & Humanities Festival: Moth Mainstage (May 16)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

The Cleveland Orchestra’s Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Opera & Humanities Festival opened on May 16 with The Moth Mainstage: Live from Severance, an evening of true, personal storytelling centered on the theme of reconciliation.

Presented in partnership with Ideastream Public Media, the show marked The Moth’s first live appearance in Cleveland. Founded in 1997 in New York City, The Moth is a nonprofit celebrating “the art of true, personal storytelling.” It produces hundreds of live events annually across the U.S. and abroad, including the widely popular podcast The Moth Radio Hour. [Read more…]

CityMusic Cleveland Chamber Orchestra at Fairmount Presbyterian (May 15)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

In a 1902 interview, Gabriel Fauré, who spent much of his career as an organist, said his goal in writing his Requiem was to stray from the established path, “after all those years accompanying funerals.” So, rather than ending with the horror of a Dies irae, he chose In Paradisum instead.

On Thursday, May 15, at Fairmount Presbyterian Church, CityMusic Cleveland delivered both heaven and earth over the course of a diverse program. Responding to conductor Lorenzo Lopez’s assured direction, the ensemble gave sympathetic readings of William Grant Still’s Danzas de Panama and Gabriela Lena Frank’s Leyendas, then ascended to a higher place in Fauré’s Requiem, aided by superb singing from soprano Chabrelle Williams, baritone Edward Vogel, and the CityMusic Community Choir.

[Read more…]

Evgeny Kissin mesmerizes with Bach, Chopin, and Shostakovich at Severance (May 7)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

This article was originally published on Cleveland.com

CLEVELAND, Ohio — Few pianists today elicit the kind of eager expectation, borne of star-power and reputation, that Evgeny Kissin does the moment he takes the stage. There is a quality to his presence — austere and shy yet fully possessed — that electrifies a listener before a single note sounds. In Mandel Concert Hall at Severance Music Center on Wednesday evening, May 7, Kissin’s program of J.S. Bach, Chopin, and Shostakovich, plus encores, had something to satisfy every fan’s wish.

Bach’s Partita No. 2 in C minor began the evening on low heat, with an understated approach to the Sinfonia‘s long, elegant lines. But it wasn’t until the final Capriccio that the pianist’s rhythmic and technical polish fully enlivened Bach’s polyphony without diminishing its architectural integrity.

[Read more…]

Escher String Quartet at Wayne Center for the Arts (May 3)  

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by Kevin McLaughlin

The Escher String Quartet, performing as a trio on Saturday, May 3, due to the injury of its second violinist, offered a beautiful plan “B”: a trio of trios by Schubert, Dohnányi, and Beethoven. Violinist Adam Barnett-Hart, violist Pierre Lapointe, and cellist Brook Speltz delivered engaging and refined performances in the intimate space at the Wayne Center for the Arts in Wooster.

The group’s thinning and their positioning in front of the stage due to a lightbulb outage might have bothered a lesser ensemble, but the Escher players carried on with expansive lyricism and technical bravado throughout the evening. [Read more…]

Cleveland Classical Guitar Society: Duo Chinoiserie (Apr. 26)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

Sometimes a concert surprises and disorients its audience so completely that you have to be reminded of what you signed up to hear. Duo Chinoiserie, pairing guitarist Bin Hu and guzheng virtuoso Jing Xia, had that effect on Saturday evening, April 26, at the Maltz Performing Arts Center.

Presented by Cleveland Classical Guitar Society, the duo’s program of works — some written and others arranged for them — traced an imaginative arc across centuries, continents, and traditions, in a marvelous comingling of sonic possibilities.

[Read more…]

Soloists shine in Cleveland Orchestra’s Bach Easter Oratorio, Magnificat and more (Apr. 17)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

This article was originally published on Cleveland.com

CLEVELAND, Ohio — On Thursday, April 17, at Severance Music Center, Canadian guest conductor Bernard Labadie led The Cleveland Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra Chorus, and four splendid soloists in two of J.S. Bach’s most exultant sacred works — the dramatic Easter Oratorio, and his Magnificat. Bach’s festive Sinfonia from his Cantata 29 completed the program.

Reworked from a secular cantata for a patron’s birthday, Bach’s Easter Oratorio is a less overtly theatrical work than the composer’s Passions. Its uncomplicated story describes the moment that Mary Magdalene (mezzo-soprano Adèle Charvet), Mary of Cleophas (soprano Joélle Harvey) and the apostles Peter (tenor Andrew Haji) and John (bass-baritone Gordon Bintner) come to the tomb of Jesus and find it empty.

[Read more…]

Rocky River Chamber Music Society: North Coast Winds (Apr. 7)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

According to Ben Chen’s program notes for the North Coast Winds concert on April 7 at West Shore Unitarian Universalist Church, the jazz age, which began in the 1920s,  coincided with the emergence of the woodwind quintet as a standard chamber ensemble. This made an appealing premise for the ensemble’s programming. But if jazz as a musical style and aesthetic was hard to detect that evening, it mattered little.

What did matter was the quality of the music performed and the playing of the ensemble, which was refined and persuasive. [Read more…]

Akron Symphony sparkles in works by Mozart, Bologne, Montgomery, and Beethoven (Mar. 29)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

For his final appearance with the Akron Symphony on Saturday, March 29 at E.J. Thomas Hall, Amer Hasan went out in style. He was the agile and honey-toned soloist in the Mozart Clarinet Concerto, and for good measure, he occupied his soon-to-be vacant principal chair to play the works on the second half.

Employing the A-clarinet rather than basset horn — as the composer intended — Hasan chose deftness rather than force in the concerto. His frolicing up and down the instrument was enough to make any singer jealous. The Adagio was a serene balm of peace, and in the finale Hasan turned playful, goading the orchestra into sassy ripostes.

Christopher Wilkins and the orchestra were sensitive and generous collaborators throughout, underscoring and confirming the soloist’s interpretations like an ideal dance partner. Hasan offered up no extended cadenzas (Mozart wrote none) or encores for that matter, presumably saving his energy for the works on the second half.

[Read more…]

Cleveland Photoplayers to make debut at Cleveland Silent Film Festival

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by Kevin McLaughlin

Aficionados of silent film music know there is an infinite variety of approaches to performing a film’s music, from original scores to improvised performances and generic musical cues that have been stitched together from a variety of sources.

On Saturday, April 5 at 4:30 pm in the Louis Stokes Wing Auditorium at the Cleveland Public Library, the Cleveland Silent Film Festival will continue their “CPL: Celebrating 100 Years” series with a screening of Alfred Hitchcock’s 1929 thriller Blackmail. Daniel Goldmark, Professor of Music at Case Western Reserve University, will introduce the film and the musical score. Admission is free.

The screening will also mark the debut of The Cleveland Photoplayers. Directed by pianist Eric Charnofsky (pictured), the ensemble includes violinist Emily Cornelius, cellist David Ellis, clarinetist Amitai Vardi, and cornetist Riley Conley.

[Read more…]

Pianist Yuja Wang, Cleveland Orchestra do Tchaikovsky justice, despite pre-concert surprise (Mar. 22)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

This article was originally published on Cleveland.com

CLEVELAND, Ohio — Pianist Yuja Wang is a dazzler. She has a way of dressing, of taking the stage, and of bowing that bespeaks confidence and star quality. Add to those a suspenseful entrance (a few minutes overdue), apparent nonchalance at a last-minute conductor change — assistant conductor Daniel Reith in for music director Franz Welser-Möst — and an astonishing keyboard technique, and you get excitement.

The audience was buzzing with anticipation on Saturday evening March 22 at Severance Music Center for Wang’s appearance with the Cleveland Orchestra in Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1.

To be fair, the delayed entrance likely had more to do with a needed meeting between pianist and conductor before performing the work together. Reith, who received word of the change only two hours before the concert, deserves much of the glory for what followed.

[Read more…]

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