by Nicholas Jones
I’ve just returned from a trip to Germany, where I encountered three fine conductors, two superb orchestras (in two extraordinary halls), and one stellar opera. My visit was arranged by Road Scholar, a company that offers educational travel, mostly for retirees. I was travelling with twelve other classical music fans, and much of what I am writing here was developed in discussions over dinner or beer. [Read more…]
by Nicholas Jones
Venice can be pretty wet in November, but the music of Apollo’s Fire this weekend took us there and back with shoes dry and hearts warmed. With music director Jeannette Sorrell as tour guide, “Love in Venice: A Multicultural Fiesta” took us not only to palazzi on the Grand Canal, but also ushered us safely through the crowded streets and tiny squares where Jews and Arabs traded and mixed — not always comfortably — with the ruling Christians. I attended the Sunday, November 20 performance at Rocky River Presbyterian Church. [Read more…]
by Nicholas Jones
Cleveland-based Baroque violinist Julie Andrijeski, well-known to area audiences for her performances with Les Délices and Apollo’s Fire, premiered a new project on Saturday, November 12 in a lively concert at the Tregoning & Company gallery on West 78th Street. [Read more…]
by Nicholas Jones
I walked into the St. Lawrence String Quartet concert at Oberlin’s Finney Chapel on Friday, November 11 hoping for a respite from the tensions and anxieties of the week’s events, and I was not disappointed. With total conviction and attentiveness, the St. Lawrence played music that soothed the nerves and stimulated the heart. I was expecting beauty, focus, and artistry. But I was not prepared for a further impact: the powerful message of how the St. Lawrence plays. [Read more…]
by Nicholas Jones
The superb young pianist Yuja Wang is a fiery presence. Recently named Musical America’s Instrumentalist of the Year for 2017, the flamboyant, Chinese-born Wang has justly soared to fame for her gutsy performances of the most technically demanding solo and concerto literature for the piano. She plays with a formidable command of the finger-busting pieces of the Romantic and high modern, and she brings to them a sense of burning intensity. [Read more…]
by Nicholas Jones
Music for the instrument that the English called the viol and the Italians the viola da gamba flourished during the tumultuous changes in Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries. The contemplative, intimate sound of a consort of viols must have been a welcome relief from fires, plagues, religious wars, revolutions, and other sudden and unpredictable catastrophes. Viol consorts implied the opposite of Fortune’s wheel: the steady companionship of friends, both players and listeners, coming together in the appreciation of a quiet artistry. [Read more…]
by Nicholas Jones
The short-lived English composer Henry Purcell wrote works that rank among the masterpieces of the Baroque. But, like many artists of the 17th century, he also had to produce a lot on demand. In his position as organist at both the Chapel Royal and Westminster Abbey, he needed to work up music for a number of royal occasions. Necessarily, while some of his music is deeply personal, other works — like his odes for the queen’s birthday — were clearly more routinely produced. [Read more…]
by Nicholas Jones
For its 2016 season-opener on September 17 at St. Alban’s Episcopal Church in Cleveland Heights, Burning River Baroque assembled a fascinating and diverse program of music by women composers, both “famed and forgotten.” The pieces they chose — spanning ten centuries! — gave a taste of what gems lie beyond the patriarchal canon, particularly in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. [Read more…]
by Nicholas Jones
Some music makes you yearn; some makes you cry; some makes you think. And some music just makes you glad to be alive. At The Cleveland Orchestra’s final Summers@Severance concert of the season last Friday, August 12, joy radiated from just about every aspect of the music.
by Nicholas Jones
Britain may have voted to cut ties with the European Union, but last night’s Blossom Music Festival concert, with The Cleveland Orchestra and conductor Nicholas McGegan, was a referendum confirming a long — and enduring — musical connection between the continent and the island. [Read more…]