by Nicholas Stevens
Last week, as part of the seventh annual Cleveland Trombone Seminar, a concert by Mark Lancaster Lusk took listeners into the heart of the brass player’s world: a region dominated by vocal music, modernist explorations, and jazz.
Art Song Festival at CIM: Prégardien & Vignoles (May 24)
by Nicholas Stevens
Christoph Prégardien has traced the path of Schubert’s song cycle Die schöne Müllerin many times, yet he always seems to find it fresh beneath his feet. In two recordings and dozens of recitals, the German lyric tenor has made the cycle his own, sounding the hope, heartbreak, and resentment of its wandering miller with such assurance that his interpretation of the story feels genuinely true. [Read more…]
Chatham Baroque & friends at Holy Trinity in Akron (May 20)
by Nicholas Stevens
For all its fantastic variety of styles and scenes, the Baroque era has left us with only a few household composers’ names. History is cruel. However, thanks to ensembles like Chatham Baroque, music that has fallen through the cracks breathes anew. Pieces by Legrenzi, Bertali, Buxtehude, and especially Kapsberger stood as highlights in a recent program, which also included music by Handel, Vivaldi, and Monteverdi. [Read more…]
Arts Renaissance Tremont: pianist Cicilia Yudha (May 6)
by Nicholas Stevens
Tradition or innovation, familiarity or freshness? These are and always have been false choices, as pianist Cicilia Yudha demonstrated in a concert last week. With a program spanning almost exactly three hundred years of music, Yudha concluded Arts Renaissance Tremont’s 27th season with a recital that sparkled and surprised. [Read more…]
West Shore Chorale celebrates its 50th with Mozart and Malloy in Rocky River (Apr. 29)
by Nicholas Stevens
The 2017-18 performing arts season celebrated several auspicious anniversaries in Northeast Ohio, and last week in Rocky River, the West Shore Chorale marked its first half-century. Any ensemble with an extensive record of uniting communities through music deserves a commemoration of grand scale and ambition, and the Chorale offered just such a program for its own anniversary at Magnificat High School.
Cleveland Orchestra: all-Beethoven with Franz Welser-Möst (April 12)
by Nicholas Stevens
The sun is shining, the leaves regenerating — and something wonderfully alive is stirring in Severance Hall. The Cleveland Orchestra billed its programs on April 12 and 13 as “sneak previews” of the concert cycles that close its 100th season: windows into the ensemble’s preparations for The Ecstasy of Tristan and Isolde and The Prometheus Project. [Read more…]
Music from the Western Reserve: Dana Brass Quintet (April 8)
by Nicholas Stevens
The repertoire for brass quintet embraces a range of periods and styles. Arrangements of vocal music take on a certain muscle and gleam, Baroque pieces ring triumphant, classics gain in pep, and recent music can audibly push the ensemble’s limits. Jazz often makes for a natural fit. Small wonder, then, that the Dana Brass Quintet delighted in a program at Hudson’s Christ Church on April 8 with a program that incorporated all of the above. [Read more…]
Good Friday at Trinity Cathedral: Arvo Pärt’s Passio (March 30)
by Nicholas Stevens
The story of Jesus of Nazareth’s final hours is necessarily an unpleasant one, concluding hints of optimism aside. But the Passion can be beautiful in its own way, as Trinity Cathedral’s Good Friday Concert demonstrated. Suffering and salvation, grit and grace, horror broken by a spark of hope: under director Todd Wilson on March 30, Trinity’s Choir and Chamber Orchestra incorporated all of these into a program built around Arvo Pärt’s monumental Passio. [Read more…]
Cimarosa’s Il matrimonio segreto at Baldwin Wallace (March 22)
by Nicholas Stevens
A white picket fence, a suburban home interior, a blue sky dotted with puffy clouds — and six opera singers, each decked out in a distinct color ranging from deep purple to highlighter orange: such were the sights onstage on the opening night of Baldwin Wallace Conservatory’s production of Domenico Cimarosa’s Il Matrimonio Segreto last week. The show’s bright imagery — Pixar meets Japanese anime, inside a dollhouse — complemented the vibrant acting and spirited singing of the student performers.
Tri-C Classical Piano Series: Lise de la Salle at CMA (March 18)
by Nicholas Stevens
Active on the international piano scene for around a decade, Lise de la Salle continues to rise. In a recital for the Tri-C Classical Piano Series this week, she explored one of the fundamental elements of the human condition, often invoked yet seldom considered in depth: love. At the Cleveland Museum of Art’s Gartner Auditorium on March 18, though de la Salle often explained to the audience the reasoning behind her programming choices, these commentaries proved less powerful than the combination of her musical and gestural sensibilities. [Read more…]