by Peter Feher
Franz Welser-Möst led the final bows on Saturday night at Severance, like the star of any show should. The Cleveland Orchestra’s music director is in his element presiding over the ensemble’s annual opera production, which this season packs the drama. Verdi’s Otello — in a concert staging that opened May 21 and runs for two more performances (May 26 and 29) — demands big voices, instrumental forces to match, and a conductor who can give it all shape and direction. [Read more…]
by Peter Feher
Tuesday Musical has been straying from its usual formula in a way that seems to be working. The Akron concert series brought its season to a close last Wednesday with a performance that exemplified the “classical with a twist” style the presenter has hit upon lately.
Nu Deco Ensemble, a Miami-based group that has gone on the road a couple times, took the stage at EJ Thomas Hall on May 4, bringing a setup that was part orchestra and part rock band. Jacomo Bairos conducted the ensemble, which included a string quartet, a medium-sized wind section, and a handful of players on guitars, keyboards, and percussion — all amplified.
Nu Deco can cover a range of genres with this instrumental variety. One mode the group easily adopts might be called “classical music reinvigorated,” in the vein of crossover projects like Mannheim Steamroller or the Trans-Siberian Orchestra. [Read more…]
by Peter Feher
Many conductors are happy to travel from orchestra to orchestra with the same set of pieces. Not Michael Tilson Thomas, who brought a unique but instantly recognizable program to Severance Music Center over the weekend.
A visit from the San Francisco Symphony’s music director laureate usually means interesting repertoire, stylish interpretations, and the prospect that he’ll return next season.
If that workload and those artistic commitments would be exceptional from anyone else on the podium, this year they have to count as remarkable for Tilson Thomas, too. The conductor announced his semi-retirement two months ago, going public with the details of a brain-cancer diagnosis but promising to keep making music all the same. [Read more…]
by Peter Feher
Lawrence Brownlee was still in master-class mode when he visited the Cleveland Chamber Music Society on April 26. The star tenor, born and raised in Youngstown, brought an educational element to his recital at the Maltz Performing Arts Center.
The program, “Song of My Youth,” served as an introduction not just to Brownlee’s artistry but more generally, to the world of classical vocal music. Songs in the three “big” languages (Italian, German, French) filled the first half, and excerpts from opera, musical theater, and elsewhere comprised the second. It all made for a concise overview of the standard styles in which any voice student today should be well versed, and Brownlee played up this aspect of his selections cheerfully. [Read more…]
by Peter Feher
A recital by Evgeny Kissin isn’t over when it ends. Anyone who’s kept up with the Russian pianist’s career — he was last in Cleveland 25 years ago — knew what to expect on Sunday, April 24 at Severance Music Center. After the final billed piece, Kissin returned to the stage four more times, playing a set of encores that made for a third act to the evening.
It’s his signature move for a reason. With these extra, off-the-cuff performances, Kissin shows remarkable command and pacing. He manages simultaneously to satisfy his own artistic standards and to respond to the demands of the crowd. When the mood is right, he can go on for hours, racking up a dozen encores that all but upstage the planned recital in breadth and artistry. [Read more…]
by Peter Feher
The Cleveland Orchestra could have partnered with the Cleveland Museum of Art for last weekend’s concerts. The give-and-take between composers and visual artists — and the historical movements that emerged in the process — inspired the program on Thursday, April 7 at Severance Music Center.
Actually, some of the Orchestra’s players — along with the week’s soloist, pianist Emanuel Ax — did end up at the museum the following evening, for a benefit concert in support of Ukraine. But before their night off, the performers put the relationship between music and art on dazzling display for the audience at Severance. Alan Gilbert conducted four works that ranged from the 19th century to the 21st and that showed what’s changed in the culture since. [Read more…]
by Peter Feher
The Akron Symphony set last weekend’s program moving — spinning, scurrying, and leaping across the stage, even if the musicians stayed in their seats. The April 2 concert at E.J. Thomas Hall brought out the dance element in a range of orchestral works, sometimes literally. Choreography, from ballet to flamenco to traditional Korean dance, accompanied two of the evening’s pieces.
The program’s second half stayed strictly musical, with a straightforward reading of Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Symphonic Dances. Any movement that took shape came directly from the score, in the rhythms and accents the composer used to virtuosic effect in his writing for orchestra. [Read more…]
by Peter Feher
The Cleveland Museum of Art showed off a new piece last week, though one that didn’t hang on a wall. The musical work in question — Stacy Garrop’s In a House Besieged — had its world premiere at Gartner Auditorium on Friday, March 25.
From conception to instrumentation, the score was crafted with CMA in mind. The performance (brought together by the museum’s director of performing arts, Tom Welsh) honored the late Robert G. Schneider, combining the two musical passions of that Cleveland choir director and organist. In fact, Friday’s entire program, which featured the Philadelphia-based chamber choir The Crossing, made the most of Gartner Auditorium’s organ. [Read more…]
by Peter Feher
If you were assembling an all-star chamber group, you couldn’t do much better than the Rosamunde String Quartet. The ensemble — a passion project for its members, who play in the string sections of some of the world’s top orchestras most of the year — visited the Cleveland Chamber Music Society on March 15.
One secret to last Tuesday’s polished program at Plymouth Church had to do with the group’s extracurricular nature. Thanks in part to seasons in ensembles including the Berlin, Los Angeles, and New York Philharmonics, the Quartet can pull off a big program easily, and with a certain unity of style. [Read more…]
By Peter Feher
Wu Wei is one of the world’s best players of an instrument you’ve likely never heard. The Chinese sheng virtuoso took advantage of this fact from the start of his dazzling program at the Cleveland Museum of Art’s Gartner Auditorium on March 11.
The stage was barely lit, and the rest of the hall was pitch black, when he made his entrance from the back of the house, down one of the aisles. His playing mingled with the other sounds in the auditorium — a violin line floating along the opposite aisle and spectral notes coming from the cello, harpsichord, and percussion onstage. [Read more…]