by Peter Feher
If Marc-André Hamelin had never studied music, he might have become a great novelist instead. At least, that was the impression that the expert Canadian pianist gave during an engrossing solo performance in Reinberger Chamber Hall on November 19.
Hamelin’s program, perhaps the most ambitious entry in The Cleveland Orchestra’s recital series at Severance Music Center this season, offered a master class in sensitive storytelling.
And the narrative brilliance had everything to do with the alchemical mix of performer and repertoire. On Sunday, Hamelin tackled three multi-movement works whose composers shared a couple of important inclinations. They all were good, but not great pianists themselves, and they all wrote programmatic music, or pieces that tell a story. [Read more…]
If you had stopped by the Cleveland Museum of Art on Wednesday, Oct. 25, you would have experienced an evening fit for a king. Members of Le Poème Harmonique, the French early music ensemble led by Vincent Dumestre, presented a sophisticated concert in Gartner Auditorium that centered around the tastes and decrees of Louis XIV.
The Akron Symphony fully embraced tradition with its opening-night concert this season. In an all-out performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony on September 29 at E.J. Thomas Hall, the Orchestra was recreating a major moment from its history. And at the end of the evening, as the finale of the “Ode to Joy” resounded throughout the hall, the program transformed into a complete celebration.
Valerie Coleman joined the flute and composition faculty at New York’s Mannes School of Music in 2021, but her work has found a second home at Oberlin Conservatory since then. 
