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DIARY: Weekend, October 21 – 23, 2022

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by Daniel Hathaway

IN THIS EDITION:

.  Concerts in all flavors to choose from

. R.I.P. violinist Geoff Nuttall (pictured), news from Piano Cleveland

. Howard Hanson & Franz Liszt celebrate birthdays, Jean-Marie Leclair & Alessandro Scarlatti take their leave

WEEKEND  EVENTS:

Today, at 12:15 pm, McGaffin Carillon Concert & Live Stream presents Sheryl Modlin, guest carillonneur (Church of the Saviour, Cleveland Hts.). Her program of Halloween favorites includes themes from The Adams Family and the Munsters, “the” Bach Toccata & music by Gounod, Chopin, and John Williams. McGaffin Tower, 11205 Euclid Ave., Cleveland. Free. Click here for live stream.

At 7:30 the imaginative period ensemble Les Délices unveils their new program, Winds of Change, at the Akron Public Library (downtown). The all-instrumental concert features chamber works from the eve of the French and Haitian Revolutions, inspired by philosophical ideals of liberty and equality and early abolitionist writing. Classical Era works by Joseph Bologne Chevalier de St. Georges and Luigi Boccherini will be paired with Haitian composer Sydney Guillaume’s commission A Journey to Freedom. [Read more…]

DIARY: Thursday, October 20, 2022

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by Jarrett Hoffman

IN THIS EDITION:

•Tough choices: three orchestra concerts all at 7:30 tonight

•A composition competition and a performing arts fellowship for Northeast Ohioans

•Almanac: a pair of American composers in Charles Ives and Josephine McGill

HAPPENING TODAY:

Three options — choose one.

There’s Tuesday Musical’s season-opener, a performance by the Scottish Chamber Orchestra. The orchestra, led by Maxim Emelyanychev, will play Max Bruch’s Violin Concerto No. 1 with Nicola Benedetti as soloist (pictured), Mendelssohn’s Symphony No. 3, and Anna Clyne’s Stride. Read Mike Telin’s interview with Clyne here, and get tickets here.

There’s The Cleveland Orchestra, led by Daniel Harding, in a program that includes Jörg Widmann’s Viola Concerto with Antoine Tamestit as soloist, and Richard Strauss’s “Alpine Symphony.” Tickets here.

And there’s the Canton Symphony with “Indré Meets the Symphony,” a pop-classical crossover concert featuring Akron-based band Indré. Tickets here (cheaper online than at the door). Also available: an open-bar pass…

[Read more…]

DIARY: Wednesday, October 19, 2022

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by Daniel Hathaway

IN THIS EDITION:

. Farewell to Gabriel’s horns at Trinity

. Scottish Chamber Orchestra soloist Nicola Benedetti profiled, anniversaries of Ravel’s Pictures, Gershwin’s Lullaby, and the premature departure of Jacqueline du Pré

TODAY’S  EVENTS:

At noon, Trinity Cathedral’s Brownbag Concert features the popular big band Gabriel’s Horns (pictured). If you’re a fan, you should know that bandleader James Mays is retiring, so this will be the horns’ final appearance on the lunchtime series at Trinity Cathedral, 2230 Euclid Ave., Cleveland. Freewill offering.

IN THE NEWS:

Violinist Nicola Benedetti, who will appear on Akron’s Tuesday Musical Series on Thursday with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra in the Max Bruch Concerto, is profiled in The Guardian in conjunction with her recent appointment as director of the Edinburgh Festival. [Read more…]

DIARY: Tuesday, October 18, 2022

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by Jarrett Hoffman

IN THIS EDITION:

•Today: pianist-composer Chris Neiner at the Covenant, and Academy of St. Martin in the Fields Chamber Ensemble at Cleveland Chamber Music Society

•Interesting reads: Jakub Hrůša and Jennifer Koh in the news

•Almanac: Wynton Marsalis, Howard Shore, Charles Gounod, and Gussie Davis

HAPPENING TODAY:

Pianist-composer Chris Neiner is the featured artist today on the Tuesday Noon series at Church of the Covenant, where he’ll play music by Copland, Barber, and John Adams, as well as three works of his own. There will be a freewill offering.

And at 7:30, the Cleveland Chamber Music Society welcomes the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields Chamber Ensemble to Plymouth Church in Shaker Heights, where a group of eight string players will play works by Brahms, Henry Purcell, and George Enescu. Tickets are available online.

You can find more details in our Concert Listings.

[Read more…]

DIARY: Monday, October 17, 2022,

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by Daniel Hathaway

IN THIS EDITION:

. Sphinx Virtuosi visit CIM, Charnofsky interviews bassist Ruth Cavano

. Anniversaries, some tragic, and invitations to explore some overlooked chamber music

TODAY’S  EVENTS:

2:00 pm – Not Your Grandmother’s Classical Music, Eric Charnofksy hosts a new episode that includes. Michael Nyman’s Where the Bee Dances for soprano saxophone and chamber orchestra, Sara Feigin’s Variations for piano, Ivor Gurney’s Five Elizabethan Songs, Joseph Martin Kraus’s Riksdags March for orchestra, plus a special interview with prize-winning CWRU double bass student Ruth Cavano, discussing her upcoming recital on campus and playing a sampling of her repertoire by J.S. Bach and Andrés Martín. Join the broadcast on WRUW.

7:30 pm – CIM welcomes Sphinx Virtuosi, featuring Tommy Mesa, cello & Hannah Whitc, violin, in the program “Songs for our Times,” featuring Jessie Montgomery’s Strum, & Divided for Solo Cello & Orchestra,Michael Dudley’s Prayer for our Times, Valerie Coleman’s Tracing Visions, Carlos Simon’s Between Worlds, Heitor Villa-Lobos’ Bachianas Brasileiras No. 9, Ricardo Herz’s Sísifo na Cidade Grande & Ludwig van Beethoven’s Violin Sonata No. 9 in a, arr. Rubén Rngel. Kulas Hall, Cleveland Institute of Music, 11021 East Boulevard, Cleveland. Free but seating passes required. [Read more…]

DIARY: Weekend, October 14-16, 2022

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by Daniel Hathaway with Mike Telin

IN THIS EDITION:

. The weekend concert calendar gives you a multiplicity of options.

. CIM ventures outside University Circle in an expanded series of community concerts.

. Hamilton C. MacDougall and William Barclay Squire (who?) make their debuts while Leonard Bernstein and Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck (pictured above on a Dutch 25 guilder banknote) exit the scene.

WEEKEND EVENTS: 

On Friday, October 14 at 11:00 am Nikolaj Szeps-Znaider leads The Cleveland Orchestra with cello soloist Mark Kosower in Canadian-American composer Karim Al-Zand’s timely Lamentation On The Disasters of War, Ernst Bloch’s Schelomo (Solomon, Hebraic Rhapsody for Cello and Orchestra) & Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3 (“Eroica”) at Severance Music Center, 11001 Euclid Avenue, Cleveland. Tickets are available online for this program, which will be repeated Saturday at 8:00 pm and Sunday at 3:00 pm. Read our preview article here.

On Friday at 7 pm, The Singers’ Club of Cleveland reprises a concert of reflective choral music in recognition of the global impact of the COVID pandemic. The featured work is British composer David Briggs’ Requiem for men’s voices and organ.. First Baptist Church, 3630 Fairmount Boulevard, Cleveland Heights. Tickets available online. [Read more…]

DIARY: Thursday, October 13, 2022

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by Jarrett Hoffman

IN THIS EDITION:

•Tonight: Kosower plays Bloch’s Schelomo with Cleveland Orchestra, YSU presents a faculty/alumnus guitar duo, and Oberlin combines orchestra and choir for music by R. Nathaniel Dett

•Interesting reads: digging deeper into Dett, and praise for Lawrence Brownlee

•Almanac: the Medieval-influenced contemporary music of Zana Clarke

HAPPENING TODAY:

Three events, all at 7:30.

At Severance Music Center, Nikolaj Szeps-Znaider leads The Cleveland Orchestra in a concert that features Mark Kosower as soloist, in Ernst Bloch’s Schelomo – Hebraic Rhapsody for Cello and Orchestra. (Kosower and Mike Telin discuss the work here.) Also on the program: Karim Al-Zand’s Lamentation On The Disasters of War and Beethoven’s “Eroica” Symphony. Tickets are available online. (Photo of Kosower by Roger Mastroianni.)

At Youngstown State’s Bliss Recital Hall, a faculty member (François Fowler) and an alumnus (Christopher Mrofchak) join forces as the Fowler/Mrofchak Guitar Duo. They’ll play works by J.S. Bach, Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, and Fowler himself — namely, his latest composition, Four Letters to Wormwood (after C.S. Lewis) for 2 guitars. Attendance is free.

And at Oberlin Conservatory’s Finney Chapel, another teaming-up will take place. As a preview for a performance at Carnegie Hall in January, Raphael Jiménez will lead The Oberlin Orchestra and three of the school’s choral ensembles — Gospel Choir, Musical Union, and Oberlin College Choir — in R. Nathaniel Dett’s oratorio The Ordering of Moses.

Soloists include members of the faculty (soprano Mathilda Edge, baritone Timothy LeFebvre), guest artists (mezzo-soprano Krysty Swann), and an alum (tenor Limmie Pulliam). The program also includes Brahms’ Tragic Overture and Iván Enrique Rodríguez’s A Metaphor for Power. It’s free, and there’s a livestream.

Speaking of that concert…

[Read more…]

DIARY: Wednesday, October 12, 2022

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by Daniel Hathaway

IN THIS EDITION:

. An engaging ritual celebrated nightly since 1549

. Contemporary  music at Oberlin

. Revisiting the music of Ralph Vaughan Williams

TODAY’S EVENTS: 

At 6pm, Trinity Chamber Choir will sing the traditional Anglican service of Choral Evensong commemorating Edith Cavell +1915, nurse and martyr. with Jeremy Jackman’s responses, William Byrd’s Fauxbourdon Service, and Ralph Vaughan Williams’ Valiant-for-Truth. The Rev. Peter Faass officiates and Todd Wilson conducts.

This 45-minute service will be sung by Trinity’s resident choirs and guests every Wednesday from October through May at Trinity Cathedral, 2230 Euclid Ave., Cleveland. On his blog, concert pianist and polymath Stephen Hough (himself a Roman Catholic), wrote about the engaging British ritual, which has been sung nightly around the world sinc 1549:

Evensong hangs on the wall of life like an old, familiar cloak passed through the generations. Rich with prayer and scripture, it is nevertheless totally nonthreatening. It is a service into which all can stumble without censure – a rambling old house where everyone can find some corner to sit and think, to listen with half-attention, trailing a few absentminded fingers of faith or doubt in its passing stream. [Read more…]

DIARY: Tuesday, October 11, 2022

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by Jarrett Hoffman

IN THIS EDITION:

•Dear Diary: an encounter with the Great Stalacpipe Organ, in a cave

•Bulletin Board: Next Jazz Legacy apprenticeship deadline, George Walker album from Cleveland Orchestra

•Almanac: R. Nathaniel Dett & Anton Bruckner

DEAR DIARY,

This past weekend I heard the biggest musical instrument in the world. It’s inside a cave in Virginia.

The cave is called Luray Caverns. It has high ceilings and big open spaces, but it feels very close-up in the dim lighting and with stalactites stretching down right in front of you.

Partway through the cave, you find the Great Stalacpipe Organ. Armed with four manuals, it was invented in the ‘50s by Leland W. Sprinkle (a real name), a mathematician and scientist who was involved in electronics and worked at the Pentagon.

Back then, Luray tour guides would tap on stalactites with a mallet to make sounds, even playing well-known tunes. That might’ve been what gave Mr. Sprinkle his idea. Or maybe it was his son smacking his head on a stalactite — another kind of percussion, and another version of the story.

[Read more…]

DIARY: Monday, October 10, 2022

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by Daniel Hathaway

IN THIS EDITION:

. Tatsuya Nakatani CUSP concert, Charnofsky playlist

. Why orchestras flourish in the American Midwest, and a few births, deaths, and premieres for the record

TODAY’S EVENTS: 

8:00 pm – Cleveland Uncommon Sound Project presents Tatsuya Nakatani, avant-garde percussionist, composer, and artist of sound, with CUSP Improvisation Orchestra in “a spatially presented, structured improvisation.” Convivium 33 Gallery, 1433 E. 33 St,, Cleveland. $15 recommended ticket price or pay what you can. No one will be turned away for lack of funds.

Eric Charnofsky’s playlist for Not Your Grandmother’s Classical Music today from 2-4 pm: Charles Wakefield Cadman’s Sonata for Violin and Piano, Henri Dutilleux’s: Mystère de l’instant (string orchestra, cimbalom, and percussion), Jules Massenet’s Poème d’Octobre (baritone voice and piano), Paul Creston’s Symphony No. 4 (in celebration of his birth anniversary), Nicolas Flagello’s Electra (piano, celesta, harp, and percussion) & Erik Satie’s: solo piano selections. [Read more…]

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