by Jarrett Hoffman
IN THIS EDITION:
•Today’s events: Oberlin Orchestra and Contemporary Music Ensemble, and The Cleveland Orchestra
•Interesting reads: the environmentalism surrounding Yolanda Kondonassis’s latest recording project, and a new production of Beethoven’s Fidelio aimed at both hearing and deaf audiences
•Videos of CityMusic’s recent premieres
•Almanac: Van Cliburn on The Tonight Show, Metallica sues Napster, and a feature on Handel’s Messiah
by Daniel Hathaway
TODAY’S EVENTS:
Tonight at 7, Carlos Kalmar leads the CIM Orchestra in Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 9 and works by Anna Clyne and Haydn in Kulas Hall, and at 7:30, the Oberlin College Choir under visiting professor Ben Johns serves up a menu of part songs and madrigals in Finney Chapel (you can watch via live stream).
NEWS BRIEFS:
The Boston Symphony has canceled an upcoming four-city European tour due to a resurgence of COVID-29 that has affected 31 of its onstage musicians. The tour was to be a partnership between the BSO and the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, which share an artistic conductor in Andris Nelsons. Read more here. [Read more…]
by Jarrett Hoffman
IN THIS EDITION:
•A recital at UA by the “bowed and fretted” string quartet Invoke
•Cancellations in Boston and Vienna due to COVID and Russia
•Almanac: comedian David Letterman, the different iterations of his band, and a handful of his classical-musician guests
by Daniel Hathaway
TODAY’S EVENTS:
Eric Charnofsky’s WRUW radio slot today from 2-4 pm observes Alberto Ginastera’s 106th birthday (in absentia), and pulls some obscure works by Anron Arensky, David Maslanka, Adolphus Hailstork, Robert Schumann, and Janice Giteck off the shelf for a listen here.
The Cavani Quartet work with CSU student composers today at 4 in Drinko Recital Hall, at 7 pm, Les Délices proposes to reconcile early Romantic Lieder with the history of science (fairies meet microbes) in the next online episode of Salonera, and Youngstown State faculty Misook Yun, soprano, Sean Yancer, horn, and Caroline Oltmanns, piano (pictured) take on the diversity problem in German Lieder repertoire in a free 7:30 pm concert in Guzzetta Recital Hall at the University of Akron (also available online). [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway with Mike Telin
FEATURED THIS WEEKEND: BW Bach Festival
Back for its 90th iteration after a two-year hiatus imposed by the pandemic, the Baldwin Wallace University Bach Festival packs nine concerts, recitals, master classes and lectures into two days this weekend on its campus in Berea, and spills over into the rest of the year with other Bach-related happenings.
“It’s pretty exciting, with all the artists coming back together from all over the place,” Festival artistic director Dirk Garner said in a telephone conversation earlier this week. “We’re really all so relieved to be performing live again instead of doing it virtually or not doing it at all.”
With the help this year of a generous grant from the Kulas Foundation, Garner has invited two Boston-based ensembles to perform individual concerts as well as to join Garner’s BWV Bach Choir on Friday evening, and BW faculty and student singers and instrumentalists on Saturday evening in four of the six cantatas that make up Bach’s Christmas Oratorio. [Read more…]
by Jarrett Hoffman
IN THIS EDITION:
•Events tonight from Urban Troubadour and The Cleveland Orchestra
•News briefs: the 2022 Re:Sound lineup and schedule, auditions for the Cleveland Orchestra Chorus, and a change of conductor for The Cleveland Orchestra’s concerts April 14-16
•In memoriam: American composer Dorothy Rudd Moore (pictured)
by Daniel Hathaway
ON TODAY:
Trinity Cathedral’s Brownbag Concert at high noon today will feature the Amethyst String Quartet – Mary Beth Ions and Carol Ruzicka, violins, Laura Kuennen-Poper, viola, an Kent Collier, cello in a “spring bouquet” of Classical favorites by Bach, Beethoven, Haydn, Dvořák & Mozart. The hybrid concert will also be livestreamed and archived for later, on-demand viewing.
NEWS BRIEFS:
On Wednesday, the New York Times announced the appointment of Zachary Woolfe, a freelancer at the paper since 2011, as its classical music critic. In an article in Editor and Publisher, his Times colleagues Gilbert Cruz and Sia Michel wrote
Zack often engages with the major issues confronting the field — editing and writing pieces about the continuing obstacles female conductors face; the lack of diversity in major orchestras and on podiums; the ways classical music should change in an era of racial reckoning; and the field’s complex, fraught relationship with Asian and Asian American musicians. [Read more…]
by Jarrett Hoffman
IN THIS EDITION:
•ChamberFest and Chamber Music Society come together tonight
•An update on the theft of Berta Rojas’ guitar (pictured: surveillance footage of the suspect)
•In memoriam Anne Parsons, and news about Anna Netrebko
•Louis Spohr: his useful inventions, his clarinet concertos, and a boastful passage in his autobiography
by Daniel Hathaway
ON TODAY:
Today from 2 to 4 pm on WRUW from Case Western Reserve University, Eric Charnofsky continues to explore highways and byways of classical music with a program that includes Dmitry Kabalevsky’s Symphonic Poem “Spring,” “Poem of April” for baritone and piano by Jules Massenet, the first symphony of Arvo Pärt, plus a Sonata for violin and piano by Lejaren Hiller and music by Theresa Wong and Louis Couperin. Click here to listen to the internet feed.
And tonight at 7:30 pm, the Rocky River Chamber Music Society ventures into jazz with Bob Sneider & Friends, a five-member jazz ensemble led by Sneider, who is associate professor of jazz studies and contemporary media at the Eastman School of Music. It’s a hybrid event that you can either attend in person at West Shore Unitarian Universalist Church, 20401 Hilliard Blvd. in Rocky River, or watch via live stream. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
ON THIS WEEKEND:
Les Délices continues its live, premiere run of the Baroque opera The White Cat on Saturday at 3 and 7:30 and Sunday at 3 at the Breen Center, and CIM Opera Theater and New Music Ensemble repeat their Pocket Operas program on Sunday at 4 in Mixon Hall.
Orchestra concerts this weekend include the Akron Symphony with the flamenco dance Alice Blumenfeld and the Korean Three Drum Dancers (E. J. Thomas Hall Saturday at 8), and Lauren Berry and Connor Bogart solo in Broadway favorites with Carl Topilow and Cleveland Pops at Severance.
Visiting musicians will be hosted by the Cleveland Classical Guitar Society (Berta Rojas, pictured, Saturday at 7:30 at Plymouth Church) and No Exit (The Unheard-of Ensemble exploring climate change with composer Christopher Stark and video artist Zlatko Ćosić at Spaces Gallery Saturday at 8).
On Sunday at 1 at the Cleveland History Center, the Cleveland Arts Prize will celebrate African American History and Culture and its own 60th anniversary with pianist Dianna White-Gould, violist Christopher Jenkins, cellist Kahri Joyner, poet Raja Belle Freeman, and tenor Cornelius Johnson. The weekend concludes Sunday at 4 with Stars in the Classics’ spring cabaret at the Church of the Western Reserve. [Read more…]