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Chamber Music Societies Join To Celebrate Music from Spain

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By Mike Telin

Unlike other groups that the Cleveland Chamber Music Society presents, The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center is not a single standing ensemble but rather a collection of talented musicians who come together around a specific project or program.

On Tuesday, February 11 at 7:30 pm at The Cultural Arts Center at Disciples Church,  CCMS continues their 75th Anniversary season with the Lincoln Center ensemble’s “Spanish Journey.” The program features works by Fernando Obradors, Isaac Albéniz, Enrique Fernández Arbós, Manuel de Falla, Pablo de Sarasate, Joaquín Rodrigo, and Joaquín Turina performed by guitarist Jason Vieaux, pianist Soyeon Kate Lee, violinist  Kristin Lee, soprano Vanessa Becerra, and cellist Clive Greensmith. Tickets are available online.

We caught up with violinist Kristin Lee by phone in the lobby of Alice Tully Hall after the group had just completed their dress rehearsal for the premiere performance of the program before taking it on tour.

[Read more…]

Oberlin Opera on tour:
Jack and the Beanstalk

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by Kate MacKenzie

This January, the Oberlin Opera Theater hit the road, staging eleven performances of Jack & the Beanstalk across seven venues. While such tours are uncommon, it was the audiences of elementary school students that made the show truly special.

A Winter Term education tour was the joint vision of professors Stephanie Havey and Kyung-Eun Na, who served as Stage and Music Directors. Both had extensive experience organizing similar outreach programs, and felt a call for Oberlin Conservatory to be more active in the wider community. Equipped with an enthusiastic student cast and crew, the show began rehearsal on January 9th, a mere ten days before its preview performance in Warner Concert Hall.

The thirty-minute children’s opera was adapted from the music of Gilbert & Sullivan operettas by Johan Davies, who rearranged the simple but catchy melodies and authored a playful libretto to match. [Read more…]

The Cleveland Orchestra: A Conversation with Thomas Guggeis

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by Mike Telin

“Franz Welser-Möst was one of my first big supporters,” conductor Thomas Guggeis said during a telephone conversation. “I was his assistant at the Salzburg Festival early in my career, so it’s a real honor for me to be making my American orchestral debut with his amazing orchestra.

On Friday, February 7 at 7:30 pm in Mandel Concert Hall at Severance Music Center, Guggeis will lead The Cleveland Orchestra in Richard Strauss’ Also sprach Zarathustra, Henri Dutilleux’s Tout un monde lointain…, with principal cello Mark Kosower as soloist, and Maurice Ravel’s La valse. The program will be repeated on Saturday at 8:00 pm and Sunday at 3:00 pm. Tickets are available online.

Born in 1993 in Dachau, Bavaria, Thomas Guggeis has served as general music director of Oper Frankfurt and artistic director of the Frankfurt Museum Concerts since the 2023–24 season. He made his debut in Frankfurt in May 2021 with Mozart’s Requiem, followed by Richard Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos. Guggeis made his first North American appearance in 2023 at the Metropolitan Opera leading Wagner’s Der Fliegende Holländer. The same year he conducted the work for Santa Fe Opera.

[Read more…]

Old Friends, New Collaboration: Anthony McGill and Emanuel Ax bring recital tour to Oberlin

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by Stephanie Manning

Reposted with the permission of Oberlin Conservatory

Throughout his decades of playing chamber music, Emanuel Ax has kept his friends close. “ It’s wonderful to have people on stage that you like,” the pianist says. “I’m pretty gregarious as a person, so I like being with someone, especially old friends.”

Now in his 70s, the esteemed musician has performed with many of the same collaborators for decades, including cellist Yo-Yo Ma and violinists Issac Stern and Leonidas Kavakos. But his next recital tour brings him together with someone new: clarinetist Anthony McGill.

The duo’s upcoming performances feature a program of wide-ranging music, and their travels include a stop at Finney Chapel. That concert, on February 4 at 7:30 pm, will be presented as part of Oberlin’s Artist Recital Series. [Read more…]

Wayne Center Presents: Chamber music among friends in Wooster

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by Stephanie Manning

A ’60s cafetorium might not sound like a great place to hear chamber music. But at the Wayne Center for the Arts, there’s more to the concert venue than meets the eye.

“ Crazily enough, it has unbelievably sharp, nice acoustics for chamber music,” Jarrod Hartzler said in a recent interview. “ It is not fancy. It is not super comfortable. But it is acoustically great.”

Hartzler is the vice president and managing director of ESQYRE, an Ohio-based music education non-profit partnered with the Wayne Center for the Arts in Wooster. The two organizations have created a concert series called “Wayne Center Presents,” featuring musicians both local and otherwise. The third season began earlier in January and will present monthly chamber music concerts through May 2025. Tickets are available online.
[Read more…]

When Grammy nominees are also friends: chatting with Elaine Martone & Erica Brenner

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by Mike Telin

This year’s Grammy Awards recognize the best recordings, compositions, and artists from September 16, 2023, to August 30, 2024, as chosen by the members of the Recording Academy.

While Cleveland artists have been well-represented at the Grammys for some time, when the 67th award ceremony is held at the Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles on February 2 and broadcast at 8 pm EST on CBS, there will be two special reasons to pay attention.

Elaine Martone (left) and Erica Brenner (right), who have been among past Grammy nominees and winners, have both been nominated this time around for Producer of the Year, Classical (Category 82).

[Read more…]

CIM Opera Theater: Direct from the Headlines — Nico Muhly’s Dark Sisters

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by Mike Telin

Due to unforeseen circumstances, the CIM Opera Theater’s performances of  Nico Muhly’s Dark Sisters on February 1 and 2, 2025, at the Cleveland Museum of Art have been canceled. Refunds are being issued to all ticket holders.

“As an artistic and stage director who enjoys telling stories, this is a very compelling work and something that our students can sink their dramatic teeth into. It’s also a piece that audiences can get lost in, and ask questions about as the story goes along.”

That’s how CIM Opera Theater’s interim artistic director JJ Hudson characterized Nico Muhly’s Dark Sisters in a telephone interview. In his synopsis, the composer notes that the 2009 work — his first opera — follows one woman’s dangerous attempt to escape her life as a member of the FLDS Church (Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints), a sect that split from mainstream Mormonism in the early 20th Century, largely because of the LDS Church’s renunciation of polygamy. [Read more…]

Cooper Violin Competition: final prizes announced

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by Daniel Hathaway

Following Friday’s full concerto performances in Oberlin’s Finney Chapel with Norman Huynh and the Columbus-based ProMusica Chamber Orchestra, the panel of judges announced the three top winners in the 2025 Thomas and Evon Cooper International Violin Competition.

Taking first place with her performance of the Tchaikovsky concerto, 13-year-old Edna Unseld from Zurich, Switzerland (pictured, below) banked a cash prize of $20,000, plus a variety of professional opportunities. [Read more…]

Cooper International Violin Competition Moves from Summer to January

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By Mike Telin

Now that the new calendar year is upon us, it’s interesting to see which of the area’s classical music organizations are going to be leading the way into 2025.

When it comes to competitions, that honor goes to Oberlin’s Thomas and Evon Cooper International Competition, which alternates annually between piano and violin.

Usually held in August, due to construction at the Conservatory this year’s violin competition needed to find an alternative time period. “We wanted the competition to happen so we moved it to January as a one-time thing,” competition director and jury chair Sibbi Bernhardsson said during a telephone conversation.

[Read more…]

A Message from Daniel Hathaway

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As I write this end-of-calendar-year letter, I’m pleased to announce the renewal of our San Francisco Conservatory grant “to support the publication of classical music reviews, previews, profiles, and features” as one of the publications supported by the Rubin Institute for Music Criticism and the Ann and Gordon Getty Foundation.

We’re delighted to continue being part of a distinguished group of publications that includes the Boston Globe, the Dallas Morning News, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Baltimore Sun, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and the Chicago Tribune, who are keeping the great tradition of classical music journalism alive amid drastic changes in the industry.

That said, we would be nothing without the outstanding local musicians who provide us with such interesting topics to write about. In addition to a full concert calendar, look out in the new year for features about the 15th anniversaries of Blue Water Chamber Orchestra and Cleveland Chamber Choir, the Grammy-nominated classical producers of the year, Erica Brenner and Elaine Martone, and the 2025 edition of the Cooper International Violin Competition. And that’s just at the beginning of January.

ClevelandClassical.com provides a unique service to Northeast Ohio’s vibrant classical music scene, a valuable source of information for presenters, musicians, and audiences alike.

If you use and appreciate what we offer, we hope you’ll consider making a tax-exempt gift to ClevelandClassical as we close out 2024. Click here for easy ways to do that.

With grateful thanks and best wishes for 2025,

Daniel Hathaway
President

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