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BlueWater Chamber Orchestra: fifteen minutes with Daniel Meyer

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by Daniel Hathaway

BlueWater Chamber Orchestra will present music by Osvaldo Golijov, Anton Bruckner, Antonio Vivaldi, and Franz Schubert in concerts this weekend at Rocky River Presbyterian Church (Friday, February 1) and Plymouth Church in Shaker Heights (Saturday, February 2), both at 7:30 pm.

I reached conductor Daniel Meyer on the road between his home in Pittsburgh and one of his regular podium positions in Erie, where he was rehearsing for a concert last weekend with the Erie Philharmonic. I started by congratulating him on his recent appointment as conductor of the Lakeside Symphony.

Daniel Meyer: I’ve been looking for a summer home for a while. My family loves Lakeside, and I’m very excited to have the opportunity to work there. One promising thing is its collaborative possibilities. We’re looking to expand what we do.

DH: Besides Erie, what other conducting positions do you hold down at the moment?

DM: I also conduct the Westmoreland Symphony just outside of Pittsburgh. I just got back from a guest appearance in Silicon Valley with the former San José Symphony. [Read more…]

Four Apollo’s Fire violinists take on Biber’s Mystery Sonatas

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by Daniel Hathaway

Tell your friends you’re headed to a Biber concert and their thoughts will immediately turn to a certain Canadian pop star. There’s another Biber, of course, probably famous only in early music circles, and Apollo’s Fire will treat its audiences to a good chunk of one of his violin masterworks this weekend.

Violinists Carrie Krause, Johanna Novom, Adriane Post, and Karina Schmitz will take turns playing nine of the fifteen virtuosic pieces that make up Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber’s “Rosary” Sonatas — musical meditations on the five Joyful Mysteries, the five Sorrowful Mysteries, and the five Glorious Mysteries of the life of Christ. Probably written in the 1670s, but unknown to modern ears until first published in 1905, the devotional work is preserved in a beautiful manuscript held in the Bavarian State Library.

The sonatas are pictorial and expressive, but a special feature of the collection is Biber’s requirement that the violin strings be re-tuned for most of the pieces after the first sonata. This practice is called scordatura. “What I love about it is that it changes the resonance of the instrument so much,” Karina Schmitz said in a telephone conversation. [Read more…]

Cleveland Uncommon Sound Project presents violist Ammie Brod and flutist Kenneth Cox

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by Jarrett Hoffman

Violist Ammie Brod embarked on a commissioning project after an almost miraculous encounter with a work of art. Flutist Kenneth Cox is a strong believer in programming music by minority composers.

Those two musicians will split the bill in a recital of solo music on Saturday, February 2 at 5:00 pm at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Cleveland. The event is part of the Cleveland Uncommon Sound Project’s free concert series, and includes a pre-concert chat at 4:00 pm.

There’s no more textbook “eureka” moment than when Brod, a member of Chicago-based Ensemble Dal Niente, happened upon Beth Lipman’s Laid Table (Still Life with Metal Pitcher) at the Milwaukee Art Museum.

During a recent phone call, Brod said it was “like getting hit in the head with something.” She had been thinking about a potential project and was trying to put it into words. “I turned the corner, and I was like, ‘Oh, everything makes sense now.’”

[Read more…]

Carl Topilow and the Cleveland Pops Orchestra play “John Williams: Cinema’s Greatest Music”

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by Jarrett Hoffman

The music of the prolific film composer John Williams was a staple of Carl Topilow’s programming long before he launched the Cleveland Pops Orchestra. “We were doing Star Wars medleys in the late ‘70s with the Denver Symphony — now the Colorado Symphony,” the conductor told us during an interview in January of 2016.

On Saturday, February 2 at 8:00 pm at Severance Hall, Topilow and the Cleveland Pops will honor Williams “and his incredible contributions to the world of music,” as the conductor told us recently over email. Tickets are available here.

“In the span of six decades, John Williams has composed some of the most popular, inspiring, and recognizable film scores in cinematic history,” Topilow said. “Whether drama, science fiction, patriotism, action, adventure, comedy, or despair, he always finds the perfect mood. It is a great joy to perform his music, and we look forward to a wonderful concert.”

[Read more…]

Fresh Perspectives to present Ohio premiere of Contralto

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by Mike Telin

What is a percussionist? What is a woman? These two questions will be examined on Friday, January 25 at Glo Cleveland, when Fresh Perspectives presents “I Am,” a celebration of identity through art and music. The evening will feature the music of percussionist/composer Sarah Hennies, including the Ohio premiere of her groundbreaking work Contralto, for video, strings, and percussion. The work features a cast of transgender women vocalizing over a live musical score.

The program will also include Hennies’ Everything Else for four or more performers and Settle for vibraphone (two players), performed by Hennies and Justin Gunter. Attendees can enjoy a new generative video installation by Brooklyn-based Natalie Braginsky and a poetry bar hosted by Cleveland-based poets, offering made-to-order poems you get to take home. Food and drinks are available. Tickets are available at the door on a sliding scale of $5 to $15. Doors open at 6:30 pm — 2460 Lakeside Avenue, Cleveland.

On her website, Hennies writes that Contralto — “defined in musical terms as ‘the lowest female singing voice’ — uses the sound of trans women’s voices to explore transfeminine identity from the inside and examines the intimate and peculiar relationship between gender and sound.” Click here to view a four-minute trailer.

[Read more…]

Les Délices & Newberry Consort to bring diminutive 15th-century songbook to life

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by Daniel Hathaway

Note: the Saturday evening concert in Lakewood has been cancelled due to the severe weather forecast. It’s always fun when musical scores suddenly emerge from wherever they’ve been hiding for decades or centuries. In 2014, a physically tiny collection of 15th-century songs came into the hands of an art dealer in Brussels and caused quite a stir in the early music world. It brought the total of such books that survive to 6, and its beautifully notated pages contain 50 pieces, 12 of which were previously unknown.

“Unbelievable. It’s like suddenly finding a dozen new drawings by Rubens!” said a researcher at the Alamire Foundation of the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium, which owns what is now known as the Leuven Chansonnier. “We hope that we’ll be able to find out who created the songs. The 38 known works are very interesting as well, because they’re often different versions from the ones we already know.”

When Les Délices and its Chicago counterpart, The Newberry Consort, were casting about for a collaborative project, the Leuven Songbook came immediately to mind for both directors, Debra Nagy and Ellen Hargis. “I told Debra we’d love to do something with that,” Hargis said in a telephone conversation, “and she said, ‘So would we. It doesn’t make any sense to do two programs, so why not do it together?’” [Read more…]

The Harlem Quartet in Youngstown: an ensemble for the 21st Century

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by Mike Telin

It’s no secret that today’s young musicians easily travel between musical genres. Take the Harlem Quartet, for example, who regularly present programs that combine standard string quartet literature with jazz, Latin, and contemporary works. They have a collaborative approach that broadens their repertoire and audience reach, as well as a commitment to residency activity and educational outreach. That combination makes them a prime example of a model 21st-century chamber music ensemble.   

On Thursday, January 17 at 7:30 pm at the Ford Family Recital Hall in Youngstown, the Harlem Quartet (Ilmar Gavilán and Melissa White, violins, Jaime Amador, viola, and Felix Umansky, cello) will perform works by Beethoven, Bolcom, Gillespie, Gavilán, and Debussy. The concert is presented as part of the inaugural Donald P. Pipino Concert Series. Tickets are available online.

The program will open with Beethoven’s Quartet No. 11, Op. 95 (“Serioso”). “It’s beautiful, concise, and compact, and makes a great program opener,” first violinist Ilmar Gavilán said during a recent telephone conversation.  

[Read more…]

Cleveland International Piano Competition kicks off 2019 Concert Series with Jeremy Denk

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by Mike Telin

If you’ve ever wondered what the Cleveland International Piano Competition does during the gap years between its signature event, the answer is a lot. Last spring CIPC hosted its Young Artist Competition, and from January through May will present five free concerts at the Beachwood Community Center. And on Saturday, January 19 the Competition will kick off the 2019 Concert Series with an 8:00 pm recital by Jeremy Denk at the Cleveland Institute of Music’s Mixon Hall.

Denk, an Oberlin alum and winner of a MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship, will perform Beethoven’s Five Variations on “Rule Britannia” in D and An die ferne Geliebte, Op. 98/S. 469 (transc. Liszt), Adams’ I Still Play, Bizet’s Variations chromatiques, Mendelssohn’s Variations sérieuses in d, Op. 54, and Schumann’s Fantasy in C, Op. 1. Tickets are available online.

“We’re very happy Jeremy is coming,” CIPC President & CEO Yaron Kohlberg said during a telephone conversation. “He’s one of the major pianists in the United States right now. He’ll be presenting a wonderful program and I look forward to a beautiful concert.”

This Saturday’s concert also marks one of Kohlberg’s first public events since he began his tenure with the Competition this past fall. Kohlberg, the second prize winner at the 2007 CIPC, is uniquely qualified for the job. [Read more…]

Akron Symphony: a conversation with Alexander Korsantia

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by Mike Telin

Note: this concert has been cancelled due to the severe weather forecast. There are certain pieces of music that, no matter when they were written, always sound new. And in the eyes and ears of Alexander Korsantia, Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 3 is one that holds that distinction. “It is an eternally fun concerto,” the pianist said during a recent interview. “It was written almost one hundred years ago but it still feels like it is aiming to the future.”

On Saturday, January 19 at 8:00 pm in E.J. Thomas Hall, the Georgian-born pianist will perform that concerto with the Akron Symphony under the direction of guest conductor Benjamin Zander. The all-Russian program will also include Glinka’s Overture to Ruslan and Lyudmila and Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 4. Tickets are available online.

When asked what he finds so attractive about the Prokofiev Concerto, the 1995 Gold Medal winner at the Rubinstein Competition quickly answered, “Its diversity. This concerto, probably more than any other by Prokofiev or any great composer, just covers a colossal amount of space in history. He is using an array of techniques from earlier music, like the polyphonic music of the Baroque, and the minuets and gavottes of the Classical era. Haydn is the champion of those dances in the 18th century, but in the 20th century that is Prokofiev.”  

[Read more…]

Art Song Festival: a conversation with baritone Benjamin Appl

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by Daniel Hathaway

As a stop on his first United States tour, Benjamin Appl will visit Cleveland for a recital in Mixon Hall at the Cleveland Institute of Music on Friday, January 18 at 8:00 pm. The German-born baritone, 36, said in a telephone conversation from his New York hotel that he’s delighted to be sponsored by the Cleveland Art Song Festival. “Especially in the United States, art song recitals are quite rare and it’s very difficult to find promoters who trust there will be enough of an audience,” he said. “My agency in New York told me that it’s absolutely wonderful because the Cleveland organization is a real flagship for this art form.”

Appl, who began his singing career as a treble in the Regensburger Domspatzen — the “Sparrows” of the famous Bavarian cathedral choir of boys and men — spent his early adult years in finance and business administration. Then he became Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau’s last student, and his life changed.

Since then, Appl has etched out distinguished international credentials in opera and concert music, but he has specialized in Lieder, a subject he now teaches at the Guildhall School in London. It’s music dear to his heart, but he knows it’s often a hard sell in the 21st century. “When I decided to do a lot of song recitals, I knew this would not be an easy step,” he said. [Read more…]

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