Special to ClevelandClassical
The Cleveland Philharmonic Orchestra sadly notes the recent death of former Music Director and Director Emeritus, William B. Slocum.
Mr. Slocum touched the lives of countless orchestra musicians, students, and colleagues in the Greater Cleveland area and in Northeastern Ohio beginning in the 1960s when he was a member of The Cleveland Orchestra under George Szell and a professor at Kent State University. This was followed by a long career at Youngstown State University (1972-2015) and his position as Music Director of the Cleveland Philharmonic Orchestra (1981-2007). [Read more…]
Three years after his first solo appearance with the Cleveland Women’s Orchestra, violinist Michael Ferri will return to Severance Hall to help the ensemble celebrate its 80th birthday with a performance of Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto on Sunday, April 26 at 3:30 pm.
New York-based mezzo-soprano Lara Nie and her long-time keyboard collaborator, Brandt Fredricksen, will join violinist Hristo Popov for the final concert in this year’s Chagrin Concert Series at Valley Lutheran Church in Chagrin Falls on Sunday, April 26 at 3:00 pm. The concert is free, but donations are welcome.
On Thursday, April 23 at 7:30 pm at Severance Hall, conductor Susanna Mälkki will be making waves during her Cleveland Orchestra debut with a program that will begin with Jean Sibelius’s tone poem The Oceanides. “It’s not performed very often, which is very surprising, because it is a jewel and personally one of my favorites of Sibelius,” the Finnish conductor said during a recent telephone conversation.
This week Les Délices, Cleveland’s French baroque music specialists, will present “The Angel and the Devil.” The program showcases music by the most famous pair of viola da gamba players of the eighteenth century, Marin Marais and Antoine Forqueray. Referred to respectively as The Angel and The Devil, their musical personalities will be brought to life by two modern-day gambists, Josh Lee and Emily Walhout. Oboists and recorder players Debra Nagy and Kathryn Montoya, baroque violinists Scott Metcalfe and Ingrid Matthews will join harpsichordist Michael Sponseller and the dueling gambists in music by Jean-Féry Rebel, François Couperin and Marc-Antoine Charpentier.
On Friday, April 24 at 7:00 pm, the John Knox Performance Series will present Verb Ballets in a production of Geoffrey Peterson’s Edmund Fitzgerald, a concerto for piano and strings, choreographed by Richard Dickinson. The performance will be held in Trinity Hall at John Knox Presbyterian Church in North Olmsted. Seating reservations required: see our 
The celebrated British tenor Ian Bostridge will bring the Cleveland Chamber Music Society’s 65th subscription series to a conclusion on Tuesday, April 21 at 7:30 pm at Plymouth Church in Shaker Heights, when he joins pianist Wenwen Du in a program entitled “Music of the Great War.”
Italian baroque music is immensely popular not only with modern audiences but also with advertising firms looking for energizing music to help sell cars. And there’s nothing more popular in that repertoire than Antonio Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons. This week, Apollo’s Fire will launch a six-concert series called “Vivaldi’s Four Seasons rediscovered,” featuring its concertmaster, Montréal-based violinist Olivier Brault, as soloist. Two other AF violinists, Johanna Novum and Julie Andrijeski, will do the honors in another Vivaldi concerto, the famous one in d-minor for two violins that Johann Sebastian Bach liked so well that he turned it into a solo organ work.
“I’m just so happy to be back with this wonderful orchestra,” French conductor Lionel Bringuier said in a telephone conversation immediately after Tuesday morning’s rehearsal with The Cleveland Orchestra. On Thursday, April 16 at 7:30 pm at Severance Hall, Bringuier will lead the Orchestra in a concert featuring works by Maurice Ravel, Camille Saint-Saëns, and Florent Schmitt. The program will be repeated on Saturday, April 18 at 8:00 pm.