by Daniel Hathaway
“We have a penchant for the dramatic,” Burning River Baroque artistic director and violinist Peter Lekx said in a recent Skype conference call. “This program found itself when we discovered Nicola Porpora’s cantata, Destatevi, destatevi o pastore. It just screamed Burning River Baroque.”
“It’s about a broken-hearted shepherd who falls hopelessly in love with a nymph,” added Burning River Baroque soprano and executive director Malina Rauschenfels. “He takes himself way too seriously and writes his own epitaph on a tree.”
According to Lekx and Rauschenfels, who collaborate to plan BRB’s programs and finish each other’s sentences when they talk about that process, the rest of the program of Italian baroque cantatas and instrumental sonatas that the ensemble will perform three times this weekend began to fall neatly into place. “Giovanni Bononcini’s Alle sue pene intorno and Domenico Scarlatti’s No, non fuggire o Nice spoke to uswith their energy, and in the second case, with its Spanish flair. A very dramatic Porpora cello sonata and violin sonatas by Veracini and Scarlatti fill out the program.” [Read more…]
“When Dvořák came to the United States, he changed as a person and a composer, but I believe he also had a profound impact on the American music scene,” Broadway School of Music board member and Cleveland Orchestra cellist Bryan Dumm said, during a recent telephone conversation. “He was very comfortable mixing together as many stylistic elements as possible because of his experience in America.”
Italian Guitarists Matteo Mela and Lorenzo Micheli formed SoloDuo ten years ago. Their performances have received world-wide acclaim from New York’s Carnegie Hall to Seoul’s Sejong Chamber Hall, from Kiev’s Hall of Columns to Vienna’s Konzerthaus.
As the joke goes: A young musician stops a man on a New York sidewalk and asks: How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice, the man replies. On Friday, May 30 beginning at 6:45 pm in Studio 113 at the Cleveland Institute of Music, Brad DeRoche will give a lecture titled “Acquisition of Expertise on the Classical Guitar: The Effects of Mindset, Willpower, Goals, and Practice in the Quest for Mastery.” Free and open to the public, the lecture is presented by the Cleveland International Classical Guitar Festival.
On Sunday, June 1st at 7:30 pm, Jason Vieaux, guitar, and Julien Labro, bandoneón, will close out the 2014 Cleveland International Classical Guitar Festival with a dynamic recital at Cleveland Institute of Music’s Mixon Hall.
The twenty-second Art Song Festival, now firmly established at Baldwin Wallace University, got down to business on Monday, May 19 and will culminate in a free recital by ten singer-pianist 
The Broadway School of Music and the Arts (BSMA) will present Old World/New World: An Intimate Evening of Chamber Music, on Friday, May 30 beginning at 7:00 pm at Trinity Commons in downtown Cleveland. This annual benefit supports BSMA’s music and arts instruction and programming for underserved children and adults.
On Friday May 30, the not-for-profit foundation 
