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Preview: CMA Performing Arts Series — Jordi Savall and Hesperion XXI in “Honey and Blood”

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by Daniel Hathaway

SAVALL-RebecFor the third November in a row, Jordi Savall will visit the Cleveland Museum of Art to play on the museum’s Performing Arts Series. In 2011, Savall appeared with his son, Ferran, in a program called “Music Dialogues from Orient and Occident,” when Jordi played lira da gamba and seven-string bass viol and Ferran played theorbo and sang. In 2012, Jordi Savall brought his ensemble, Hespèrion XXI, to Cleveland to chronicle two centuries of European Renaissance and early Baroque consort music — an occasion on which he played the treble viol.

This year, Savall and Hespèrion XXI will return to Gartner Auditorium on Friday evening, November 1, when the resourceful Catalan musician will play vielle and rebec as part of the Museum’s “Masters of the Violin” series-within-a-series in a program entitled “Honey and Blood: The Cycles of Life in the Mosaic of Christians, Sephardic Jews & Muslims of the Balkans.” The ensemble includes five singers and half a dozen other instrumentalists playing exotic regional instruments. We reached Jordi Savall via Skype in his studio near Barcelona to ask how this program came about. [Read more…]

Preview: Oberlin Artist Recital Series — conversations with Yolanda Kondonassis and Ellie Dehn about “Ravel: Intimate Masterpieces”

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by Mike Telin

KONDONASSIS-Yolanda“I don’t know what it is about Ravel’s music that resonates with me so much,” says harpist Yolanda Kondonassis. “But it’s like that hopeful melancholy, yet it’s so full of energy at the same time.” On Tuesday, November 5 at 8:00 pm in Finney Chapel, the Oberlin Artist Recital Series begins its 2013-14 season with Ravel: Intimate Masterpieces, featuring some of the composer’s most sublime works: Introduction et Allegro, Cinq Mélodies Populaires Grecques, Chansons madécasses and the String Quartet in F. In addition to Kondonassis, performers include Ellie Dehn, soprano, Richard Hawkins, clarinet, Spencer Myer, piano, Alexa Still, flute and the Jupiter String Quartet.

The concert, inspired by a recent recording by the performers, all of whom have an Oberlin connection, was a project that was a long time in the making largely due to logistics, Kondonassis told us by telephone.

“But I never shy away from a complicated project. I play the harp, so complication is my specialty.” She also says that this particular group of pieces is music that never gets old. “I don’t know if this combination of works has ever been recorded on one album. But I think Ravel achieves such a particular atmosphere of music in his more intimate combinations.” [Read more…]

Preview: Brett Mitchell takes up the reins of Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra

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by Mike Telin

MITCHELL-BrettThe 2013-14 season marks Brett Mitchell’s first year as assistant conductor of The Cleveland Orchestra. And on Sunday, November 3 at 3:00 pm, Mitchell will make his Severance Hall debut as music director of the Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra (COYO) in a concert featuring the music of Shostakovich, Stravinsky, Kilar and Mussorgsky.

In addition to his position in Cleveland, Brett Mitchell is currently in his fourth season as music director of Michigan’s Saginaw Bay Symphony Orchestra. Prior to Cleveland, Mitchell served as assistant conductor of the Houston Symphony from 2007 to 2011.

Additionally, he has led an impressive list of orchestras including the London Philharmonic and the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, as well as the orchestras of Baltimore, Memphis, Oregon, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and Rochester, the Frankfurt Radio Symphony, Washington D.C.’s National Symphony Orchestra, Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, and the Northwest Mahler Festival Orchestra.

Mitchell says that working with young people has always been part of his career and a part that he enjoys enormously. “I love working with kids,” the Seattle native says enthusiastically during our relaxed conversation in his Severance Hall office. “They’re so eager and have such great energy, and are so open and so giving.” He adds that, technically speaking, his first music directorship was with the North Sound Youth Symphony in Bellingham, Washington. “I was halfway through my senior year of undergraduate school when they asked me to fill in for the remainder of that season.” [Read more…]

Preview: Beethoven’s Mass in C at Severance Hall — a conversation with Cleveland Orchestra Choruses director Robert Porco

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by Mike Telin

PORCO-Robert“Beethoven’s Mass in C is a wonderful piece and under-performed in my opinion — at least in this country,” Cleveland Orchestra Director of Choruses Robert Porco told us by telephone. “And I don’t know exactly why that is. People like to do the Missa Solemnis, which is an entirely different kind of piece and was written some fifteen years later.”

On Thursday, October 31 and Saturday, November 2 in Severance Hall, Franz Welser-Möst leads The Cleveland Orchestra and Cleveland Orchestra Chorus in performances of Beethoven’s Mass in C and Messiaen’s Trois petites liturgies de la Présence Divine. Also included on the program is Beethoven’s Grosse Fugue.

The Mass in C was commissioned by Prince Nikolaus Esterházy II. “He was the same person for whom Haydn wrote his wonderful masses. I only mention this because the late Haydn masses are not performed that often either.”

According to history, Esterházy did not like the work — which caused Beethoven to leave abruptly. “Esterházy wrote letters about how much the piece embarrassed him. People have asked me why he thought that and I can’t really answer that either except that he was very accustomed to hearing what Haydn had written.” In his The Life of Beethoven, (1998) musicologist David Wyn Jones recounts, “Nikolaus later wrote to Countess Henriette Zielinska, ‘Beethoven’s music is unbearably ridiculous and detestable; I am not convinced it can ever be performed properly. I am angry and ashamed.'” [Read more…]

Preview: CMA “Masters of the Violin” — a conversation with Mark O’Connor

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by Mike Telin

O'Connor-SQViolinist, composer and educator Mark O’Connor is not a folk musician or a jazz musician or a classical musician. Nor is he a musician specializing in any one of the multitude of musical styles he has studied. The categorization of Mark O’Connor is nearly impossible as he is his own musical genre.

On Wednesday, October 30 at 7:30 in Gartner Auditorium, Mark O’Connor returns to Cleveland with his string quartet for performances of his String Quartet No. 2 “Bluegrass,” Appalachia Waltz and String Quartet No. 3 “Old-Time.” The concert is co-presented by CIM and the Cleveland Museum of Art as part of the Mixon Hall Masters Series: Return of the Composer/Virtuoso and the CMA Performing Arts Series: Masters of the Violin. A conversation between O’Connor and CIM president Joel Smirnoff begins at 6:00 p.m.

Through his popular summer string camps and method books, O’Connor is training the next generation of musicians in the art of what he refers to as “American” string playing. And while in town he will also present master classes in string improvisation and composition as well an educational workshop at CIM. [Read more…]

Preview: Cleveland Chamber Music Society — fifteen minutes with Cuarteto Casals violist Jonathan Brown

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by Daniel Hathaway

Cuarteto-Casals-BarueccoFormed in Barcelona in 1997, Cuarteto Casals soon rose to international prominence with first prizes at string quartet competitions in London and Hamburg. Violinists Vera Martínez Mehner and Abel Tomàs Realp, violist Jonathan Brown and cellist Arnau Tomàs Realp have joined the King of Spain on diplomatic visits and have performed on the special, decorated Stradivarius instruments housed at the Royal Palace in Madrid. Collaborations with György Kurtág, Christian Lauba and James MacMillan have underlined the ensemble’s commitment to contemporary music.

Curateto Casals will appear in its latest collaboration, with Cuban-born guitarist Manuel Barrueco, on the Cleveland Chamber Music Society series at Plymouth Church on Tuesday, October 29 at 7:30 pm. The performance, itself a collaboration with the Cleveland Classical Guitar Society, features Eduard Toldrà’s Quartet “Vistes al mar,” Debussy’s Quartet in g, op. 10, Boccherini’s Quintet in D, “Fandango,” and the premiere of Roberto Sierra’s Fantasía.

Violist Jonathan Brown, a native of Chicago, joined the quartet in 2002. We reached him by telephone in Gainesville, FL at the beginning of Cuarteto Casals current United States tour.

Daniel Hathaway: You’ve been with Cuarteto Casals now for eleven years. How did you come to join the ensemble?

Jonathan Brown: I was studying in Salzburg and playing with the Camerata Salzburg and the quartet was studying with the Alban Berg Quartet in Cologne. [Read more…]

Preview: Israeli pianist Daniel Gortler to open Tri-C Classical Piano Series on October 27

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by Daniel Hathaway

GORTLER-DanielWhen Daniel Gortler last played on the Tri-C Classical Piano Series at the Cleveland Museum of Art in November, 2010, he was impressive in both his brilliance and restraint.

“Letting Schumann’s Symphonic Etudes, the Arabesque and ten of Mendelssohn’s Songs Without Words largely speak for themselves without putting his own personality in the way, Gortler nonetheless left his own stamp on these pieces by thoughtfully pointing up their many subtleties and placing every note as carefully as a curator would place valuable objects in an exhibition. The result was a memorable afternoon of piano music with no over-the-top pianism to be seen or heard.” (clevelandclassical.com review)

Gortler, who divides his life between New York and Israel, will be back to open this year’s Tri-C Series in Gartner Auditorium at CMA on Sunday afternoon, October 27 at 2:00 pm, with more Schumann — the Fantasiestücke, op. 12 and Fantasy, op. 17, as well as Mozart’s Fantasia in c minor. We reached the pianist by telephone in New York, where he was busy practicing Mozart for a midweek concert at Symphony Space.

Daniel Hathaway: You seem to have a special affinity for Schumann. What attracts you to his music?

Daniel Gortler: It’s not that I don’t like other composers — they’re all geniuses in a way — but with Schumann I think it’s the complexity of emotion and intellect together with structure and rhythm and feeling and passion. For me, all of this makes his music very beautiful and intense. [Read more…]

Preview: Garth Knox and Scott Dixon up next on CMA’s Transformer Station Series

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by Mike Telin

KNOX-GarthThe Cleveland Museum of Art’s new series, Concerts at the Transformer Station (1460 West 29th Street) was launched on October 5th with a captivating performance by tabla player Salar Nader. Never has an hour gone by so quickly as Nader engagingly discussed and displayed his masterful musicality as he guided the audience on a rhythmic journey across India, Pakistan and his native Afghanistan.

The Transformer Station is the perfect venue for showcasing solo artists: it’s hard to imagine being able to get any closer to the music. Refreshments and conversation following the performance was a delightful way to mingle with your fellow audience mates and say hello to the evening’s guest performer.

Transformer Station concerts continue on Sunday, October 27 at 7:30 with a performance by the twenty-first century troubadour, violist Garth Knox. “Troubadour” is the word Knox used to describe himself during a lively telephone conversation. “I’m a player/performer kind of a troubadour who goes around the world playing his music and other peoples and bringing news from one part to the other.” [Read more…]

Preview: Cleveland Orchestra’s “Fate and Freedom Festival” begins with screening of Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange

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BeethovenShostakovichby Mike Telin

The opportunity to look beyond composers’ music and into the world that shaped their lives and creative output is often available only to students enrolled in music history classes. Beginning tonight and continuing through Saturday, The Cleveland Orchestra presents Fate and Freedom: Music of Beethoven and Shostakovich. Music director Franz Welser-Möst conceived the Festival to look more closely at landmark symphonies by Beethoven and Shostakovich and provide context around their creation, while examining the ever-relevant themes of personal and societal freedom they express.

“Franz Welser-Möst is interested in bringing together unusual or disparate elements to see how they change our palette,” the orchestra’s director of artistic planning Mark Williams told us by telephone. “For example, a couple of seasons ago the orchestra played a number of works by Bruckner paired with the works of John Adams. The idea being that maybe Bruckner was the father of minimalism. Whether or not you agree with it, it is a statement.”

Fate and Freedom is a coming together of organizations and experts in their fields of study. On the musical front, Franz Welser-Möst will lead three Cleveland Orchestra concerts on three consecutive evenings, pairing Beethoven’s Symphonies Nos. 3, 4, and 5 with Shostakovich’s Symphonies Nos. 6, 8, and 10. [Read more…]

CityMusic Cleveland: An audio interview with Avner Dorman

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DORMAN-AvnerCity Music Cleveland kicks off its 10th anniversary on Wednesday October 23rd at Fairmount Presbyterian Church in Cleveland Heights with the first of five concerts at locations in and around Cleveland featuring the music of Dorman, Vivaldi and Schubert. Violinist Rachel Barton Pine returns to the City Music stage to perform a different Mozart concerto at each of the five performances.

The concerts also mark the debut of conductor/composer Avner Dorman as City Music’s new music director. Mike Telin had the opportunity to speak to Avner Dorman when he was in the area for a performance of his cello concerto with the Youngstown Symphony. He asked Aver Dorman about this week’s concerts and what it takes to juggle an active career as a composer and conductor.

[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/116368348″ width=”100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /]

Podcast produced by Erica Brenner. Musical excerpts: Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 3, from CityMusic Cleveland’s performance on December 10, 2011; Schubert’s Symphony No. 3, from CityMusic Cleveland’s performance on October 14, 2006, both used with permission from CityMusic Cleveland. Dorman’s Concerto Grosso, from Avner Dorman’s CD: Concertos for Mandolin, Piccolo, Piano and Concerto Grosso.

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