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Alisa Weilerstein talks about FRAGMENTS

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by Mike Telin

When faced with the realities of the pandemic, like many cellists, Alisa Weilerstein found refuge on social media, streaming movements of Bach’s cello suites. “I just want to have a kind of outpouring of music, of thoughts, and everything else,” she told The New York Times in 2020. “Right now all I really want to do is give.”

Little did she know that spending time with her thoughts would eventually lead to the creation of FRAGMENTS. The multi-year project weaves together movements of Bach’s six solo cello suites with 27 newly commissioned works.

On Thursday, May 11 at Severance Music Center Weilerstein will present FRAGMENTS 1, in which Bach’s first cello suite will be combined with selections from the commissioned pieces. The hour-long program is enhanced by theatrical elements including responsive lighting and set designs.

The music will be performed without pause and without printed programs. Following the performance, audiences can attend a post-concert discussion with Weilerstein and the FRAGMENTS creative team. Tickets are available online. The evening is presented as part of The Cleveland Orchestra’s American Dream Festival.

[Read more…]

Music of American history with the Parma Symphony: Lincoln Portrait & Gettysburg

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by Jarrett Hoffman

There are several stirring moments in Aaron Copland’s Lincoln Portrait, a piece that combines music with excerpts of oratory by Abraham Lincoln. One of those moments comes about two-thirds of the way through, when a rousing crescendo in the percussion follows a select few lines from the famous Lincoln-Douglas debates:

It is the eternal struggle between two principles, right and wrong, throughout the world. It is the same spirit that says, ‘You toil and work and earn bread, and I’ll eat it.’ No matter in what shape it comes, whether from the mouth of a king who seeks to bestride the people of his own nation, and live by the fruit of their labor, or from one race of men as an apology for enslaving another race, it is the same tyrannical principle.

[Read more…]

Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra: Violinist Marina Ziegler plays Sibelius

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by Mike Telin

Performing a concerto with the Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra is an honor and a moment to cherish. “I have fun playing Sibelius,” violinist Marina Ziegler said, “I’m just happy to play it with COYO because I get to do it with all of my friends. And it will be a nice way to end the year. My first piece with COYO was the Sibelius Second Symphony, so I feel like I’ve come full circle.”

On May 5 at 8:00 pm at Severance Music Center, the Copley High School senior will play the Sibelius concerto with COYO under the direction of Daniel Reith. The program also includes Schwerrtsik’s Herr K. entdeckt Amerika and Rachmaninoff’s Symphony No. 3. Tickets are available online.

Ziegler began her violin studies at the age of five at the Sato Center for Suzuki Studies at the Cleveland Institute of Music. Her teachers have included Stephen Sims, Isabel Trautwein, and Eugenia Poustyreva. She currently studies violin with David Bowlin at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music. [Read more…]

Allison Loggins-Hull is named next Cleveland Orchestra Composer Fellow

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by Mike Telin

When Allison Loggins-Hull’s manager reached out to say that The Cleveland Orchestra was curious to see some of her scores, the composer/flutist thought they might be interested in programming some of her music  in the future. Then, several weeks later, when he called back and asked Loggins-Hull if she was interested in being the Orchestra’s Daniel R. Lewis Composer Fellow, at first she didn’t take him seriously.

“I thought ‘Okay, Greg, what do you really want?’ But when he said no, this is real,  I was like wow, because this was not something that I saw coming.”

On Thursday, May 4 at 7:30 pm at Severance Music Center, Franz Welser-Möst will lead The Cleveland Orchestra in the world premiere of Loggins-Hull’s Can You See? The concert will also include Barber’s Cello Concerto with Alisa Weilerstein as soloist and the revised 1947 version of Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 4. The program will be repeated on Saturday at 8 pm. Tickets are available online.

One hour before each performance, a Prelude program in Reinberger Chamber Hall curated by Loggins-Hull will feature excerpts from her full-length program Honoring Black Composers, which will be presented at Karamu House on May 21.

[Read more…]

Johansen to solo with Women’s Orchestra on Sunday in Dvořák Cello Concerto 

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by Daniel Hathaway

The Cleveland Women’s Orchestra will make its 88th annual visit to Severance Music Center on Sunday, April 30 at 3:30 pm when Cleveland Orchestra cellist Dane Johansen will be featured in Antonin Dvořák’s Cello Concerto in b minor. Filling out the program, Jungho Kim will lead the ensemble in Dolores White’s Celebration, Salute to the Arts, and Jean Sibelius’ King Christian II Suite, Op. 27.

Johansen, a native of Fairbanks, Alaska,  joined the cello section of The Cleveland Orchestra in March of 2016, after studying at the Cleveland Institute of Music, the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Paris, and at the Juilliard School, and touring for five seasons with the Escher String Quartet.

In addition to performing Elliott Carter’s concerto during the composer’s centennial celebrations at Lincoln Center, Johansen made his Carnegie Hall debut as first winner of the Juilliard Leo Ruiz Memorial Award and appeared in William Walton’s Concerto with the London Philharmonic Orchestra. [Read more…]

Singers Club of Cleveland to take its spring program on tour to the Baltics

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by Daniel Hathaway

One of Northeast Ohio’s oldest continuing ensembles, The Singers Club of Cleveland, made its debut in the chapel of First Baptist Church on April 19, 1894.

The all-male chorus, which had tallied up 1,663 members by the time its entry in The Encyclopedia of Cleveland History was written in 1995, will return to First Baptist Church for a spring concert on Friday, April 28 at 7 pm  — not to the edifice where the chorus sang its first concert, but to its new Gothic building designed by Walker and Weeks and dedicated in 1929.

Friday’s concert will also set the distinguished ensemble off on a new course. Having stayed close to home for over a century, the Singers Club will embark on a week-long tour of Latvia, Estonia, and Finland in June.

“We’re going to be there during the Summer Solstice, which is a huge celebration in the Baltics,” music director Don Verkuilen said in a telephone conversation. [Read more…]

Chopin Competition Winner Bruce Liu To Perform on Oberlin Artist Recital Series

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This article is posted with the permission of the author and Oberlin Conservatory 

by Cathy Partlow Strauss

Rising Canadian pianist Bruce Liu, winner of the 18th Chopin International Piano Competition in Warsaw, Poland, will perform the closing program on the Oberlin Artist Recital Series 2022-23 season. The concert is at 2:30 p.m. on April 30 in historic Finney Chapel.

Liu will play pieces by Frederic Chopin and Franz Liszt—two great pianist-composers who expanded the piano repertoire in ways that still astound and move artists and audiences.

He describes the music on his spring recital programs as “operatic and full of romantic scenes.”

This concert features Chopin—the poet of the piano—at two distinct stages in his tragically brief career: his early time in Poland in the 1820s, and his artistic maturity during the following decade in Paris. [Read more…]

Cleveland Ballet: an evening of firsts

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by Mike Telin

Many exciting things are happening for the Cleveland Ballet. On Friday, April 21 and on Saturday April 22 at 7:00 pm at Connor Palace Theatre at Playhouse Square, the company will for the first time present George Balanchine’s Serenade.

The program also includes the Company’s first commissioned musical score, Symphony of Life by ​Israeli composer Anna Segal. And both works will be performed with the newly formed Cleveland Ballet Orchestra under the direction of Caleb Young. Tickets are available online.

Segal’s works are regularly performed by many orchestras and ensembles including the Berliner Symphoniker, London Mozart Players Orchestra, Ukraine National Philharmonic Orchestra, and The Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra. [Read more…]

David Russell returns to the Cleveland Classical Guitar Society

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by Kevin McLaughlin

David Russell may be one of the most respected and distinguished guitarists alive. But despite his Olympian artistic achievements — a Grammy, honorary membership in the Spanish Amigos de la Guitarra, and a place in the Hall of Fame of the Guitar Foundation of America — talking to him is like meeting an old friend over a pint at the pub.

On Saturday, April 22 at 7:30 pm at Plymouth Church, in a program presented by the Cleveland Classical Guitar Society, Russell will play works by de la Maza, Marcello, Asencio, Lackenbacher, Susani, and Tolsa, as well as Celtic Folk music. I spoke to the guitarist via Zoom while he was in Chicago and began by asking him about his program.

DR: The first is Campanas del alba by Eduardo Sainz de la Maza. It translates as “Bells at Dawn,” and it’s a tremolo study with a lovely low melody. It’s sort of to introduce myself to the audience.

[Read more…]

Quire Cleveland: creating an entire program of “Our Fathers”

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by Daniel Hathaway

Well-known for crafting interesting programs, Quire Cleveland’s artistic director Jay White has done that once again for the 19-voice professional ensemble’s forthcoming concerts in Cleveland, Chesterland, and Rocky River from April 21-23.

“Pater Noster” will feature seventeen settings of Christianity’s most famous prayer in six languages by known and anonymous composers dating from the last 400 years.

The Lord’s Prayer is the supplication that Jesus taught his disciples when they asked him how they should pray to God the Father. His answer is preserved in slightly different versions in two of the Gospels: Matthew 6:9–13 and Luke 11:1–4.

To learn more, I reached Jay White by telephone in his studio at Kent State University, where he had just celebrated the first balmy breezes of spring by opening all the windows. [Read more…]

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