by Mike Telin
Bryce Dessner’s musical world defies categorization. The Cincinnati native’s music has been commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Ensemble Intercontemporain, Kronos Quartet, and Sō Percussion, to name a few.
His diverse roster of collaborators includes Philip Glass, Steve Reich, Paul Simon, Nico Muhly, Jonny Greenwood, Bon Iver, Jennifer Koh, Kelley O’Connor, and Taylor Swift as well as choreographer Justin Peck, and multimedia artist Ragnar Kjartansson.
The 45-year-old has won GRAMMY Awards for Best Chamber Music Performance (2016) for Murder Ballads, performed by Eighth Blackbird, and Best Alternative Music Album (2018) for Sleep Well Beast with the The National, which includes Dessner and his twin brother Aaron on guitar, piano, and keyboards.
On Friday, November 26 at 7:30 pm and Saturday at 8:00 pm in Mandel Hall at Severance, pianists Katia and Marielle Labèque will perform Dessner’s Concerto for Two Pianos with The Cleveland Orchestra under the direction of Gustavo Gimeno. The program also includes Ravel’s Suite from Ma Mère l’Oye (“Mother Goose”) and Franck’s Symphony in d. Tickets are available online.
After a long hiatus, the Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra is back in full swing. “I’m so excited,” COYO music director Vinay Parameswaran said during a recent telephone conversation. “I couldn’t wait to be back in our beautiful hall with the young musicians — we’ve all been waiting for this for way too long.”
Spanish-born Andrea González Caballero, who in 2016 became the youngest guitarist to receive first prize in the Alhambra International Guitar Competition in Valencia, has chosen an all-Spanish program for her Cleveland debut this weekend.
If you’re intrigued by the idea of contemporary composers writing music for historical instruments, Les Délices says that their latest program is for you.
Where did Johann Sebastian Bach come from? What influenced the mature musical style of one of the greatest composers of the Baroque period? Or to put it as co-director and violin soloist Alan Choo does in his recorded introduction to Apollo’s Fire’s Violin Fantasy programs, “Who were Bach’s role models?”
Identical twins Christina and Michelle Naughton — the first piano duo to receive the Avery Fisher Career Grant — are known for their uncanny level of mind-melding in performance. Christina once told 
One challenge of concert previews is balancing a discussion of the music against a portrait of the artist. In the case of pianist Arsentiy Kharitonov, who will visit the Rocky River Chamber Music Society for a free concert on Monday, November 15 at 7:30 pm at Lakewood Congregational Church (masks required), those two worlds of content collided. The way he described his program — works by Bach, Schubert, Schumann, Johann Strauss, Scriabin, and Rachmaninoff — was very telling about the way he thinks about music.
“The hardest part of programming a John Williams concert is that there’s so much you have to leave out,” Cleveland Pops music director Carl Topilow said during a telephone conversation. “I’ve seen programs that focus on Spielberg movies, for example. But our idea was to present a cross-section of his music.”