ClevelandClassical.com Header
Ad
Ad
Ad

Pre•Views

Les Délices mesmerizes with Machaut’s Lai of the Fountain

by

by Mike Telin

Now that the cold and dreary winter is behind us, our thoughts turn to spring. And with trees beginning to blossom and flowers blooming we can begin to think about cultivating the garden. On April 8 at 7:30 pm, Les Délices will celebrate the Medieval garden and it’s centerpiece — the fountain — with the debut of Machaut’s Lai of the Fountain. The program is presented in collaboration with Boston’s Blue Heron and features video art design by Camilla Tassi. Click here for ticket information.

While devotees of Les Délices will recognize the name Guillaume de Machaut, why has the ensemble returned to his music so frequently? “The practical reason is that there is so much of it,” artistic director Debra Nagy said during a telephone conversation.

“He created six copies of his own complete works that are full of compelling story-telling, which is something I’m always interested in when it comes to programming. Once you’ve invested a certain amount of time in learning the language — not just the 14th century French but the style and rhythmic language — it’s hard not to want to spend more time there.” [Read more…]

Piano Cleveland announces plans for 2021 International Piano Competition

by

by Mike Telin

Piano Cleveland has announced that after a year-long postponement due to the challenges presented by the pandemic, the organization’s signature event — the Cleveland International Piano Competition (CIPC) — will take place from July 8 through August 11, 2021. (Above: Nikita Mndoyants, 2016 first place winner, with Bramwell Tovey.)

The competition has been reimagined as a hybrid event with pre-recorded First and Second Rounds — Semi-Final and Final Rounds will take place in Cleveland. Twenty-eight contestants who were chosen for the 2020 competition will compete for an opportunity to perform with The Cleveland Orchestra and to win the Mixon First Prize of $75,000, a New York performance debut, management services, and a recording on the Steinway & Sons label. Click here for a full competition schedule and here for ticket information.

Creating the plan — a logistical jigsaw puzzle 

Piano Cleveland president Yaron Kohlberg said in a Zoom conversation that all the decisions during the planning process were made with the best interests of the contestants in mind. [Read more…]

No Exit presents works by composers who call Cleveland home

by

by Jarrett Hoffman and Mike Telin

The ensemble No Exit will continue its season on Friday, March 26 at 7:00 pm. The playlist features four world premieres — Zeke Paulowski’s 2020 Set to Viola: What We Will Remember, Nicholas Underhill’s Concerto for Piano and Midi Orchestra, Adonai Henderson’s We Tremble, but Know Better, and Luke Rinderknecht’s Resonances — as well as Timothy Beyer’s Amputate II for alto flute and electronics. As always, the concert is free. Click here at start time to view the performance.

“We love presenting concerts that celebrate some of the extraordinary musical voices that reside in Northeast Ohio,” No Exit artistic director Timothy Beyer said in a press release. “There are some great Cleveland-area composers who are really doing their own thing, thinking outside the box and writing music that is singular, unique and really worthwhile.”

[Read more…]

Caroline Oltmanns next up in Tri-C Classical Piano Series 

by

by Mike Telin

If there was a day and time made for piano recitals, it might be Sunday afternoon. “I like Horowitz’s idea of 4:00 pm Sunday recitals,” pianist Caroline Oltmanns said during a telephone conversation. “3:00 is great, 2:00 is great — those are like the golden hours.”

On Sunday, March 21 at 2:00 pm, Oltmanns will present a free, pre-recorded online recital as part of the Tri-C Classical Piano Series. The program will include works by Debussy, Gulda, Wilding, and Beethoven. Click here at start time.

When asked about the music, the pianist said she wanted to play pieces that were “festive, colorful, and sunny.” She also wanted the program to have a minimal amount of fuss. “There will be very short introductions before each part of the recital — I don’t want to say a lot unless I actually have something to say.”

Oltmanns will open her program with five of Debussy’s Preludes. “I wanted this set to have a crescendo,” she said. “‘Bruyeres’ is so gentle and one of my favorites.” (View a preview video of Bruyères here.)

In addition to being beautiful pieces, “Le Vent dans la Plaine,” “Ce qu’a vu le vent d’ouest,” and “Voiles” are part of Oltmanns’ current recording project. “I’m in the final stages of my next album, which is all about wind,” she said. The set will conclude with “Feux d’Artifices” (‘Fireworks’). [Read more…]

Italian guitarist Emanuele Buono debuts with Cleveland Classical Guitar Society

by

by Mike Telin

Although guitarist Emanuele Buono didn’t come from a musical family, his father had a passion for the instrument. “He put the guitar in my hands when I was five years old,” Buono said in an email. “And from that moment, I have never stopped playing.”

On Saturday, March 20 at 7:30 pm, Buono will make his Cleveland Classical Guitar Society International Series debut with an online program that will feature music by J.S. Bach, Franz Schubert, Hans Haug, and Gerard Drozd. The pre-recorded concert is free. Click here to receive links to the performance as well as to a post-concert Zoom reception with the artist, plus a copy of the full concert program.

Born in Turin, Italy in 1987, Buono began his musical studies at a young age. He went on to attend the Giuseppe Verdi Conservatory in Milan and later the Accademia Chigiana of Siena. He first broke onto the international concert scene in 2008 when he was awarded the Golden Guitar as the best young concert-player of the year at the XIII International Guitar Competition and Festival of Alessandria (Italy). In 2009, he won the Gold Medal at the International Christopher Parkening Competition (USA). [Read more…]

Emanuel Ax to open in-person Tuesday Musical Series March 25

by

by Daniel Hathaway

Thanks to COVID-19, the earth has cycled through four seasons since pianist Emanuel Ax has played a solo recital. He’s looking forward to making up for that with an all-Chopin program on the Tuesday Musical Series at E.J. Thomas Hall in Akron on Thursday, March 25 at 7:30 pm.

This time around, the annual Margaret Baxtresser Concert will mark the Association’s first in-person event since the pandemic began, and the management has made sure that all performers have had their vaccinations, and that distancing protocols are respected in the seating plan.

Ax has chosen works from Chopin’s later years: the Two Nocturnes, Op. 55, the Polonaise Fantasie, Op. 61, the Three Mazurkas of Op. 56, the Barcarolle, Op. 60, the Nocturne in E, Op. 62, No. 2, and Scherzo No. 4, Op. 54.

I reached “Manny” Ax by telephone at his getaway in the Berkshires to chat about his program, which I found a bit unusual. Lots of pianists program Chopin, but you don’t often see a complete recital dedicated to his works.

“I’ve never done it, but it’s been done,” he said. “This program is meant to feature incredible masterpieces from Chopin’s later years. I learned some of it that I’d never played before during quarantine and I’m excited about trying out the program. Of course, I’m going to be very nervous because I haven’t done a recital for a year. I hope people will forgive me for things, because it’s going to be difficult in that sense.” [Read more…]

Bayan + flute: Arts @ Holy Trinity to present Stasera Duo

by

by Jarrett Hoffman

Recently, maybe just by coincidence, Akron’s Arts @ Holy Trinity series has been highlighting uncommon, intriguing pairings of instruments — ones that often represent different spheres of the musical world, but that overlap in some slight way.

Last month brought clarinet and acoustic guitar, which share the same basic material: wood. And next up is flute and accordion, which derive their sound from the same place: air.

More specifically, when Stephanie Jutt and Stanislav Venglevski of the Stasera Duo give a virtual concert on Sunday, March 21 at 4:00 pm (register here), the combination that will be on display is flute and bayan, a type of chromatic button accordion developed in Russia that’s known for its wide range and rich sound.

Their program is diverse — it’s mostly made up of Venglevski’s original works, but also includes music by Astor Piazzolla, Isaac Albéniz, Alexander Tziganov, Raimundo Pineda, Claude Debussy, Henry Mancini, and J.S. Bach. It’s also very recent. The Duo was scheduled to record it on Monday at the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art.

[Read more…]

Les Délices “Women of Genius” — a conversation with Clara Rottsolk

by

by Daniel Hathaway

Les Délices, Cleveland’s French Baroque ensemble, continues its all-online subscription series on Thursday, March 18 at 7:30 pm with “Women of Genius,” featuring soprano Clara Rottsolk in music and poetry by Louis-Nicolas Clérambault, Mme. Duval, Julie Pinel, Élisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre, and François and Louis Couperin. After its debut, the video will be available on-demand through March 29. Purchase tickets and view connection details here.

The program, curated by Les Délices’ artistic director and oboist Debra Nagy, sets out to present its female composers not as isolated phenomena, but as composers who exerted a strong influence on French musical culture.

These were the daughters, the nieces, and the cousins of musical families like the Couperins. They were poets, translators, and librettists for airs, cantatas, and operas. They were brilliant improvisers and arrangers whose celebrated performances were attested to but whose works were never published. They were singers, keyboard, and theorbo players whose intimate work impressed and delighted. They were Women of Genius.

Rottsolk, a native of Seattle now based in Philadelphia, said in a Zoom conversation that Nagy’s idea of moving from presenting live concerts to forming a production company to produce high-quality video and audio shows was a wise and creative solution to the vagaries of the pandemic. [Read more…]

SalonEra: “Women in Music” — a conversation with Michele Kennedy

by

by Jarrett Hoffman

Both the music and the history of women composers are very much underexplored. So it’s fitting that Les Délices will begin its celebration of Women’s History Month with a new entry in their SalonEra series of performances and conversations — there will be plenty to hear, and plenty to learn.

Premiering online on Monday, March 15 at 7:30 pm, and remaining available for another 48 hours, “Women in Music” will feature instrumental and vocal works from the 17th-19th centuries by Francesca Caccini, Barbara Strozzi, Isabella Leonarda, Élisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre, Maddalena Sirmen, and Clara Schumann. See the full program and register here. It’s free to watch, but a donation is suggested.

Les Délices artistic director Debra Nagy, who is also the host of SalonEra, will be joined by harpsichordist Byron Schenkman, violinist Shelby Yamin, and soprano Michele Kennedy (above), who share a commitment to researching, performing, and recording music by women composers.

I reached Kennedy by telephone in Oakland, California to talk about the selections by three 17th-century Italian composers: Caccini, Strozzi, and Leonarda. We also discussed the societal restrictions on women of that era, and in some cases, the connections that helped these composers establish their careers. And we closed our phone call on the topics of equity and representation in classical music — particularly, Kennedy’s efforts to further that work while sheltering at home.

[Read more…]

Du Yun to be featured on YSU’s virtual Pipino Series February 24

by

by Daniel Hathaway

What should viewers expect when they tune in to composer/performer/curator Du Yun’s master class and presentation on the Donald Pipino Performing Arts Series from Cliffe College at Youngstown State University on February 24?

Publicist Maggie Stapelton described this fascinating artist last October in a press release for one of New York’s Bang on a Can Marathons:

Du Yun has a secret life. Several secret lives, actually — she is not only a composer of socially activated opera but she is also a pop diva, an extreme improviser, a high energy new music storyteller. When she performs her own music on the Marathon, at least one of these personalities will be on display.

A native of Shanghai, China who took up the piano at the age of four, Du Yun studied composition with Randoph Coleman at the Oberlin Conservatory, going on after graduation to study at Harvard, where she earned a master’s and a doctorate in composition with Bernard Rands and Mario Davidovsky.

Northeast Ohio had its most recent look at Du Yun’s work when Oberlin Winter Term Opera gave five sold-out performances of her Pulitzer Prize-winning work Angel’s Bone in late January and early February of 2018. The opera, directed by Christopher Mirto, explores a dark topic with alluring words and music. [Read more…]

Follow ClevelandClassical.com

Contact us