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Barber’s Violin Concerto: a conversation with Jung-Min Amy Lee

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by Rory O’Donoghue

Whether performing with the Omni Quartet or soloing with The Cleveland Orchestra, violinist Jung-Min Amy Lee takes the same approach. “The orchestra is just a bigger setting for chamber music,” the associate concertmaster said in an interview last weekend. “It’s the same ideas, transfigured.”

Lee will get to flex those elevated chamber music chops this Saturday, August 10 at 8:00 pm at Blossom Music Center, where she will perform Barber’s enigmatic Violin Concerto with The Cleveland Orchestra. I got the chance to catch up with the busy violinist and discuss her upcoming performance. 

[Read more…]

Classical music events to catch during the rest of the summer

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by Daniel Hathaway

Classical music events begin spiraling down into the Dog Days of August this week, beginning with Ohio Light Opera, which will present final performances of Perchance to Dream (above) and Girl Crazy on Wednesday the 7th at 2:00 and 7:30 pm, The Devil’s Rider and Music in the Air on Thursday the 8th at 2:00 and 7:30 pm, South Pacific and Into the Woods on Friday the 9th at 2:00 pm and 7:30 pm, and Pirates of Penzance on Saturday the 10th at 2:00. Hurry to Freedlander Theater on the campus of The College of Wooster before the company packs it in for 2019. Tickets here.

The Cleveland Orchestra will be busy in several modes through the end of the month. Its Star-Spangled Spectacular — postponed from Independence Day because of the All-Star Game — takes place on Mall B downtown on Wednesday the 7th at 9:00 pm (catch it, if not in person, on the stream at ideastream.org). [Read more…]

Margaret Scharf, 89

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Margaret Rickerd Scharf, who co-directed the music program at Old Stone Church in Public Square from 1969-1999 with her husband, Warren, died on Friday, August 1 at the age of 89.

“Maggie” joined Warren on the faculty of the Baldwin Wallace Conservatory in 1993, where he had served as director since 1967, and taught organ there until 2013. The couple met as graduate organ students at the Eastman School of Music (he died in 2014). She also served as Dean of the Cleveland Chapter of the American Guild of Organists, and taught at Cleveland State University.

Services will be held at The Old Stone Church on Saturday, August 10 at 11:00 am, followed by a luncheon. Read an obituary here.

Mozart’s “Great” Mass: A conversation with Lisa Wong

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by Rory O’Donoghue

This Friday, August 2 at 7:00 pm in Severance Hall, the Blossom Festival Chorus will join The Cleveland Orchestra for a one-off performance of Mozart’s “Great” Mass in c-minor. Last Sunday, the Chorus and Orchestra brought the house down at Blossom in their Aretha Franklin tribute concert, with vocalists Capathia Jenkins and Ryan Shaw in the spotlight.

“It’s a busy summer in Cleveland,” Director of Choruses Lisa Wong said over the phone last week, “but it’s a fun one.” I got the chance to talk with Wong by telephone about her work with The Cleveland Orchestra Choruses in anticipation of this Friday’s concert, the latest installment of their Summers@Severance Series.

Rory O’Donoghue: How did you get started in choral music?

Lisa Wong: Interestingly, the very first choral and orchestral piece that I ever encountered was this Friday’s selection, Mozart’s Mass in c-minor. I sang it as an undergraduate music student, and we had a guest conductor who came to our university and worked with our choruses for that concert. It was a singularly influential moment in my life — I was so inspired by this wonderful conductor. As it turned out, that was the late Robert Page, who was director of choruses for The Cleveland Orchestra at the time. I didn’t know what that title meant, exactly, but I knew how inspired I was by the way this music bubbles up with emotion.  [Read more…]

Cooper International Competition: A conversation with first-prize winner Eric Charles Chen

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by Mike Telin 

After a grueling three rounds at Oberlin’s Thomas and Evon Cooper International Competition, on Friday evening, July 26 at Severance Hall, 18-year-old violinist Eric Charles Chen from Princeton, New Jersey was awarded the grand prize of $20,000. Earning second place and $10,000 was 14-year-old Shihan Wang of Beijing, China, while Sixteen-year-old Isabella Brown of Gurnee, Illinois, earned third place and $5,000.

Commenting in a press release on Chen’s performance of Prokofiev’s Concerto No. 2 in g with The Cleveland Orchestra under the direction of Gemma New, Director and Jury Chair Gregory Fulkerson said, “What you heard from Eric was profound instrumental control and rhythmic understanding of the piece.” Fulkerson particularly praised Chen for his delivery of a duet with the Orchestra’s bass section late in the piece. “It was a true moment of greatness.” [Read more…]

Cleveland Orchestra Summers@Severance: a conversation with conductor Matthew Halls

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by Daniel Hathaway

On Friday, August 2 as part of the Summers@Severance Series, guest conductor Matthew Halls will lead The Cleveland Orchestra, soloists, and the Blossom Festival Chorus in Mozart’s “Great” Mass in c-minor. 

In the United States, where the subscription concert format is the norm, single performances of major works are rare. But in a telephone conversation from Toronto, where he lives with his family for part of each season (his wife plays in the Toronto Symphony), Halls said he rather likes one-off events.

“The subscription series is lovely, especially if you’re a young conductor who’s learning a piece for the first time. It gives you the possibility to solidify your ideas over three or four nights. But there’s also a special energy in a one-off, the most common format in Europe, because it means that you only have one chance. All of the intensity of a week-long rehearsal period is focused on that single moment, and there’s no sense that you can always get it right tomorrow night.” [Read more…]

Kent Blossom Music Festival features KLR Trio as Kulas Artists

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by Daniel Hathaway

The Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio (pianist Joseph Kalichstein, violinist Jaime Laredo, and cellist Sharon Robinson) will present the last of five faculty concerts in the Kent Blossom Music Festival Series on Wednesday, July 31 at 7:30 pm in Ludwig Recital Hall on the Kent State campus. Named the Kulas Visiting Artists for this year’s Festival, the Trio will perform music by Previn, Ravel, and Mendelssohn. Tickets are available online.

The KLR Trio enjoyed a distinguished debut as an ensemble more than four decades ago, having been invited to perform at the White House in 1977 as part of the inauguration festivities for President Jimmy Carter. (Joseph Kalichstein reminisced about that event in an interview for this publication in October of 2012).

I reached Sharon Robinson and Jaime Laredo by telephone at their home in Cleveland, where they both teach at the Cleveland Institute of Music, to chat about their Kent program. I began by asking them about André Previn’s Piano Trio No. 2, which the ensemble commissioned and debuted during their 2012-2013 season, and which they’ve brought back recently. [Read more…]

Chen wins first prize at
Cooper Violin Competition

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Eric Charles Chen, 18, from Princeton, NJ, took first prize in the 2019 Thomas and Evon Cooper International Violin Competition with Prokofiev’s Third Concerto on Friday evening, July 26 at Severance Hall. His  performance with Gemma New and The Cleveland Orchestra sent him home with a cash prize of $20,000.

Shihan Wang, 14, from Beijing, China claimed the second-place award of $10,000 with the Mendelssohn Concerto, and Isabella Brown, 16, from Gurnee, IL, who played the Dvořák Concerto, was awarded third prize of $5,000.

Photo by Roger Mastroianni: L-R, Wang, Brown & Chen.

Kent Blossom: a conversation with Barrick Stees and Frank Rosenwein

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by Rory O’Donoghue

“We don’t discuss much when we’re playing in orchestra,” Cleveland Orchestra principal oboe Frank Rosenwein said in an interview this week. “It’s funny, there’s opportunity to point something out if anything is amiss — you can say, ‘Oh, can we go over this or that’ — but essentially, it’s a silent collaboration. In chamber music, however, we have the luxury of getting together and discussing things, and teasing out people’s individual personalities and musical concepts.”

Rosenwein will showcase the fruits of that process this week as part of the Kent Blossom Music Festival Faculty Concert Series. He’ll join his fellow Cleveland Orchestra members, assistant principal bassoon Barrick Stees and principal clarinet Afendi Yusuf, for an evening of woodwind repertoire this Wednesday, July 24 at 7:30 pm in Kent State University’s Ludwig Recital Hall.

The evening will begin with Shapes for Bassoon and Piano, a new work by assistant principal oboe Jeffrey Rathbun. [Read more…]

Aretha Franklin: Queen of Soul —
a conversation with vocalist
Capathia Jenkins

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by Mike Telin

With the passing of Aretha Franklin on August 16, 2018, the world lost a musical treasure. One that day, Jon Pareles, chief popular music critic at The New York Times wrote in an obituary: “Aretha Franklin, universally acclaimed as the ‘Queen of Soul’ and one of America’s greatest singers in any style, died on Thursday at her home in Detroit. She was 76.” Pareles also noted that “in a musical career of more than five decades, Aretha Franklin had more than 100 singles on the Billboard charts. But more important, she freed other singers to let their voices fly.”

“That moniker — Queen of Soul — she was literally a Queen,” vocalist Capathia Jenkins said during a telephone interview. “Anyone who has been singing and living on the planet for any length of time has drawn from and perhaps tried to emulate her. She was such an influence on so many.”

Franklin’s musical legacy will be celebrated on Sunday, July 28 at 7:00 pm at Blossom Music Center, when Jenkins and vocalist Ryan Shaw join The Cleveland Orchestra and the Blossom Festival Chorus, under the direction of Lucas Waldin to present Aretha Franklin: Queen of Soul. Tickets are available online. [Read more…]

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