by Kevin McLaughlin
In a program titled “American,” the Verona Quartet — Jonathan Ong and Dorothy Ro, violins, Abigail Rojansky, viola, and Jonathan Dormand, cello — spent much of their concert at Federated Church in Chagrin Falls on Saturday, October 3 moving among American musical dialects: Philip Glass’s minimalism, Samuel Barber’s lyricism, along with early jazz and popular song.
Antonín Dvořák was the outlier, though his American years supplied a plausible connection, and his final quartet gave each member of the ensemble (who are quartet-in-residence at the Oberlin Conservatory) more room to speak.
Philip Glass’s Company began as four musical interludes for a stage adaptation of Samuel Beckett’s prose work. Glass later wrote that he chose the string quartet for its ability to be both “introspective and passionate.” The Verona treated repetition as something active rather than static. [Read more…]
For the New York-based Baroque chamber orchestra Relic, a program themed around an opera requires a deliberately operatic presentation.
In the hands (and voices) of the Cleveland Chamber Choir, Joby Talbot’s Path of Miracles became both a piece about a pilgrimage and a piece that felt like one.
Arts Renaissance Tremont keeps things fresh — after all, the ‘R’ in ART stands not just for “renaissance,” but also “reimagined.” The organization’s embrace of experimentation and creativity keeps their programming memorable among Cleveland’s many arts offerings.
