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Cleveland International Classical Guitar Festival:
Saturday afternoon recital by Muxin Li (June 6)

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by Daniel Hathaway

Chinese-born guitarist Muxin Li took up the instrument at the age of three, made her concert debut at ten, and began studies with David Starobin and Jason Vieaux at Curtis at 16.

On Saturday June 6, in Mixon Hall, she demonstrated both a charming precocity and an impressive maturity in her Cleveland International Classical Guitar Festival recital of works by Spanish, Italian, Paraguayan, and Swiss composers.

Like François Couperin’s character pieces, the titles of movements of Vincente Asencio’s Collectici Intim depict human affects. In “La Serenor,” simple chords lead to lyrical music beautiful in its simplicity.“La Joia” is animated by sweeping scales, and “La Calma” is soothing, with a gentle, sweet melody.“La Gaubanca” delightfully strums its way forward, and “La Frisanca” shimmers with tremolo. Li played its impressionistic lines with sensitivity and direction. [Read more…]

No Exit closes season with “Songs, Soundscapes and Sonnets”

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By Daniel Hathaway

No Exit’s recent foray into art song brought new takes to sonnets by Edna St. Vincent Millay and traditional lullabies on Friday, May 29 at The Bop Stop. Cycles by Robert Honstein and Annika Sokefeldt were vividly realized by soprano Anika Kildegaard and the No Exit ensemble —  Cara Tweed (violin), Nicholas Diodore (cello), Sean Gabriel (flutes), Gunnar Owen Hirthe (clarinets), Shuai Wang & Rob Kovacs (pianos), and Katalin La Favre (percussion).

The composers had colorful texts to work with. Millay’s sonnets follow the traditional fourteen-line format in which the final couplet often contains a surprise, and Sokefeldt has deconstructed familiar “Mother Goose” rhymes — along with English and French songs — into what she calls “feminist rager lullabies,” “retelling old lullabies for a new, queer age.”

[Read more…]

Jason Vieaux takes a trip down memory lane at Cleveland International Classical Guitar Festival (June 4)

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4by Stephanie Manning

More than five minutes after the scheduled 7:30 start time on June 4, Mixon Hall still buzzed with conversation. The first concert of the Cleveland International Guitar Festival had drawn a large crowd to the Cleveland Institute of Music, and the room’s murmur quickly morphed into applause with the arrival of the evening’s headliner, guitarist Jason Vieaux.

At this event, Vieaux is often a doubly-familiar face, recognizable both by frequent Festival attendees and by general Cleveland audiences. To kick off the 2026 event, he brought a program that he called “a trip through memory lane,” bringing together pieces he learned as a teenager but hadn’t formally performed in years.

Importantly, Vieaux made sure that he wasn’t simply blowing the dust off old interpretations, but revisiting beloved pieces with new maturity in life and in playing. [Read more…]

Music by Cara Haxo roars at The Bop Stop (May 31)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

“She ROARS!,” a series celebrating living female composers, devoted its program at the Bop Stop on Sunday afternoon, May 31, to nine works by Cara Haxo performed by violinists Diana Pepelea Vardi and Callista Koh, violist Lauren Kuennen Poper, cellist Linda Atherton, flutist Linda White, and clarinetist Amitai Vardi.

Haxo’s use of varied instrumental combinations offered a glimpse into her creative process and Emily Laurance’s spoken introductions helped listeners understand the composer’s train of thought.

The opening work for string quartet, says the almanac (2024), inspired by Elizabeth Bishop’s poem “Sestina,” showed Haxo’s gift for turning literary structure into musical form. [Read more…]

Trobár examines the female experience in “The Lady of Medieval Song” (May 22)

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by Stephanie Manning

Obviously, the male perspective was not the main focus in a program called “The Lady of Medieval Song.” On May 23, Trobár’s audience at West Shore Unitarian Universalist Church primarily heard repertoire written by or about women, favoring female voices and perspectives as much as possible.

However, more than five centuries removed from this music’s origin, these kinds of pieces are rare. And the reasons why are inextricably tied to the men who undervalued it — and often preferred their own point of view instead. Four of the selections listed in the program appeared under the headline “The Male Gaze,” with the pointed logic behind that choice to be revealed as the concert went on.

Although the pool of surviving music by women is limited, Trobár tapped into the larger availability of woman-authored texts, borrowing tunes from elsewhere when needed. [Read more…]

Cleveland Chamber Music Society: Isidore String Quartet with Jeremy Denk (May 19)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

Presented by the Cleveland Chamber Music Society at the Cleveland Museum of Art’s Gartner Auditorium on May 19, the Isidore String Quartet — violinists Adrian Steele & Phoenix Avalon, violist Devin Moore, and cellist Joshua McClendon — offered a program that moved from Haydn through Ligeti to Brahms with the addition of pianist Jeremy Denk.

Haydn’s Op. 76, No. 4 (“Sunrise”) begins with a first-violin line unfurling over softly lit inner voices as the quartet waited for daylight. But when Haydn quickly broadened the texture into something fuller and more forceful, the quartet’s delicacy came at the expense of expressive weight.

The second movement opened almost inaudibly, the players hardly breathing, as if afraid of being discovered. By the Menuetto, the ensemble had loosened up, swaying with Haydn’s unexpectedly intricate rhythms, not waiting to be asked to dance. In the finale’s fugue, lines passed so smoothly from one player to the next that the seams disappeared, leaving only music. [Read more…]

Baritone Edward Vogel creates a sentimental “Palace in the Wild” (May 11)

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by Stephanie Manning

Plenty of concerts trace a kind of journey, using music to tell a story. But Edward Vogel’s recent recital with the Rocky River Chamber Music Society felt particularly personal.

The baritone, who has lived and performed in Cleveland for five years, announced to the audience at West Shore Unitarian Universalist Church that he and his husband would be relocating to Tennessee the very next day. Thankfully, before that happened, we got to hear “A Palace in the Wild: Journeys in British Art Song,” the beautiful program he brought to Rocky River on May 11.

Together with pianist Jenny Parker, Vogel guided the listeners through the five-part evening, contributing oral program notes throughout. The selections celebrate the “beautiful and underrated” genre of art song, specifically from British composers — a combination Vogel noted is less-often heard in the U.S. The structure followed the path of a life, from youthfulness, to seeking adventure, to grappling with a changed meaning of home.

[Read more…]

Welser-Möst, Josefowicz, Struble, Cleveland Orchestra explore Courage in ‘Hero’s Song’ at Severance (May 22)

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by Daniel Hathaway

This article was originally published on Cleveland.com

CLEVELAND, Ohio — In 1897, a year before Richard Strauss wrote his shamelessly autobiographical tone poem, Ein Heldenleben, Antonín Dvořák completed his Heldenlied (Hero’s Song), a more generalized ode to Courage that ended and gave its title to The Cleveland Orchestra’s program at the Mandel Opera and Humanities Festival at Severance Music Center on May 22.

The Dvořák work joined Adolphus Hailstork’s Epitaph for a Man Who Dreamed, Grażyna Bacewicz’s Symphony No. 4, and the world premiere of Jüri Reinvere’s Concerto for Violin, Harp, and Orchestra on a brilliantly played, fascinating playlist of rarely performed works that invited introspection and earned their performers the kind of wild ovations usually reserved for old warhorses.

Hailstork wrote his Epitaph in 1979 in memory of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the civil rights hero who was assassinated in Memphis in 1968. It takes its title from Dr. King’s I Have a Dream Speech, delivered during the March on Washington in 1963. [Read more…]

ART honors its late founder with Haff-Paluck legacy concert (May 17)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

Feza Zweifel, artistic director of Arts Renaissance Tremont, called it “a concert built on relationships.” “A Legacy of ART — Honoring Chris Haff-Paluck” at Pilgrim Congregational Church on Sunday, May 17, felt less like a formal memorial and more like a gathering of musicians bound by years of performances, collaborations, and friendships — many initiated by Haff-Paluck herself.

Founder of Arts Renaissance Tremont and later director of performance and community programs at the Cleveland Institute of Music, Chris Haff-Paluck spent decades creating opportunities for musicians in Cleveland before her passing in 2020. Throughout the afternoon, performer after performer recalled concerts she organized, introductions she made, and collaborations she encouraged.

[Read more…]

Jeannette Sorrell and CityMusic shed new light on Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony (May 14)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

Audiences often associate Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony with orchestral mass — huge string sections, blazing brass, and symphonic muscle.

On May 14 at Fairmount Presbyterian Church, conductor Jeannette Sorrell and CityMusic Chamber Orchestra offered another approach, a leaner fate-knocker that surrendered none of its dramatic power.

From the podium, Director of Development Em Laudeman Ezell acknowledged Sorrell’s connection to CityMusic during the ensemble’s founding years. With Apollo’s Fire, Sorrell had already shown that a smaller professional ensemble in Cleveland could thrive outside the major-orchestra model. Her appearance for this series felt less like a guest engagement than a return.

[Read more…]

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