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Cleveland Women’s Orchestra at Severance Music Center (Apr. 19)

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by Daniel Hathaway

Eric Benjamin ended his brief tenure as music director of the Cleveland Women’s Orchestra with an engaging concert of mostly French music on Sunday afternoon, April 19 in Mandel Concert Hall at Severance Music Center.

The performance marked Benjamin’s second visit to the Severance podium in the company of one of America’s few remaining women’s ensembles. CWO has grown artistically during his two years at the helm, and he leaves the orchestra in good hands for his successor.

Sunday’s program began with a rarity, Camille Saint-Saëns’ Overture to La Princesse Jaune. Benjamin drew a lush sound from his players during the introduction, and the ensuing allegro made for an enjoyable opener, both vigorous and charming.

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Les Délices and soprano Hannah de Priest leave audiences “Starstruck” (Apr. 26)

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by Stephanie Manning

Part season finale, part album release party, Les Délices’ recent “Starstruck” program celebrated both its past and its future.

The group’s latest CD, Arcadian Dreams — released on March 13 — collects a group of pastoral pieces that local audiences heard live in 2024, featuring soprano Hannah de Priest. Last week, de Priest marked the album’s release by returning for “Starstruck,” a program of music exclusively by Georg Frederic Handel. The performances toured Akron and Cleveland Heights before the final rendition on Sunday, April 26, at Rocky River’s West Shore Unitarian Universalist Church.

Les Délices have been more than happy to support the exciting, early career of de Priest, who first met artistic director Debra Nagy as a Case Western Reserve University student and currently works as the group’s communications director. As Nagy put it, Les Délices decided to record a CD with her before anyone else did — and the wisdom of that choice is apparent once you hear her sing.

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Jörg Widmann featured as composer-conductor in first of two weeks with The Cleveland Orchestra (Apr. 30)

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by Stephanie Manning

This article was originally published on Cleveland.com

CLEVELAND, Ohio — When the lights dimmed in Mandel Concert Hall on Thursday night, April 30, audience members were greeted not by a stage full of seated musicians, but by a collection of empty chairs and stands, waiting for their players to file on from the wings. An unconventional beginning — but unconventional is what Jörg Widmann does best.

A conductor, composer, and clarinetist, Widmann is no stranger to Severance Music Center. He served as The Cleveland Orchestra’s Daniel R. Lewis Composer Fellow from 2009 to 2011, and his music has resurfaced in the Orchestra’s programs ever since. But this week marked his debut on the podium.

To celebrate the occasion, Widmann paired three works of his own, including a U.S. premiere, with Felix Mendelssohn’s Symphony No. 5, “Reformation.”

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Cleveland Chamber Symphony features works by Margaret Brouwer (Apr. 19)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

Margaret Brouwer’s music has become a fixture in Northeast Ohio — distinctive, unmistakable, and not easily pinned down. She goes her own way, with stylistic diplomacy: borrowing freely, but never pledging allegiance to any one camp.

On Sunday, April 19, Steven Smith led the Cleveland Chamber Symphony in three works by Brouwer as part of NEOSonicFest, its annual spring exposition of new sounds, at Disciples Christian Church in Cleveland Heights.

First up was Donald Erb’s Harold’s Trip to the Sky (1974). Scored for viola, piano, and percussion, Erb treats the ensemble less as a traditional trio than as three independent voices. The title makes a nod to Lord Byron’s Harold but Erb’s piece doesn’t tell a story. It unfolds in episodes: the viola climbing and exploring, the piano holding its ground, the percussion commenting, like Puck, with wry asides. [Read more…]

Klaus Mäkelä leads powerful Britten’s ‘War Requiem’ at Severance (Apr. 23)

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by Daniel Hathaway

This article was originally published on Cleveland.com

CLEVELAND, Ohio — Do the arts have the wherewithal to take up great subjects like war? Four hundred years ago, Shakespeare sent his Prologue onstage at the top of his play Henry V to apologize in advance to the audience for its shortcomings:

Pardon, gentles all,
The flat unraisèd spirits that hath dared
On this unworthy scaffold to bring forth
So great an object. Can this cockpit hold
The vasty fields of France? Or may we cram
Within this wooden O the very casques
That did affright the air at Agincourt?

In 1961, British pacifist composer Benjamin Britten addressed that question by writing his “War Requiem” on commission for the consecration of the new Coventry Cathedral, which rose next to the ruins from an 11-hour long Luftwaffe bombing raid on the night of November 14, 1940.

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Cleveland Pops plays Williams & Spielberg (Apr. 24)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

On Friday, April 24 at Severance Music Center, the Cleveland Pops Orchestra played to a packed house with a program devoted to John Williams and Steven Spielberg — a partnership that reliably fills seats. Williams writes themes you can recognize in seconds, sometimes in two notes.

Carl Topilow made that point before the first downbeat. “Ladies and gentlemen — the two notes that changed the course of music history,” he said, letting Jaws swim in with low strings, and a steady pulse, the interval repeating then tightening like a screw.

From there, the program moved among Williams’ familiar modes. The “March from 1941” had a buoyant snap. Close Encounters offered short, bright phrases, almost conversational. And in Jurassic Park, the orchestra leaned into the composer’s gift for breadth.

Not all of Williams’ music trades in spectacle. As the New York Times has noted, it often works by taking older materials and presenting them in technicolor. The themes of Schindler’s List are spare and direct, the emotion carried by contour and tone rather than overt passion.

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Renée Fleming’s “Voice of Nature” caps off Tuesday Musical season (Apr. 21)

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by Stephanie Manning

It’s too bad that Earth Day — April 22 — didn’t fall on a Tuesday this year. But the eve of Earth Day still felt like a fitting time to hear “Voice of Nature: The Anthropocene,” the program Renée Fleming recently brought to Tuesday Musical.

The superstar soprano’s current touring concert — based on her Grammy-winning album of the same name — is a product of her increasing connection to nature during the early days of the pandemic. Fleming’s visit to Akron’s E.J. Thomas Hall on April 21st brought out one of the biggest crowds in recent memory, greeting her with a celebrity welcome.

Although the album and the concert program share a title, only some of the original tracks were present, specifically Nico Muhly’s Endless Space and Kevin Puts’ Evening. Pieces by Edvard Grieg, Gabriel Fauré, and Franz Liszt were swapped for a more eclectic combination of genres, including Björk’s “All Is Full of Love” and Hazel Dickens’ “Pretty Bird.” Throughout, Fleming sang both with a handheld microphone, and unamplified.

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Pianist Alexander Kantorow’s thoughtful artistry defines his Cleveland debut (Apr. 16)

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by Stephanie Manning

This article was originally published on Cleveland.com

CLEVELAND, Ohio — On the cover of the Severance Music Center’s April 16 program book, Alexandre Kantorow stares at the viewer from one end of the piano keyboard, his face mirrored in the glossy fallboard. That stylistic presentation felt quite fitting for the French pianist, a musician who brings out the contrasting sides in every piece and whose playing often produces a reflective, translucent quality.

Currently on a multi-week tour of the U.S., Kantorow made his Cleveland debut on Thursday night at Severance Music Center. Dressed in all black, he initially cut an unassuming figure, an impression that quickly dissolved with the intense opening chords of Franz Liszt’s Variations on Weinen, Klagen, Sorgen, Zagen after J.S. Bach.

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Baldwin Wallace BachFest: two inspired evening concerts (Apr. 17 & 18)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

From midday Friday through Saturday night, the Baldwin Wallace Bach Festival presented a steady run of events in Gamble Auditorium — lectures, master classes, busking, and concerts. I heard the two evening anchors — “Concerto Countdown”  and Mass in G Minor and Magnificat — which gave a fair picture of the whole.

Friday night, April 17, offered something to look at as well as hear: an array of harpsichords drawn together for Bach’s concertos for multiple keyboards. Festival director Dirk Garner led the count — four, then three, then two — as players rotated in and out, trading bright sprays of plectral fancy-fare.

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Les Délices presents Edwards & Yamin in Marianne Mozart-era music at CMA (Mar. 22)

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by Daniel Hathaway

Whatever happened to the siblings of famous musicians?

That’s a particularly interesting question in the case of Marianne Mozart, Wolfgang Amadé’s beloved sister, nicknamed Nannerl, who in her youth was highly regarded as a pianist and composer, but whose works have completely disappeared.

On March 22  at the Cleveland Museum of Art, Les Délices honored the music of Mozart’s sister in its absence with a fascinating recital of music by women composers from her era performed by fortepianist Mark Edwards and violinist Shelby Yamin.

Edwards is a celebrated harpsichordist and organist on the faculty of the Oberlin Conservatory, but this performance marked his public debut as a fortepianist, as well as his inaugural appearance as a duo with Yamin.

[Read more…]

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