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Re•Views

Lionel Meunier’s Vox Luminis at the Cleveland Museum of Art (Oct. 24)

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by Nicholas Stevens

The average classical musician’s biography is a thinly veiled list of names. A performer’s teachers, schools, venues, festivals, grants, and roles may impress when dressed up in prose, but they sit side by side haloed by auras of significance, like hieroglyphs. How refreshing, then, to read a bio that sums up the appeal of a group in plain terms by the third sentence: “Since its inception, the ensemble has been defined by its unique sound, appealing as much through the personality of each timbre as it does through the color and the uniformity of the voices.” This honesty in advertising is hardly the only thing for which Northeast Ohioans can thank Vox Luminis, the Baroque-focused vocal ensemble who performed in Cleveland last week.

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Tri-C Classical Piano Series: Hughes Leclère’s Debussy collage (Oct. 28)

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by David Kulma

If given a single choice for the first major figure of musical modernism, my choice would be the succulent weirdness of French composer Claude Debussy, who died 100 years ago. Unlike other candidates, Debussy’s revolt threw off received musical ideas in the name of more beauty rather than the ugly truth. He made music more intoxicating rather than more disturbing. French pianist Hughes Leclère connected works by living composers to Debussy’s 1915 Études in his Tri-C Classical Piano Series recital on Sunday afternoon, October 28 at the Cleveland Museum of Art’s Gartner Auditorium. [Read more…]

CIM New Music Ensemble: “L’Histoire du soldat at 100” (Oct. 26)

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by David Kulma

The purpose of a “New Music” ensemble seems obvious at first glance: to play recent music. But new music in an academic context like the Cleveland Institute of Music is actually about a specific tradition. It is an outgrowth of the high modernist, post-war avant-garde, and traces its lineage back to the second decade of the 20th century. So it is no surprise that the CIM New Music Ensemble’s director Keith Fitch chose to celebrate Igor Stravinsky’s 1918 L’Histoire du soldat on Friday night, October 26 in Mixon Hall. [Read more…]

CityMusic Cleveland: all-Brahms at St. Jerome in Collinwood (Oct. 24)

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by David Kulma

The towering Trinity mosaic behind the altar at Collinwood’s St. Jerome Church was an apt image to frame CityMusic Cleveland’s 15th season opener on Wednesday, October 24. Featuring violinist Tessa Lark and cellist Edward Arron, this peripatetic orchestra led by music director Avner Dorman enlivened this holy space with two grandiose, yet intricate works by one of classical music’s own trinity of B’s: Johannes Brahms.

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Burning River Baroque: “Destructive Desires” (Oct. 20)

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by David Kulma

Burning River Baroque’s October 20 performance at St. Alban’s Church in Cleveland Heights was a case study in thoughtfully-programmed, politically-inspired concerts. Titled “Destructive Desires” and framed by informed program notes and remarks, the performance invoked the ongoing #MeToo movement. Soprano and Baroque cellist Malina Rauschenfels and harpsichordist Paula Maust also spoke about their own thoughts and experiences, bringing the feminist slogan “The Personal Is Political” to life.

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Cleveland Classical Guitar Society Ana Vidović Recital (Oct. 20)

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by Nicholas Stevens

Concerts can inspire a range of moods: passionate engagement at best, shades of frustration or offense at worst. One such mood, rare and therefore precious, arises when it dawns on the listener that something amazing is happening onstage, and the sheer quality of the performance prompts rapt absorption. Audience members at guitarist Ana Vidović’s concert for the Cleveland Classical Guitar Society last week would eventually solicit an encore with a high-volume ovation. During the main program, however, near-silence descended over the pews of Plymouth Church, dozens straining to hear each masterful nuance. [Read more…]

The U.K.’s Marian Consort at St. John’s Cathedral (Oct. 19)

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by Nicholas Stevens

To speak of our era as one of unlimited access to global cultures is to imply — often inaccurately — that availability necessarily leads to familiarity. In the cases of art forms with deep roots in a particular place, no amount of streaming audio or video can stand in for the kind of live exposure that knocks one backward with the full force and physical presence of the new. How fortunate for Northeast Ohioans, then, that the Cathedral of St John the Evangelist invited the Marian Consort to Cleveland as the penultimate stop on their first North American tour. Their concert of music inspired by the Virgin Mary spanned centuries of sacred music in the English choral tradition. [Read more…]

Cleveland Orchestra with Gimeno & Kosower (Oct. 18)

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by David Kulma

As autumn finally slammed Northeast Ohio with colder temperatures, the Toronto Symphony’s new music director- designate Gustavo Gimeno led The Cleveland Orchestra in a stimulating and shining program for his Severance Hall debut on Friday, October 18. This concert featured an early, ecstatic overture by Samuel Barber, an Alberto Ginastera concerto starring principal cello Mark Kosower, and a melody-drenched warhorse by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov.

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A concert of thought-provoking music at Cleveland State University (Sept. 17)

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by Mike Telin

Music can be a powerful tool for the expression of social discourse. Sometimes it is subtle. Other times it is overt and unapologetic. Such was the case with Andrew Rindfleisch’s American Monster, which received its premiere on September 17 in Drinko Hall at Cleveland State University. The concert was presented as part of No Exit’s season-opening series of concerts and CSU’s Cleveland Contemporary Players Artist in Residency Series.

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Anthony Roth Costanzo & Les Violons du Roy at Tuesday Musical (Oct. 16)

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by Timothy Robson

American countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo and the Quebec-based Baroque orchestra Les Violons du Roy, with their new music director Jonathan Cohen, made a stop at E.J. Thomas Hall at the University of Akron on Tuesday, October 16, in a presentation by Tuesday Musical. The concert included music from their recent album ARC – Glass / Handel, plus a Handel concerto grosso and an excerpt from a Philip Glass symphony. [Read more…]

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