by David Kulma
The Cleveland Philharmonic put on a smilingly fun family concert on Saturday, October 13 at Cleveland State University’s Waetjen Auditorium. Music Director Victor Liva was joined by multiple guests to bring off shining versions of works by Prokofiev and Saint-Saëns alongside a Grieg orchestral chestnut.
by Nicholas Stevens
“…or does it explode?” In a concert last week on the Arts Renaissance Tremont series, the poet Mwatabu Okantah spoke this line from Langston Hughes’s Harlem as the final chord of a movement from Bartók’s String Quartet No. 4 resounded. While the Cavani String Quartet, Okantah’s collaborators in the Collage: Music and Poetry project, paused, the Professor and Poet-in-Residence at Kent State University shot the audience a knowing smile and asked, “is everyone alright?” [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
On October 14 in Finney Chapel, Canadian violinist James Ehnes took Oberlin’s 1722 Stradivarius on the first public outing since its complete restoration. Leavening distinguished playing with laid-back humor, his splendid recital with pianist Andrew Armstrong on the Oberlin Artist Recital Series put the famous fiddle through its paces in music by Beethoven, Ravel, Brahms, and John Corigliano. It was a delightful way to spend a Sunday afternoon. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
On Thursday, October 4, in a nearly-full Severance Hall and on a stage so packed with musicians that percussionists had to navigate sideways to change instruments, Franz Welser-Möst led The Cleveland Orchestra and Chorus in a strategically- paced performance of Gustav Mahler’s “Resurrection” Symphony as remarkable for its vast dynamic range as for its sonic magnificence. [Read more…]
by Jarrett Hoffman
It’s hard to say whether the main character in Rossini’s The Barber of Seville is the scheming barber himself, or a member of the love triangle that drives the plot. It’s even more difficult when the four central roles are portrayed as memorably as they were on Saturday, October 6 in the performance by Cleveland Opera Theatre at the Maltz Performing Arts Center. [Read more…]
by Robert Rollin
On Friday, October 5, the Baroque string band ACRONYM presented The Battle of Vienna in Youngstown’s Ford Family Recital Hall on Youngstown State University’s inaugural Donald P. Pipino Performing Arts Series. The program was a mélange of inventive 17th-century works employing novel techniques brought by Italian composers to the German-speaking lands, including Venetian polychoral effects. ACRONYM’s consistently fine intonation and exceptional ensemble were nothing short of amazing all evening. [Read more…]
by Timothy Robson
Jeannette Sorrell and her intrepid orchestra Apollo’s Fire performed Friday evening, October 12, in a somewhat unusual venue — for them — Gartner Auditorium at the Cleveland Museum of Art, in somewhat unusual repertoire — again, for them — Mozart and Haydn. After listening for years to Apollo’s Fire in churches around Northeast Ohio, I had a bit of cognitive dissonance being in a real concert hall with relatively drier acoustics and seats rather than pews. Apollo’s Fire certainly performs in concert halls elsewhere in the United States and internationally, but it seemed on Friday that the group had not yet fully settled into the ambience of Gartner Auditorium. [Read more…]
by Nicholas Stevens
Line Drawings, the title of composer John Liberatore’s new album from Albany Records, refers to the eponymous piano suite that opens the recording. However, the title has a deeper significance. To hear the music on this disc — all “composed in the same way, and in close proximity,” according to Liberatore’s notes — is to feel pulled along at varying speeds in multiple directions, but always forward. The word compelling fails to capture the way this music ventures forth and draws the listener with it. Inviting works better, in every sense of that word. [Read more…]
by Hannah Schoepe
To be “veiled” suggests a loss of orientation, dimmed sight, and a shadowy sense of mystery — ideas that are captured in Cleveland-based Ars Futura Ensemble’s newest album, Veil. Released by Navona Records on September 14, the playlist consists of five multifaceted, many-hued works by Cleveland State University faculty member Greg D’Alessio. [Read more…]
by Tom Wachunas
I was all of ten years old when I read Leonard Bernstein’s The Joy of Music for the first time. It was a cathartic experience, igniting in me a profoundly passionate appreciation of classical music. That inspiring book also fueled my regular viewing of Bernstein’s beloved Young People’s Concerts on television for the next several years. A particularly memorable highlight in one of those concerts was watching the composer conduct excerpts from his own Symphonic Dances from West Side Story. I was bitten by the Bernstein bug, benevolently infected by all those mad rhythms coming at me like so many punches amid a torrent of luscious orchestral colors. Now, more than 50 years later, that watershed moment of musical enthrallment returned a hundredfold on October 6 during the Canton Symphony Orchestra’s electrifying observance of the centenary of Leonard Bernstein. [Read more…]