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Re•Views

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.

[Read more…]

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…]

Cleveland Philharmonic + National Marionette Theatre + Double Digit Piano Duo (Oct. 13)

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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.

[Read more…]

Arts Renaissance Tremont: Cavani Quartet & Okantah (Oct. 14)

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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…]

Ehnes, Armstrong & 1722 Strad featured on Oberlin Artist Recital Series (Oct. 14)

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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…]

Cleveland Orchestra & Chorus: Mahler’s Second Symphony (Oct. 4)

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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…]

Cleveland Opera Theatre’s The Barber of Seville (Oct. 6)

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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…]

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