by Mike Telin
No Exit’s chamber concert on Saturday, July 28 at Heights Arts performed by clarinetist Gunnar Owen Hirthe and flutist Hong-Da Chin, engagingly juxtaposed traditional Chinese music with contemporary Western repertoire. The program also highlighted the wonders of micro-tonality. Surrounded by the Gallery’s complex, yet minimalist exhibit, Sticks and Stones, the evening was a walk through a cultural garden of sonic delights. [Read more…]
by David Kulma
A glorious evening of music titled “Audra McDonald Sings Broadway” featured that justly famous soprano performing with The Cleveland Orchestra and conductor Andy Einhorn. The July 29 program at Blossom Music Center included a variety of songs from musicals famous and rare, from the works of Rodgers & Hammerstein to living composers.
by Timothy Robson
On Sunday, August 5 at Blossom Music Center, The Cleveland Orchestra played a concise and musically satisfying program of works by three Czech composers: Smetana, Janáček, and Dvořák. British conductor Michael Francis led the stylish performance. With the temperature hovering around a sweltering and humid 87 degrees at concert time, the male members of the orchestra sensibly doffed their usual white dinner jackets for shirtsleeves. Even the tree-surrounded — and usually cooler — Blossom grounds failed to provide much relief from the midsummer heat.
by David Kulma
Having recently turned 91, Herbert Blomstedt is practically an institution in himself, with a career spanning more than six decades. On Saturday, July 28, he returned to Northeast Ohio to lead The Cleveland Orchestra at Blossom Music Center in two canonical symphonies by Mozart and Brahms. The “Jupiter” was so smooth and straightforward as to pass by unremarkably, while the stirringly passionate performance of Brahms 4 showed how a seasoned conductor with a top-flight orchestra can achieve magic.
by Robert Rollin
Kent Blossom presented its fifth and final faculty series program in Ludwig Recital Hall last Wednesday, August 1. The evening’s highlight was the gorgeous performance of Charles-Marie Widor’s Sonata for Cello and Piano in A by Richard Weiss, Cleveland Orchestra first assistant principal cello, and Joela Jones, Cleveland Orchestra keyboardist.
by David Kulma
Wind players take every opportunity to play Mozart, and when they are musicians at the highest level, it’s easy to come away smiling. That was the case on the Kent Blossom faculty concert on Wednesday, July 25 in Kent State’s Ludwig Recital Hall, where an array of Mozart’s works for winds made for a splendid evening.
by Kelly Ferjutz
Special to ClevelandClassical.com
Ohio Light Opera is no stranger to the works of Franz Lehár: prior to this year, seven of his operettas had been performed by the company, the most frequent being his luscious The Merry Widow. Number eight, having opened at Freedlander Theatre on July 25, is Cloclo, which is not in the usual Viennese operetta mode. First off, it takes place in Paris, as well as the French countryside near Perpignan. And written a few years after the end of WWI, its musical sensibility sensibility is a good bit different: it includes jazz, a tango, blues, and even a take-off on the final scene from Fledermaus — not originally written by Lehár. You know the one, when the inmates and jailor are happily mixed with champagne. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
At 45 minutes in length, the first of 2018’s three Summers at Severance concerts may have been short, but guest conductor Herbert Blomstedt and The Cleveland Orchestra used their three quarters of an hour onstage to make a powerful experience out of a single work — Brahms’ Fourth Symphony. Conducting without a stick and never cracking open the small score on the podium, Blomstedt sculpted every detail of the piece, melding expressive, colorful lines into a pulsing musical organism. [Read more…]
by Delaney Meyers
On a recent visit to Grafton Correctional Facility, students from Credo Music Festival performed for and talked with some of the residents in the prison’s chapel, with an audience of about 50 and a backdrop of multiple green plants. This was part of Credo’s weekly service day, during which young musicians engage with the community in multiple ways — from picking up trash along the side of the highway, to performing at places that aren’t often filled with music. [Read more…]
by Nicholas Stevens
After the Emerson String Quartet’s performance with cellist Jerry Grossman at Kent State University last week, audience members exited Ludwig Recital Hall to find an extraordinary reception laid out. Food and drink of diverse tastes, textures, and temperatures lined half a dozen tables. It felt like a metaphor for the concert: so rich and extensive that to describe it is to make it sound excessive. Despite its duration and emotional range, however, the concert itself never felt overstuffed. It went down smoothly, like an expertly arranged and executed feast. [Read more…]