by Nicholas Stevens
Is there any feat of performance greater than transfixing and moving an audience while remaining warm, welcoming, humble, and human? In a concert last week in Oberlin College and Conservatory’s Fairchild Chapel, the Flanders Recorder Quartet — performing in Northeast Ohio for the final time, as part of their 30th anniversary and farewell tour — offered a perfect blend of profundity, virtuosity, and tasteful tomfoolery as a parting gift to area audiences.
by Mike Telin
Those who were lucky enough to have a ticket to the Mantra Percussion concert on Friday, February 23 at Transformer Station were treated to a spectacular sonic feast for the ears.
The evening consisted of a single work, Michael Gordon’s hour-long Timber, scored for six instruments known as simantras — 2×4’s mounted on metal frames and struck with mallets and fingers. Rooted in the Eastern Orthodox liturgical tradition, the instruments were first introduced into classical music by composer Iannis Xenakis. The concert was presented as part of the Cleveland Museum of Art’s Performing Arts Series.
by Daniel Hathaway
Though he has lamentably gone on to that great podium in the sky, the spirit of Pierre Boulez hovered over Thursday evening’s all-Ravel concert by the Cleveland Orchestra in Severance Hall. Conductor Matthias Pintscher drew exacting, intelligent, glorious performances from the Orchestra and Chorus. And pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet triumphed in one of Ravel’s most demanding pieces — with one hand tied behind his back. [Read more…]
by David Kulma
Sunday afternoon, February 18 was a time for chamber music at Pilgrim Church. As a part of the Arts Renaissance Tremont concert series, the Amici Quartet played their fourth concert in a series of six that will survey all of Ludwig van Beethoven’s string quartets over several years. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
If you grew up before the late 20th-century early music enlightenment took hold, you might have thought from the available recordings that Venetian congregations visiting the Basilica of San Marco regularly heard music by the Gabrielis and their colleagues played by big, loud brass ensembles. Not so. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
“We don’t often play all-Czech programs,” Bennewitz Quartet second violinist Štěpán Ježek said from the stage of West Shore Unitarian Universalist Church on Monday evening, February 12. But the Rocky River Chamber Music Society audience can be glad they did on that occasion. Ježek joined his colleagues Jakub Fišer, violin, Jiří Pinkas, viola, and Štěpán Doležal, cello, in white-hot performances of works by Leoš Janáček, Bedřich Smetana, and Antonín Dvořák, playing with the pure intensity that only native Czechs could have achieved.
by Daniel Hathaway
Brad Wells’ groundbreaking vocal octet, Roomful of Teeth, spent a few days last week on the Oberlin College campus, giving demonstrations, holding master classes, and answering questions before joining Greg Ristow’s Oberlin College Choir in a jaw-dropping, larynx-challenging concert in Finney Chapel. [Read more…]
by Nicholas Stevens
In a time when talk of politics and Russia floods forth from every newscast, a concert program in which Borodin, Rimsky-Korsakov, and Tchaikovsky appear can make these topics feel inescapable. Rest assured: while the works by these composers that Earth and Air: String Orchestra played last week came into existence in a fractious and politically charged atmosphere, the debates that surrounded them ended long ago. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Antonio Pompa-Baldi’s piano recital on Sunday afternoon, February 11 on the Music From the Western Reserve series at Christ Episcopal Church in Hudson checked all the boxes on the Perfect Sunday Afternoon Concert scorecard. It lasted just over an hour, visited some unusual repertoire in varying styles, let the music speak for itself without extraneous commentary from the stage, and was brilliantly performed, to boot.
by Daniel Hathaway
Musical chameleon that it can be, The Cleveland Orchestra put itself completely in the hands of Montréal-based early music specialist Bernard Labadie and German violinist Isabelle Faust on Thursday evening, February 15, producing fresh and insightful versions of standard works by Mendelssohn and Mozart, and a tantalizing taste of the work of a little-known Parisian composer of the Classical era. [Read more…]