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…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Anticipating Fat Tuesday, Mardi Gras, Carnival, or however you refer to the blowout before the beginning of Lent, the Akron Symphony joined forces with Neos Dance Theater on Friday, February 8 in E.J. Thomas Hall to produce its latest community extravaganza: a fully choreographed performance of the ballet score to Stravinksy’s Petrushka. Set during a Shrovetide fair, it’s a tragic tale acted out by puppets, but revelry was also in the air: at the end, the stage was filled with balloons that the cast were happy to share with the audience.
by Robert Rollin
Last Saturday evening February 10, conductor Randall Craig Fleischer and the Youngstown Symphony hosted three talented vocalists for an Ella Fitzgerald hundredth birthday tribute concert. The gifted vocalists, Carpathia Jenkins, Harolyn Blackwell, and Aisha de Haas were exceptional. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Early and late Mozart piano concertos were featured on the program when pianist Mitsuko Uchida paid her annual visit to The Cleveland Orchestra at Severance Hall last Thursday, February 8. In between, concertmaster William Preucil captained the Orchestra on a virtual musical barge trip down the Thames via festive selections from Handel’s Water Music. [Read more…]