by Daniel Hathaway
Just back from its triumphant European tour, The Cleveland Orchestra joined two old friends — guest conductor Vladimir Ashkenazy and pianist Emanuel Ax — for resplendent performances of Elgar and Beethoven at Severance Hall on Sunday afternoon, November 5. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
What does it take to create a sparkling production of Mozart’s opera buffa The Marriage of Figaro? The music, of course, comes first, and you need a fine group of vocalists to put the composer’s engaging arias and brilliant finales across, a flexible conductor and orchestra in the pit, and a sure hand at the keyboard for recitatives. [Read more…]
by Timothy Robson
For reasons unknown, Sharon Isbin, one of the leading classical guitar virtuosos of our time, had never performed in Cleveland until Saturday evening, November 4, when she appeared in a recital for the Cleveland Classical Guitar Society at Plymouth Church of Shaker Heights. During the second half of the evening, she was joined by Cleveland native Colin Davin, a former Isbin student and current faculty member at the Cleveland Institute of Music and Baldwin Wallace University. [Read more…]
by Robert Rollin
Last Sunday afternoon the Stambaugh Auditorium Organ Series celebrated Halloween by screening the 1920 silent movie Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde with improvised accompaniment by organist Dorothy Papadakos. The cheerful performer arrived clad in a Mr. Hyde costume complete with the requisite top hat, circa 1890, explaining that the Stambaugh concert was part of her Halloween tour. [Read more…]
by Nicholas Stevens
Of the many quotable lines issued by filmmaker and musician Jim Jarmusch at the Cleveland Museum of Art last week, two stood out: “I’m a self-proclaimed dilettante, and I don’t think that’s a bad thing,” and later, “The most beautiful thing humans do — have done — is music.” Both comments, given during a post-concert interview in the Museum’s Gartner Auditorium, shed light on the performance that Jarmusch and his bandmate Carter Logan had just staged.
by Nicholas Stevens
Kyoungtack Hong’s painting Library-Mt. Everest (2014) depicts exactly what its title suggests: a few bookshelf cubes and decorative objects cluster around the edge of the canvas, with a photorealistic image of Mount Everest in sunlit glory at the center. The work plays with the conventions of Korean chaekgeori, a kind of 19th-century painted screen on which artists depicted the contents of a scholar’s study. The musical experiences offered by Ji Aeri, a virtuoso of the gayageum — a zither-like instrument — and percussionist Kim Woongsik at a recent concert involved a process not unlike that of taking in Hong’s painting: as one moves from the outer portions of a work toward its heart, simplicity yields to sublimity.
by Jarrett Hoffman
Eight core musicians from three continents gather around the music of Billy Drewes in the latest release on the Oberlin Music label, Under One Sun. The album’s wide array of instruments, moods, and vocal styles makes for a fun and exploratory 70 minutes of jazz.
by Daniel Hathaway
Although Argentine pianist Martha Argerich has never before played here, her reputation guaranteed a full house of ardent fans when she joined Cleveland’s own Sergei Babayan in a duo piano recital on Monday evening at Severance Hall sponsored by the Cleveland International Piano Competition. Their virtuosic playing in music by Mozart and Prokofiev was simply phenomenal, leading the cheering audience to demand two encores at the end — after multiple bouquets of flowers had made their way to the stage. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Cleveland Opera Theater got top billing, but students from the Baldwin Wallace Conservatory covered most of the singing and acting duties in Brecht & Weill’s The Threepenny Opera, which received its second and final performance at the Maltz Performing Arts Center in University Circle on Sunday afternoon, October 29. Directed by Scott Skiba, the joint production was supported by a seven-piece instrumental ensemble conducted by Domenico Boyagian. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
French organist Michel Bouvard visited Trinity Cathedral on Tuesday, October 24 to play a wide-ranging recital in celebration of the 40th Anniversary of the cathedral’s Flentrop organ. With the assistance of two registrants who drew and retired stops — the organ was built in 1750s Dutch style, all-mechanical and with no gadgets for pre-setting combinations — Bouvard masterfully put the 1977 instrument through its paces in stylish performances of music ranging from Renaissance dances to transcriptions of works by Vivaldi and Mendelssohn. [Read more…]