by Mike Telin
On his way to winning the 2016 Cleveland International Piano Competition, Nikita Mndoyants gave a thrilling performance of Prokofiev’s dissonant Sonata No. 7 in B-flat during his semi-final round. The pianist returned to Cleveland on April 30 to give an impressive recital at the Maltz Performing Arts Center. And again, he proved to have an affinity for the music of the Russian composer. [Read more…]
by Timothy Robson
The Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra played an ambitious program of works by Joan Tower, Maurice Ravel, and Sergei Prokofiev at Severance Hall on Friday evening, May 12, the last concert of their 2016-17 season. It was a bittersweet occasion. Not only did the Orchestra bid farewell to a group of graduating seniors, but it was conductor Brett Mitchell’s 29th and final concert with COYO, marking the end of his four-year term as Associate Conductor of The Cleveland Orchestra before taking up duties as Music Director of the Colorado Symphony. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Departing from its normal Saturday evening time slot, the Cleveland Classical Guitar Society closed its International Series with a duo recital by Sérgio and Odair Assad on Sunday afternoon, April 30 at Plymouth Church in Shaker Heights. Though their styles of playing are different, the Brazilian-born brothers have been performing as a duo for 52 years, and know each other so well that they could probably play a recital blindfolded.
by Daniel Hathaway
A critical mass of nearly 200 singers joined Christopher Wilkins, the Akron Symphony, and a first-rate quartet of soloists for a resounding performance of Felix Mendelssohn’s Elijah on Saturday evening, May 5 in E.J. Thomas Hall. Commissioned for the 1846 Birmingham Festival following the success of his earlier oratorio St. Paul, Mendelssohn’s concert-length work presents the life of the Hebrew prophet in several dramatic scenes.
by Daniel Hathaway
At the end of a long concert season, the final performance in a series may be a happy or a bittersweet moment. For the Mosa String Quartet — violinists James Thompson and Brian Allen, violist Christine Wu, and cellist Anna Hurt — the last Arts Renaissance Tremont concert on Sunday, May 7 at Pilgrim Church was just about the last appearance the group would make as a quartet, for Wu and Allen are off to graduate studies at Juilliard and the University of Michigan, respectively.
by Daniel Hathaway
At the end of Vox Luminis’s flawlessly-sung program of British royal funerary music at St. John’s Cathedral on April 26, artistic director Lionel Meunier said to the audience, “I have to confess: we do have happier programs.” Indeed, this repertoire, largely taken from Thomas Morley’s and Henry Purcell’s obsequies for Queen Elizabeth and Queen Mary, might have added up to a dreary evening if this fine Belgian choir hadn’t pulled it off with such commitment and finesse. [Read more…]
by Tom Wachunas
Composed in 1873-74, Giuseppe Verdi’s Messa Da Requiem (Requiem Mass) poses a wondrous irony. Verdi was openly disdainful of organized church worship. His wife, Giuseppina, once characterized him as, “…not an outright atheist, but a very doubtful believer.” It might seem, then, counterintuitive that this acclaimed champion of worldly opera — who had not composed any conventional sacred music since his youth — would render a work of such profound religiosity. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
CLEVELAND – In the latest of the Cleveland Orchestra’s annual opera performances, Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande is given a strange and wonderful staging that features actors and dancers as “mythological doppelgängers.” Read the review on Classical Voice North America.
by Timothy Robson
Cellist Jeffrey Zeigler’s April 26 recital at Transformer Station, sponsored by the Cleveland Museum of Art, typified his performances: variety and virtuosity aplenty — something for everyone willing to open their ears. Zeigler falls into that category of “super-performer” whose technique is seemingly unlimited, and who can make the most thorny contemporary music sound approachable, however austere and dissonant. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
To cap off its 25th anniversary season, Jeannette Sorrell and Cleveland’s Baroque Orchestra, Apollo’s Fire, made a big leap across historical and stylistic boundaries into the early Romantic music of Beethoven. In the second of four performances on Friday evening, April 28 at the Cleveland Museum of Art, Sorrell fielded an orchestra of 49 players (huge by AF standards) and joined forces with violinist Noah Bendix-Balgley (making his period instrument debut) to lead a spirited foray into music premiered in the first decade of the 19th century. [Read more…]