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Cleveland Orchestra marks Ravel’s 150th birthday with masterful performance (Mar. 6)

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by Peter Feher

This article was originally published on Cleveland.com

CLEVELAND, Ohio — When Maurice Ravel visited Northeast Ohio in 1928, not everything went according to plan. The French composer had a reputation for being far more brilliant on paper than in person. Nikolai Sokoloff, then music director of The Cleveland Orchestra, would recount afterward how Ravel came late to rehearsal, conducted his pieces clumsily, and left listeners somewhat confused.

So, it’s entirely fitting that this weekend’s concerts at Severance Music Center, which mark the 150th anniversary of the composer’s birth, should be entrusted to more polished hands.

Music director Franz Welser-Möst was back on the podium in Mandel Concert Hall on Thursday, March 6, presiding over a masterful performance that made a virtue of restraint. Tasteful extravagance may be more typical of Ravel’s style, but The Cleveland Orchestra has a way with refinement. And so does Korean pianist Seong-Jin Cho, the evening’s soloist, who gave a sensitive, at times subdued account of the composer’s Concerto in G Major.

[Read more…]

Midori and Özgür Aydin: an introspective evening in Oberlin (Mar. 5)

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by Stephanie Manning

If one word encapsulated Midori’s recital at Oberlin on March 5, it might be “catharsis.” This program wasn’t just a distraction from the big emotions many of us have been grappling with these days. It required confronting tangled feelings first, before arriving with a changed attitude on the other side.

Finney Chapel was the violinist’s first stop on her latest recital tour, together with her longtime collaborator, pianist Özgür Aydin. The Oberlin Artist Recital Series event attracted a large crowd, yet the space still seemed fitting for an intimate, two-person recital. Low lighting shrouded the Chapel’s great organ and the back of the stage in a warm darkness, focusing all attention on the musicians.

The process of catharsis came slightly out of order, but nonetheless effectively. For embracing a thorny emotional tangle head-on, there was Francis Poulenc’s Sonata for Violin and Piano, which arrived after intermission. [Read more…]

Akron Symphony: Mahler’s emotional rollercoaster (Mar. 1)

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by Stephanie Manning

“Welcome to Mahler’s 2nd,” read the program leaflet I was handed while entering E.J. Thomas Hall on March 1. “You’re in for an emotional rollercoaster — big drama, quiet reflection, and an ending that will shake the walls (and maybe your soul).”

The Akron Symphony’s latest program certainly delivered on that promise. Most ensembles devote the entire evening to Mahler’s “Resurrection” Symphony, an almost 90-minute work, and Akron was no different. Conductor Christopher Wilkins led a stirring performance from the extra-large orchestra, together with the Akron Symphony Chorus, the Metropolitan Chorus of Summit Choral Society, soprano Sonya Headlam, and alto Amanda Lynn Bottoms. [Read more…]

Voices from the Other Side: a celebratory album release concert full of local talent (Feb. 25)

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by Stephanie Manning

An entire album of pieces for eight cellos and one soprano might seem like a daunting prospect. But Voices from the Other Side clocks in at more than an hour’s worth of music — so there’s more out there for this instrument combination than you might think.

Released in September 2024, the album features soprano Gabrielle Haigh and the Erie Coast Cellists in music by Margi Griebling-Haigh, Arvo Pärt, and Heitor Villa-Lobos, all conducted by Steven Smith. The group made the recording at Federated Church in Chagrin Falls — and on February 25, they gathered in that same venue to present the music in concert for the first time.

Presented as part of the Federated Church Performing Arts Series, with support from the Cleveland Cello Society, the album release concert took its audience on a journey of varied, accessible, and enjoyable contemporary music. [Read more…]

The Cleveland Orchestra brings the “Wild” inside (Mar. 2)

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by Kate MacKenzie

On Sunday, March 2, animal print was à la mode at Severance Music Center, as concertgoers donned masks of leopards, crocodiles, and other creatures for Dan Brown’s Wild Symphony. The program was presented as part of The Cleveland Orchestra Family Concert Series.

Conductor Daniel Reith led the ensemble, but the star of the stage was Wild Symphony’s author and composer. Although best known for his novel The DaVinci Code, Dan Brown recently made his debut in the genre of juvenile fiction. A life-long lover of classical music, Brown was inspired by works like Peter and the Wolf and The Carnival of the Animals to write his own introduction to the orchestra. A marshland walk prompted the first composition: a poem and short piece modeled after the chorus of frogs he’d heard. Over the years, the project expanded to more than twenty poems and brief orchestral works representing different animals. Wild Symphony was published as a picture book in 2020, along with an app designed to play each movement as the pages are turned.

[Read more…]

No Exit Presents: John Faieta at Trinity Cathedral (Feb. 28)

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by Mike Telin

Although seventy-six trombones may have led the big parade, when John Faieta brought his one-man show to Trinity Cathedral on Friday, February 28, the trombone virtuoso proved that one trombone —  matched with an acoustically pleasing space —  is all that is needed to provide a fascinating listening experience.

Under the banner of No Exit Presents, Faieta’s beautifully-constructed program treated the good-sized audience to five musically diverse works that stretched the sound and technical capabilities of the instrument. And a subtle sense of humor imbued his charming and informative stories about each work and how it came to be written.

The program opened with Leonard Bernstein’s Mippy II, a tune the composer wrote as a eulogy for his brother’s beloved dog. It’s a jaunty work with a smooth-talking melody, and Faieta delivered a sparkling performance.

[Read more…]

Apollo’s Fire: “Classical Sparks” at St. Raphael, Bay Village (Feb. 28)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

Three composers whose lives intertwined and whose music inspired one another — Wolfgang Amadé Mozart, Joseph Bologne, and Joseph Haydn — were the subject of Apollo’s Fire’s latest series of concerts, “Classical Sparks.” I attended the performance on Friday, February 28 at St. Raphael Catholic Church in Bay Village, for which artistic director Jeannette Sorrell had assembled a full classical orchestra of period instruments.

Mozart was represented with a delightful overture from his three-act opera La Finta semplice (“The Fake Innocent”), plus an aria from Don Giovanni, and the supreme Violin Concerto no. 3 in G, K.216. [Read more…]

Rocky River Chamber Music Society: JR Fralick & Friends (Feb. 24)

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by Kate MacKenzie

From somber Shostakovich to carousing cabaret, tenor JR Fralick displayed a range of his abilities on the Rocky River Chamber Music Society’s February 24th’s concert at West Shore Unitarian Universalist Church.

Fellow Baldwin Wallace faculty members Christine Fuoco, piano, Steve Sang Kyun Koh, violin, Lembi Veskimets, viola, and Khari Joyner, cello, collaborated with the vocalist for an evening of song.

Shostakovich’s Seven Romances on Poems by Aleksandr Blok was a dark but gripping start to the evening. Though written for tenor and piano trio, the full ensemble rarely played at once; instead, a dramatic range of moods and timbres emerged as the composer explored different combinations of instruments song by song. [Read more…]

Welser-Möst leads lyrical, hyper-charged Beethoven “Eroica” in Cleveland (Feb. 27)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

This article was originally published on Cleveland.com

CLEVELAND, Ohio — Franz Welser-Möst was greeted with a hero’s welcome at Severance Music Center on Thursday, February 27, by the large and appreciative audience — even before a note of Beethoven’s “Eroica” Symphony had been played. He acknowledged the genuine warmth in the room, and the occasion of his return to the podium after a medical leave.

Opening the program was Shostakovich’s wintery Violin Concerto No. 2, with Leonidas Kavakos as soloist. It’s a mostly gloomy work not easily shaken from its brooding until the Finale — and even then, the raucous dancing is more crazed than jubilant.

[Read more…]

Les Délices: music fosters meaningful conversation at Cleveland’s VA Medical Center (Feb. 21)

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by Stephanie Manning

Navigating dementia — a common, yet devastating part of aging — requires confronting all sorts of complex emotions. People with memory loss, their caregivers, and the medical teams who interact with them all understand this well. So when Les Délices commissioned a piece tackling this difficult topic, they made a special effort to bring the music to those who would resonate with it the most.

The Louis Stokes Cleveland VA Medical Center hosted the early music ensemble for two performance-discussion sessions on February 21, a moving and emotional afternoon of empathetic, honest conversations about memory loss all framed by the solace of music.

At 12:00 pm, medical professionals and providers gathered in the rec hall, where flags of the U.S., the Department of VA, and the military’s many branches now provided a backdrop to a harpsichord and a collection of music stands. As part of the “Bioethics at Noon” series, the Les Délices musicians performed François Couperin’s La Visionnaire and selections from Viet Cuong’s world premiere, A Moment’s Oblivion. [Read more…]

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