by Robert Rollin
The Youngstown Symphony, conducted by Randall Craig Fleischer, presented an interesting salute to the Mahoning Valley’s Italian pioneers in its second mainstage classical program of the season on Saturday, November 5. YSU Emeritus History Professor George Beelen introduced the concert and gave a brief synopsis of early Italian immigrants’ contributions to the region. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Jonathon Field’s Oberlin Opera Theater shows are always fresh and surprising, but his versions of Donizetti’s Viva la Mamma and Poulenc’s Les Mamelles de Tiresias burst onstage Wednesday evening in a laughfest of satire and surrealism. With casts that would put many professional companies to shame, these are must-see productions that will prick up your ears and kick-start your imagination. [Read more…]
by Mike Telin
For their latest series of concerts, the first-rate new music ensemble No Exit presented “Sonic Landscapes,” a program of six appealing works that explored the variety of ways composers use timbre, texture, and rhythm to create vivid imagery with sound. I was part of the capacity audience who attended the October 8 performance at Heights Arts. [Read more…]
by Robert Rollin & Mario Buchanan
This past week, Northeast Ohio hosted two performances of the classic horror film Nosferatu — one in Youngstown’s Stambaugh Auditorium and one in Cleveland’s Severance Hall.
Both were accompanied by organ scores and performed on restored E.M. Skinner organs. [Read more…]
by Timothy Robson
“Boulez the Advocate and Mentor,” the last of five concerts at CIM honoring the late Pierre Boulez, took place on October 30 at Mixon Hall. Appropriately, the CIM New Music Ensemble, directed by Keith Fitch, was joined by soloist Joshua Smith (CIM faculty member and Cleveland Orchestra principal flute), who performed many times under Boulez’s direction. [Read more…]
by Mike Telin
A good song is a good song, and for centuries vocal music has been a fruitful source of repertoire for instrumentalists. In “Songs Without Words,” Les Délices artistic director Debra Nagy has created an inspired program that juxtaposes 17th-century art songs with 20th-century jazz standards. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
The members of the London-based Belcea Quartet hail from Romania (first violinist Corina Belcea), France (second violinist Axel Schacher and cellist Antoine Lederlin), and Poland (violist Krzysztof Chorzelski), but they meld their various backgrounds into an arresting blend that is all the more colorful for its multinational origins. On October 18, the Belcea returned to the Cleveland Chamber Music Society at Plymouth Church in Shaker Heights — for the first time since 2014 — for riveting performances of early and late quartets by Franz Schubert, with Dmitri Shostakovich’s weird and wild Quartet No. 8, Op. 110, tucked in between. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
The audience for the International Contemporary Ensemble in Gartner Auditorium at the Cleveland Museum of Art on Wednesday evening, October 19, heard two versions of Igor Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring. The first was the world premiere of a clever arrangement by Cliff Colnot for thirteen players. The second, Vijay Iyer’s score that accompanied Prashant Bhargava’s film Radhe Radhe: Rites of Holi, delivered the spirit of Rite subliminally — which requires some explanation. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Composer Margaret Brouwer curated a fascinating playlist for the most recent concert by her Blue Streak Ensemble. At Heights Arts on October 13, the seven musicians wrapped a celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Bascom Little Fund and a remembrance of the victims of 9/11 into a single program, “Looking Back.” [Read more…]
by Nicholas Jones
The superb young pianist Yuja Wang is a fiery presence. Recently named Musical America’s Instrumentalist of the Year for 2017, the flamboyant, Chinese-born Wang has justly soared to fame for her gutsy performances of the most technically demanding solo and concerto literature for the piano. She plays with a formidable command of the finger-busting pieces of the Romantic and high modern, and she brings to them a sense of burning intensity. [Read more…]