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Re•Views

Cleveland International Classical Guitar Festival: recitals by Alan Mearns, Laura Snowden & Petra Polácková (June 7 & 8)

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by Daniel Hathaway

Northern Ireland-born guitarist Alan Mearns, now based in North Carolina, gave the first of three very different recitals I heard at the Cleveland International Classical Guitar Festival. He performed on Saturday afternoon, June 7 in Mixon Hall at the Cleveland Institute of Music.

Following the plan he described in an interview, his solo recital largely featured transcriptions and arrangements of works not originally intended for the guitar, a topic he addressed in a lecture conversation with Jonathan Leathwood the day before.

The gist of that session, Mearns said, was that arrangers are really re-composing pieces that should sound as native as possible on new instruments, but need not slavishly include every note of the original. [Read more…]

Cleveland International Classical Guitar Festival: recitals by the Patterson-Sutton Duo & Jason Vieaux (June 6 & 7)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

The Cleveland International Classical Guitar Festival just keeps getting better and better. For 2025, there are masterclasses, lectures, a youth competition, guitar-maker showcases, and several headliner recitals by guitar royalty — a heady blend, whether you’re a die-hard or a casual listener. The concerts were held in the Cleveland Institute of Music’s Mixon Hall, an acoustic and sensory jewel of a room to hear music in, especially the soft-spoken kind.

On Friday June 6, cellist Kimberly Patterson and guitarist Patrick Sutton — the Patterson-Sutton Duo — offered a varied and vivid program, moving easily from the folk-infused music of Wales to more contemporary sounds. Their taut and expressive playing balanced the program’s strands of tradition and invention.

Stephen Goss’s Welsh Folk Songs, a suite of six traditional melodies arranged for cello and guitar, opened the program. The work communicates the rich folk heritage of Wales and allowed both instrumentalists to evoke a world of fable and memory.

[Read more…]

No Exit enthralls with works by The Collective (May 28)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

On Wednesday, May 28, a collaboration between No Exit and The Collective at the Cleveland Museum of Art’s Gartner Auditorium testified to the merits of exploring fresh musical terrain — in the end offering rewards for both the sympathetic listener and those less easily persuaded.

After a brief welcome by CMA Performing Arts Director Gabe Pollack, the lights lowered and a short black and white film starring Timothy Beyer’s head — not an AI stand-in, he insisted — introduced the concert.

The Collective is an international group of composers who have banded together to facilitate performances of their work. No Exit, Cleveland’s independent new music ensemble, occasionally performs The Collective’s  music, as they did spectacularly on Wednesday. In June, the two organizations will embark on a two-week European tour that will include stops in Greece, Italy, Poland, and the Netherlands.

[Read more…]

Michelle Cann at Severance: smiles, laughter, and learning something new (May 19)

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by Stephanie Manning

What’s the best part about attending a dinner party? Maybe it’s the friendly conversation, the relaxed atmosphere, or a lovely musical performance. Michelle Cann’s recital had all three.

On May 19, the pianist welcomed the audience into her (temporary) home at Severance Music Center, entertaining with both elegant musicianship and cheerful dialogue. The warm lighting, low ceiling, and plush seats of Reinberger Chamber Hall helped make it feel as if the packed crowd was listening from inside Cann’s living room.

Presented in Cleveland as part of the 2025 Mandel Opera and Humanities Festival, “The Women of Chicago’s Black Renaissance” is a program as much about education as it is about performance. [Read more…]

BlueWater Chamber Orchestra and Cleveland Chamber Choir: “I Believe!” (May 17)

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by Peter Feher

Trust in a higher purpose is part of what’s sustained BlueWater Chamber Orchestra and Cleveland Chamber Choir for many seasons now.

So it was fitting that the two local ensembles came together in a concert titled “I Believe! Knitted Voices of Justice and Faith” on May 17 at Trinity Cathedral. The evening not only marked major milestones for BlueWater and CCC — their 15th and 10th anniversaries, respectively — but also spoke to a shared mission. Making classical music more accessible is a priority for both organizations, whether through pay-what-you-wish performances or programming that forges new connections.

Saturday’s concert paired Margaret Bonds’ Credo and Mozart’s “Great” Mass in c in a righteous demonstration of belief that swelled to fill the magnificent space of Trinity.

[Read more…]

Cleveland Orchestra’s “Vox Humana” haunts with a tale of reconciliation (May 23)

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by Daniel Hathaway

This article was originally published on Cleveland.com

CLEVELAND, Ohio — Instructions for a classical programming chatbot: design a full-length program of music that illustrates the theme of Reconciliation, using in any combination a narrator, a full symphony orchestra, a mixed chorus, a vocal monologue and an instrumental quintet.

That’s not how Friday’s Vox Humana concert at the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Opera & Humanities Festival came to be. But such a prompt might help explain how apparently unrelated works by Francis Poulenc, J.S. Bach, Galina Ustvolskaya, and Richard Strauss made it from Franz Welser-Möst’s fertile imagination to the Mandel Concert Hall stage.

Based on Jean Cocteau’s monodrama, Francis Poulenc’s 1958 opera La voix humaine presents the audience with one side of a telephone conversation between a jilted woman (“Elle”) and her former lover. [Read more…]

Akron Symphony concludes season with a grand Verdi’s Requiem (May 10)

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by Peter Feher

The Akron Symphony is ready to stage a full opera in some upcoming season, judging by the spectacular success of the orchestra’s performance of Verdi’s Requiem on May 10 at E.J. Thomas Hall.

All of the elements essential for a winning production were present. A sense of drama, a compelling cast of vocal soloists, and a stage packed with extra choristers and instrumentalists made the evening feel like a thoroughly theatrical event. It was a grand way for the Symphony to conclude its 2024-25 concert year.

That a sacred piece should seem so lavish and entertaining is the glorious crux of Verdi’s Requiem. Classical composers going as far back as the 15th century have set the Latin Mass for the dead with a certain creative flourish and delight in excess, but Verdi’s contribution represents the operatic peak of the tradition.

His realization was always intended for a concertgoing audience. The work was first conceived in 1868 as part of a tribute to the late leading opera composer Gioachino Rossini but only completed in 1873 following the death of Italian writer and politician Alessandro Manzoni.

[Read more…]

Cleveland Orchestra Opera & Humanities Festival: Moth Mainstage (May 16)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

The Cleveland Orchestra’s Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Opera & Humanities Festival opened on May 16 with The Moth Mainstage: Live from Severance, an evening of true, personal storytelling centered on the theme of reconciliation.

Presented in partnership with Ideastream Public Media, the show marked The Moth’s first live appearance in Cleveland. Founded in 1997 in New York City, The Moth is a nonprofit celebrating “the art of true, personal storytelling.” It produces hundreds of live events annually across the U.S. and abroad, including the widely popular podcast The Moth Radio Hour. [Read more…]

Franz Welser-Möst leads powerful performance of Leoš Janáček’s Jenůfa (May 17)

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by Daniel Hathaway

This article was originally published on Cleveland.com

CLEVELAND, Ohio – How can an opera be so profoundly disturbing, yet so achingly beautiful?

That was the conundrum after hearing Leoš Janáček’s Jenůfa at Severance Music Center on Saturday, in a performance by Franz Welser-Möst, the Cleveland Orchestra and Chorus and 11 first-rank soloists.

Welser-Möst chose the Czech composer’s 1904 opera as the centerpiece of this season’s Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Opera & Humanities Festival because of its resonance with the theme of reconciliation. That’s a complex process that “transcends mere forgiveness and forgetfulness,” festival curator Elena Dubinets writes in the elaborate program book. “It entails recollection and progression.”

[Read more…]

CityMusic Cleveland Chamber Orchestra at Fairmount Presbyterian (May 15)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

In a 1902 interview, Gabriel Fauré, who spent much of his career as an organist, said his goal in writing his Requiem was to stray from the established path, “after all those years accompanying funerals.” So, rather than ending with the horror of a Dies irae, he chose In Paradisum instead.

On Thursday, May 15, at Fairmount Presbyterian Church, CityMusic Cleveland delivered both heaven and earth over the course of a diverse program. Responding to conductor Lorenzo Lopez’s assured direction, the ensemble gave sympathetic readings of William Grant Still’s Danzas de Panama and Gabriela Lena Frank’s Leyendas, then ascended to a higher place in Fauré’s Requiem, aided by superb singing from soprano Chabrelle Williams, baritone Edward Vogel, and the CityMusic Community Choir.

[Read more…]

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