by Daniel Hathaway
For the finale of the 2015-2016 Wednesday Noon Brownbag Concert season, music director Todd Wilson invited his predecessor, Horst Buchholz, back to conduct the Trinity Chamber Orchestra in works by George Frideric Handel and Howard Hanson featuring organist Nicholas Haigh, soprano Margaret Carpenter Haigh, and Wilson himself. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Constructing a concert devoted to the work of a single composer is like curating a gallery retrospective. On Sunday afternoon, May 22 at Historic St. Peter Church in downtown Cleveland, Ross W. Duffin and the 24 professional singers of Quire Cleveland treated a large audience to a well-chosen selection from the sacred music of “England’s Phoenix,” William Byrd, a composer who led a charmed life. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Strange to tell, but in its nearly hundred-year history, The Cleveland Orchestra never got around to playing two major works by Antonín Dvořák and Leoš Janáček until last Thursday evening. On May 19, Franz Welser-Möst led the orchestra in their first-ever performance of Dvořák’s The Wood Dove and their first performance of more than the overture from Janáček’s opera The House of the Dead. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Music director Avner Dorman and CityMusic Cleveland Chamber Orchestra wound up their current five-concert tour around Cleveland on Sunday afternoon, May 15 at Lakewood Congregational Church. Guest violinist Tessa Lark was the engaging soloist in Antonín Dvořák’s Violin Concerto, and finely-wrought performances of Felix Mendelssohn’s Hebrides Overture and Symphony No. 3 filled out the program. [Read more…]
by Nicholas Jones
The Cleveland Chamber Music Society presented the Dover Quartet on Tuesday, May 10 in the final concert of its 2015-16 season at Plymouth Church in Shaker Heights. The program ranged from the mid-19th century to the mid-20th century, unified by a Romantic palette that perfectly matched the expressive playing of this distinguished young ensemble. [Read more…]
by Robert Rollin
Last Saturday evening, May 14, as its final subscription concert of the season, the BlueWater Chamber Orchestra presented a lively and interesting program at the beautiful Plymouth Church in Shaker Heights. Guest conductor Raphael Jiménez replaced artistic director Carlton R. Woods, who was indisposed. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Music director Franz Welser-Möst returned to the Severance Hall podium on May 12 to lead the first of three end-of-season programs. The Thursday evening performance featured violinist Frank Peter Zimmermann in an exceptional performance of Béla Bartók’s Violin Concerto No. 2. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Carl Orff intended his immensely popular “Scenic Cantata” Carmina Burana to be a staged work with dancers rather than just a concert piece — the form in which we usually encounter it today. On Saturday, May 7 at E.J. Thomas Hall, the Akron Symphony and Chorus joined with David Shimotakahara’s GroundWorks Dance, Ballet Excel Ohio, the Dance Institute at the University of Akron, soprano Grace Kahl, tenor Timothy Culver, baritone Brian Keith Johnson, and the Cleveland Orchestra Children’s Choir in a performance that splendidly fulfilled the composer’s original vision. [Read more…]
by Timothy Robson
When the young man at the admissions desk offered me earplugs for experimental electronic musician Otomo Yoshihide’s appearance at Transformer Station on Monday evening, May 9, I knew that this was not your run-of-the-mill concert. [Read more…]
by Mike Telin
In an interview with ClevelandClassical.com, composer and pianist Gregg Kallor said that when choosing a poem to set to music, it’s not enough for him to simply be moved by the text, the poem also needs to have a musical quality to it. On April 21, at E. J. Thomas Hall, Gregg Kallor and the excellent mezzo-soprano Adriana Zabala performed an enthralling program of Kallor’s settings of poetry that touched on a range of emotions as well as being musically captivating. Presented by Tuesday Musical, the concert was given in honor of National Poetry Month. [Read more…]