by Daniel Hathaway
The names Johann Sebastian Bach, Ludwig van Beethoven, and Johannes Brahms are ubiquitous on concert programs. But Marius Flothuis, Arthur Meulemans, Norman Sherman, Robert Marek, and Arthur Frackenpohl? Not so much. So it was refreshing to encounter a whole set of new compositional personalities on the concert by Factory Seconds Brass Trio on Sunday afternoon, February 21, part of the 33rd season of Music from the Western Reserve at Christ Church, Hudson. [Read more…]
by Robert Rollin
The 2015/2016 Chagrin Concert Series lists as its mission statement “bringing fine classical music concerts to the greater Chagrin Falls community.” Last Sunday afternoon’s trio recital fulfilled this goal and more. It brought to the table an entire concert of exceptionally deserving but rarely heard 20th-century works, presented with amazing flair and verve. [Read more…]
by Carlyn Kessler
On Sunday evening, February 28, the Cleveland Cello Society (CCS) welcomed audience members into Case Western Reserve University’s Harkness Chapel for the 18th iCellisti concert, an annual event organized by CCS and directed by cellist Ida Mercer. [Read more…]
by Timothy Robson
On the WOW! spectrum, the JACK Quartet’s concert on Wednesday, March 2 in Gartner Auditorium at the Cleveland Museum of Art was high on the rating scale. It was a program of new music, and although several of the works were arrangements of old or even very old music, they were given new garb for these performances. We were reminded that the distance between ancient and modern is often not far. The program featured two world premieres, both by the Turkish-born, New York-based composer and improviser Cenk Ergün. [Read more…]
by Nicholas Jones
Like all great drama, Johann Sebastian Bach’s Passions — his settings of the gospel accounts of Jesus’s crucifixion — present conflicting points of view. We see the Passion through so many characters in the story — the disciple Peter, who denies knowing Jesus; the conflicted Roman governor Pilate, who finds no guilt in Jesus and yet sends him to the cross; the angry crowd, which demands his crucifixion; and Jesus himself, suffering and yet transcending his suffering. At every point, Bach demands our involvement with the conflicting ways in which each of these actors interpret the crucial event of the Christian story. [Read more…]
by Timothy Robson
As Director of Music at King’s College, Cambridge, Stephen Cleobury presides over one of the best-known choirs in the world in the college’s famously reverberant medieval chapel, as well as over its massive organ (currently removed for a year to undergo restoration). He also maintains his own career as an international concert organist and conductor. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Conducting is one of the few professions where you can make your debut at the age of 8 (as the late Lorin Maazel did) and still remain fully in the game at the age of 88 (as Herbert Blomstedt was last weekend at Severance Hall). Leading an eccentric symphony by his fellow Swede, Franz Berwald, and what many regard as Antonín Dvořák’s symphonic masterwork, Blomstedt was at the center of a love-fest generated by the players of The Cleveland Orchestra and enjoyed by an enthusiastic audience. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Nevermind, which describes itself as “un jeune ensemble de quatre musiciens et amis issus du Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris,” visited the Oberlin Conservatory of Music this week at the behest of baroque flute professor Michael Lynn to give master classes to historical performance students. The three-year-old ensemble of “musicians and friends” also delighted a capacity audience with a concert of French Baroque music in Fairchild Chapel early Tuesday evening. Those 90 minutes count as one of the most stimulating baroque music experiences these ears have ever witnessed. [Read more…]
by Timothy Robson
It was a bright, crisp winter afternoon this past Sunday – a good day to be out and around – and many people decided to take advantage of the mild weather to almost fill Pilgrim Church on W.14th Street, for a very attractive chamber music concert sponsored by Arts Renaissance Tremont. [Read more…]
by Christine Jay
Doing stupid things when young is natural. Two epic failures in youth — alas, fatal ones — are found in the myths of Icarus and Phaeton. Both are ambitious teenagers, their unrelenting and unchecked egos inducing catastrophe. Although similarly bold, the Les Délices program titled “Folly of Youth” at Case Western Reserve University’s Harkness Chapel on February 20 delighted and enthralled, with no signs of godly demise. [Read more…]