by Daniel Hathaway
The Cleveland Orchestra packed a full dose of excitement into 75 minutes on May 6 with its final Fridays@7 concert of the season. Led by Houston Symphony music director Andrés Orozco-Estrada and further animated by the dark piano pyrotechnics of Kirill Gerstein, music by Rachmaninoff and Stravinsky left different lasting impressions on the ear. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Violinist Jinjoo Cho had barely achieved teenager status when she first appeared as soloist with the Cleveland Women’s Orchestra. She’s been back several times since that debut, meanwhile walking off with top prizes in the Buenos Aires and Indianapolis competitions. Cho returned to help CWO celebrate its 81st-anniversary concert in Severance Hall on Sunday, April 23, this time with a delightful traversal of Henri Wieniawski’s Violin Concerto No. 2 in d led by Robert Cronquist. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Tasting menus can give diners a good overview of the capabilities of a restaurant. On Friday, April 29 at Severance Hall, Carl Topilow and the Cleveland POPS Orchestra offered a similar experience, using the music of George Gershwin to give the capacity audience a broad view of that versatile composer’s unique accomplishments — from popular song to Broadway, from jazz to symphonic music — with the delightful assistance in the second half of pianist, raconteur, and social historian Richard Glazier. [Read more…]
by Robert Rollin
Last Sunday afternoon, May 8, in Severance Hall, the Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra presented the third and final season concert of its 30th-anniversary season under its talented music director, Brett Mitchell. The concert’s stylistic range was remarkable given the age of its participants. [Read more…]
by Nicholas Jones
When we hear the big names of French Baroque music — Couperin, Lully, Rameau — we think of the opulence of the courts of Paris and Versailles. And we think big — long, serious operas on mythical subjects, string bands packed with dozens of players, and hefty subsidies from king and courtiers. But outside the heady claustrophobia of the courts, Paris also had a looser musical counterculture in the suburbs: small ensembles that played music based on popular tunes, and presented “operas” based not on the tragedies of gods and heroes but on the complications of everyday life. [Read more…]
by Mike Telin
What does Akron sound like to you? This is the question the Akron Symphony Orchestra and composer Clint Needham asked when they invited Akron area residents to download a smartphone app and upload their recordings to the Sounds of Akron website from late last spring through the fall. Those sounds became the inspiration for Needham’s imaginative new work, Sounds of Akron: City Meets Symphony, which received its premiere by the Akron Symphony under the direction of Christopher Wilkins on April 16 at E.J. Thomas Hall. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
When Cuban-born classical guitarist Manuel Barrueco made a cameo appearance with Cuarteto Casals on the Cleveland Chamber Music Society series in November of 2013, concertgoers got a tantalizing taste of his artistry in a Boccherini quintet and a single solo piece. In our review, we wished for a solo appearance by one of the world’s great guitar gurus. That finally happened on Saturday evening, April 16 when Barrueco played a distinguished program on the Cleveland Classical Guitar Society’s International Series at Plymouth Church in Shaker Heights. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Love comes in infinite varieties, and three of them were represented on The Cleveland Orchestra’s program on Saturday, April 30. The program began with Richard Wagner’s “Prelude and Love-Death” from Tristan and Isolde (the romantic-tragic kind of love), continued with Ernest Chausson’s Poem of Love and the Sea (the poetic-tragic flavor), and ended with Richard Strauss’s Ein Heldenleben (the narcissistic sort). [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
With its tuning challenges, tricky scherzo, and numerous transitions, Benjamin Britten’s Hymn to St. Cecilia is a ten-minute a cappella tour de force that tests the mettle of any choir that takes it on. In the second performance of their inaugural season, the 33 voices of Cleveland Chamber Choir more than rose to the occasion on Saturday evening, April 23 at First Baptist Church in Shaker Heights. In this and other British choral works, Scott MacPherson’s new professional ensemble validated the initial impression they made last November: this is a superb addition to Cleveland’s musical scene. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Chamber music societies are big on presenting string quartets — they’re portable, capable of a wide range of musical expression, and they control most of the repertory. But every now and again, programming differently-sized ensembles provides a welcome change. The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center gave the Cleveland Chamber Music Society that opportunity on Tuesday, April 19, when it served up a program of string sextets by Richard Strauss, Antonín Dvořák, and Johannes Brahms to a large audience at Plymouth Church in Shaker Heights. [Read more…]