by Daniel Hathaway
In his first local, full-length recital in a decade, Cleveland pianist Zsolt Bognár opted for musical intelligence and deep emotional content over keyboard pyrotechnics. On Sunday afternoon, February 7 in Gartner Auditorium at the Cleveland Museum of Art, Bognár gave probing performances of music by Franz Schubert, Edvard Grieg, and Franz Liszt to a good-sized audience that obviously included many of his local fans. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
The latest Cleveland Orchestra Fridays@7 event on February 5 took a new tack. Instead of programming world music before and after an hour-or-so long Orchestra performance, the Severance Hall management brought in a DJ and set up both the upper and lower lobbies with couches, comfortable chairs, and tables. This laid-back approach to the evening provided more opportunities for patrons to hang out, enjoy drinks, and have lingering conversations after the performance without having to shout over supercharged sound systems. A nice change. [Read more…]
by Mike Telin
The Oberlin Conservatory has been at the nation’s forefront in the training of undergraduate musicians for 150 years. The school’s outstanding programs encompass a variety of musical disciplines, and have produced an impressive list of world-renowned performers, composers, and innovators. On Saturday, January 30, in Symphony Center, Chicago, the conservatory’s orchestral program took center stage when Raphael Jiménez led the Oberlin Orchestra in outstanding performances of works by Hector Berlioz, Richard Strauss, and Igor Stravinsky. The concert was presented as part of Oberlin’s sesquicentennial celebration tour to Chicago. [Read more…]
by Nicholas Jones
Opera is a great medium for exploring the courage of acting for freedom and the personal cost of heroic resistance. There is something built into the art form that deepens our view of even the most resolute of actions, showing us the often tragic consequences of taking the courageous path. We can hardly hear Vissi d’arte without understanding both Tosca’s heroism and the pain that comes with it. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
The cool thing to do these days is to perform classical music in unconventional venues like bars and taverns. On Tuesday, February 2, mezzo-soprano Stephanie Blythe and pianist Warren Jones flipped that concept on its head by smuggling a program of cabaret and popular songs onto a classical chamber music series. The results were delightful. At the end of their disarming performance for the Cleveland Chamber Music Society at Plymouth Church, Blythe and Jones even had the audience singing along to an Irving Berlin tune. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Opera doesn’t get much more intimate than Oberlin Conservatory’s Winter Term production of Richard Wargo’s The Music Shop. Imaginatively directed by Sally Stunkel, Oberlin’s associate professor of opera theater, Wargo’s musical version of an Anton Chekhov story took place on the stage of Warner Concert Hall with the audience seated at the auditorium edge of the platform. Off in one corner, musical director and pianist Daniel Michalak provided the orchestral accompaniment, and the fine and energetic cast of four singers were so close you could see the perspiration on their brows as the action heated up. [Read more…]
by Timothy Robson
The rising young American tenor Nicholas Phan joined pianist Myra Huang in a musically substantial and intellectually satisfying recital on the Oberlin Artist Recital Series in Finney Chapel on Wednesday, February 3. Phan has a clear, well-managed lyric voice, with surprising heft at musical climaxes. Myra Huang, a sensitive collaborator, played with technical mastery and supportive musicianship. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Cleveland POPS music director Carl Topilow called in extra forces to celebrate the genius of composer John Williams in Severance Hall on Saturday evening, January 30. To his excellent POPS Orchestra, he added the 50-voice Cleveland Orchestra Children’s Chorus, more than 40 members of the Contemporary Youth Orchestra, and three local heroes — Howie Smith, Franklin Cohen, and Steven Greenman — who made cameo appearances during the celebration. [Read more…]
by Mike Telin
New music concerts aren’t what they used to be — in a good way. Today’s composers are writing in a myriad of musical styles, and the continuously evolving technical demands their compositions place on players are no longer insurmountable. Undistracted by technical flaws during performances, listeners are free to engage with the music itself. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
The music of John Luther Adams, perhaps one of the most widely-appreciated of contemporary composers, has been performed with some frequency in Northeast Ohio. His Drums of Winter, Wail, Inuksuit, and Veils and Vesper have recently been heard in venues ranging from concert halls to Lake View Cemetery. On January 29, David B. Ellis conducted his new Earth and Air: String Orchestra in Adams’s In the White Silence in Tucker Hall at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Cleveland Heights. [Read more…]