by Daniel Hathaway
It was a fine evening for wind players at the Akron Symphony concert on Saturday, November 14 at E.J. Thomas Hall. Their distinguished playing lent many-hued colors to Johannes Brahms’s Symphony No. 2 in D, as well as to the second suite from Albert Roussel’s ballet Bacchus and Ariadne. And the program, under the direction of guest conductor JoAnn Falletta, featured the artistry of guest soloist Todd Levy in Aaron Copland’s Clarinet Concerto. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Benjamin Bagby is so consummate a raconteur that he could probably tell you a joke in Anglo-Saxon — with the help of a few facial expressions and gestures — and you’d know exactly when to laugh. Presented by Apollo’s Fire, Bagby brought all his storytelling skills into play at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Cleveland Heights on Friday evening, November 13 to bring the first third of the Old English epic poem Beowulf vividly to life. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Expanding its reach around the region, Ross W. Duffin and Quire Cleveland took their survey of rounds and canons to Painesville United Methodist Church on Sunday afternoon, November 8. “Sing You After Me: Wondrous Rounds & Canons” showed the variety of ways that melodies combined with themselves can produce larger pieces of music. The cleverly-devised program featured two dozen works ranging from the 13th to the 19th centuries in expert performances by Quire’s 19 professional singers. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
The Cleveland Orchestra unpacked its bags just long enough between its extended European concert tour and its next Miami Residency to play a three-concert set at Severance Hall from November 6 to 8. Italian conductor Gianandrea Noseda was at the helm for colorful, virtuosic music by Goffredo Petrassi and Sergei Rachmaninoff, but the centerpiece of Saturday evening’s concert was a breathtaking trip through Dmitri Shostakovich’s Violin Concerto No. 1 with the imperturbable Greek violinist Leonidas Kavakos. [Read more…]
by Robert Rollin
Last Friday evening, November 13, Opera Western Reserve presented as its 12th annual production Gaetano Donizetti’s The Elixir of Love (L’elisir d’amore), an opera buffa in two acts. For a dozen years the company has mounted excellent operas, shrewdly limiting itself to a single annual performance and consistently playing to full houses while maintaining high artistic standards. Friday night’s performance was no exception. First-rate lead singers, fine preparation of choral numbers and ensembles, excellent blocking onstage, and a wonderful orchestra all contributed to another resounding success. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
At once historical and metaphorical in its subject, Benjamin Britten’s The Rape of Lucretia delivers a lot in a compact package. The eight singers of Oberlin Opera Theater and fifteen instrumentalists of the Oberlin Contemporary Music Ensemble delivered an outstanding performance of the British composer’s 1946 chamber opera last Wednesday evening in Hall Auditorium — one that left the audience with a lot to think about. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Making virtue out of necessity, CIM Opera Theater director David Bamberger introduced a new operatic technique in his production of Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro on Thursday, November 5 in Kulas Hall: ventriloquism.
by Yevhen Gulenko, guest writer
Have you ever heard a guitar tell a story? The thought may sound silly until you have heard the Croatian master Ana Vidović play. She is the rare musician who can make her instrument sound sublime, whether interpreting the Baroque works of Bach or performing arrangements of modern popular classics by Toru Takemitsu. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Performing to a full house, the Masterworks Chorale of Summit Choral Society began its 26th season under the new leadership of artistic director Marie Bucoy-Calavan with warm, confident performances of Johannes Brahms’s Schicksalslied and Wolfgang Amadè Mozart’s Requiem on Sunday, November 1 in Akron’s Holy Trinity Lutheran Church. [Read more…]
by Nicholas Jones
The truism holds that French aristocrats before the Revolution danced time away in utter complacency, refusing to change in the face of the inevitable. The image is probably true with respect to most things that would have mattered to those who stormed the Bastille. But in the world of music, things were changing decades before the Revolution. Writing within a framework of courtly elegance that would have pleased Marie Antoinette, composers were also pushing the boundaries of their music with wit, irony, turmoil, and glimmers of Romantic self-consciousness. [Read more…]