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…]
by Daniel Hathaway
In a post-intermission conversation with CIM composition professor Keith Fitch last Wednesday evening, January 27 in Kulas Hall, visiting composer Shulamit Ran showered praise on guest conductor Steven Smith and the Cleveland Institute of Music Orchestra. They had just assumed the considerable challenges of performing her Legends and Violin Concerto, and she found that impressive. “I wouldn’t have thought I’d live to hear both of those pieces on the same program,” she said. [Read more…]
by Christine Jay
A solo lute recital may be one of the most intimate concert experiences ever. Time seems suspended, and melody and harmony intermingle in sweet, soft pluckery. Producing such a sound-world takes skill, however, and Grammy Award-winning lutenist Paul O’Dette demonstrated his skill in spades during his January 30th recital in Herr Chapel at Plymouth Church in Shaker Heights, presented by the Cleveland Classical Guitar Society. [Read more…]
by Tom Wachunas
Among the many combined ingredients that make the Canton Symphony Orchestra the excellent ensemble that it is, arguably none is more vital than the relationship between the conductor, Gerhardt Zimmermann, and his orchestra musicians. In the past, I have often regarded Zimmermann’s readings of a given work as impassioned embodiments of his uncanny ability to draw out a particularly radiant sonority from his players. Call it the pursuit of unified intent, a one-for-all and all-for-one process. [Read more…]
by Jarrett Hoffman
New York, January 14 — Pianist Peter Takács knows Beethoven like the palm of his hand, and I’m not saying whether that’s his own or Beethoven’s. Showcasing interpretations built over a lifetime studying that composer, the professor of piano at Oberlin Conservatory capped off “The Beethoven Experience” on January 14 at Weill Recital Hall in Carnegie Hall. The series’ three concerts — starring Takács and chamber music friends — each examined one of the three periods of Beethoven’s works, concluding with Thursday evening’s look at the “late period.” [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Some of the most arresting concert works don’t end with a bang, but a whisper. Both Hans Abrahamsen’s let me tell you and Dmitri Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 4 dissipated into silence at Severance Hall on Thursday, January 14, as music director Franz Welser-Möst held off the eventual ovations for a long, thoughtful moment. There was a lot to reflect on in The Cleveland Orchestra’s playing of both an enthralling new work and a sprawling Soviet-era symphony. [Read more…]
by Christine Jay
Thankfully not all old traditions die hard. On January 16 in the University of Akron’s E. J. Thomas Hall, music director Christopher Wilkins, baroque violinist Olivier Brault, and the Akron Symphony presented a concert entitled “Vivaldi and Bach — The Great Inspiration.” An intermingling of historical and modern performance traditions ensued, with inspiring results. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Recitals that feature duo-harpsichordists are rare enough treats, but the program of French baroque music that Michael Sponseller and Jacob Street played on Les Délices’ series at The Galleries at Cleveland State University on Saturday evening, January 16, was an extraordinary tasting menu of twenty opera-related delights. These ranged from the ancien cuisine music of Jean-Baptiste Lully and Marin Marais to the nouvelle cuisine experiments of Armand-Louis Couperin, sandwiched around ten wonderfully varied main courses by Jean-Philippe Rameau and followed by a pair of postprandial confections supplied by Pancrace Royer. [Read more…]