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…]
The eighth of ten concerts featuring The Cleveland Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra Chorus, and Youth Chorus on Saturday evening, December 19 showed no apparent signs of holiday fatigue or repetitive music syndrome. To the obvious delight of a full house, Robert Porco led a wide variety of holiday selections in arrangements by such practiced hands as William Walton, Robert Shaw, Robert Russell Bennett, and John Rutter. The two-hour concert also featured original pieces by Eric Whitacre, Pyotr Tchaikovsky, George Frideric Handel, and Leroy Anderson — and a visit from the Man in the Red Suit. 
Summit Choral Society presented the first of three luminous Christmas Candlelight Concerts in Akron’s St. Bernard Church on Friday evening, December 18. The evening featured the adult Masterworks Chorale, a double brass quintet with organ, and two ensembles from its Children’s Choir Program: the Performance Choir and Advanced Choir. (The Intermediate Choir and Beginning Singing ensembles would rotate, each singing a set of their own on Saturday and Sunday evening.) 
Apollo’s Fire gave the first program of its Christmas Vespers ten years ago, a program that has continued to draw crowds through several reiterations. And no wonder: skillfully selected from the extensive publications of the early seventeenth-century Lutheran composer Michael Praetorius, these vespers have all the Christmas spirit one could wish for, with never a hint of Franz Gruber or White Christmas. 
The temperature outside was a balmy 60 degrees when CityMusic Cleveland presented its December program. I attended the last of five concerts, on Sunday, December 13 in Lakewood; others were scattered around the area from Elyria to Willoughby Hills. While it was a pleasure not to have to negotiate a Polar Vortex in getting to the concert, once inside, I was happy to experience winter in the milder form of Antonio Vivaldi’s brilliant program music from The Four Seasons. 
Apollo’s Fire, Cleveland’s Baroque orchestra, opened a two-night revival of their Christmas show Sacrum Mysterium: A Celtic Christmas on Saturday, December 12, at the First Baptist Church in Shaker Heights. It was an unseasonably warm December evening, with every window in the church open to cool the capacity audience. 
Timothy Weiss and the Oberlin Contemporary Music Ensemble wrapped up their fall term on Wednesday, December 9 in Warner Concert Hall at the Oberlin Conservatory with impressive performances of works by Andrew Norman, Jesse Jones, Augusta Read Thomas, Elizabeth Ogonek, and Carlos Sanchez-Gutierrez — five living composers, all born since 1964. 
In a celebration of popular culture in Waetjen Auditorium at Cleveland State University on Saturday evening, December 12, music director Liza Grossman and the Contemporary Youth Orchestra offered up terrific performances of clever works by Leonard Bernstein, Michael Daugherty, and DeeJay Doc.