by Mike Telin
On Thursday, June 19, a standing-room-only crowd gathered in Kulas Hall at the Cleveland Institute of Music to hear clarinetist Franklin Cohen perform works by Reich, Brahms and Mozart. From start to finish Cohen proved that he is, without a doubt, one of the greatest musicians of our time. [Read more…]
by Jeremy Reynolds
Musicologists have long been fascinated by works that transform from a dark, minor tonality to a brighter major key. Perhaps the most famous example of this phenomenon is Beethoven’s fifth symphony, which achieves its thematic unity through a ubiquitous rhythmic motif. Would the symphony in question pack the same punch without this cohesion? Probably not. The second concert in ChamberFest, “Becoming Light,” began with Thomas Adès’s primordial Darknesse Visible for solo piano, progressed through Shostakovich’s transformative Piano Quintet, Op. 57, and concluded with Beethoven’s glittering Septet in E-flat Major, Op. 20. [Read more…]
by Timothy Robson
In its first three seasons, ChamberFest Cleveland made itself an indispensable set of summer events that helped satisfy the seemingly insatiable appetite for chamber music in Cleveland. Organized by Cleveland Orchestra principal clarinet Franklin Cohen and Diana Cohen, concertmaster of the Calgary Philharmonic, this year’s fourth festival has expanded to ten concerts over a two-week period in late June, in six venues, some of them traditional concert halls, others, more unusual sites. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
The Elixir of Love, one of Donizetti’s most-performed operas, makes use of a time-honored device: a magic potion that causes people to fall in love. This time, the concoction is peddled by a quack doctor to a gullible gardener who is hopelessly in love with his employer. A manufactured love triangle involving a soldier and a series of misunderstandings complicate the plot, but after more than two hours of delightful, bel canto singing, everything gets sorted out and the right people get married. Nightingale Opera Theatre’s beautiful production of Elixir was presented one night only, on Saturday, June 13, in Knight Fine Arts Center at Western Reserve Academy in Hudson. [Read more…]
by Mike Telin
On Monday morning June 15, the seventy-seven member Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra gathered at Cleveland Hopkins Airport to embark on its second international tour, traveling to China for concerts in Beijing’s Forbidden City Concert Hall (June 18), Tianjin’s Grand Theater (June 19), Shanghai’s Oriental Arts Center (June 21), and Ningbo’s Cultural Plaza Theatre (June 22). On Sunday, June 14 at Severance Hall, a large and enthusiastic audience was treated to a thrilling send-off concert when music director Brett Mitchell led his talented young musicians in works by Shostakovich, Kilar, Barber, and Tchaikovsky. [Read more…]
by J.D. Goddard
Since 1997, with its first production of I Pagliacci, Opera Circle has produced an impressive record of more than 50 opera productions in churches and other venues throughout Northeast Ohio. On June 13, Opera Circle brought to the Ohio Theater stage in PlayhouseSquare a somewhat subtle production of one of the most revered titles of all time, Giacomo Puccini’s three act opera, Madama Butterfly, with libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa. Like other works staged in the past two years, Opera Circle’s Butterfly courageously moved the company forward, enhancing its presence as an operatic staple in Cleveland’s classical music scene. This marked the company’s third performance in the Ohio Theater. [Read more…]
by Kelly Ferjutz, Special to ClevelandClassical
When Broadway composer Frederick Loewe and lyricist Alan Jay Lerner first proposed a musical based on the legend of Brigadoon, it was suggested that they change its setting from Scotland to the US. Fortunately, cooler heads prevailed, and here we are 68 years later with a sparkling production of Brigadoon that opened the Ohio Light Opera 2015 season last Saturday evening, and will run in repertory through August 7. (Photo: Benjamin Krumreig as Charlie and Emily Hagens as Jean).
by Daniel Hathaway
The Cleveland Trombone Seminar capped its fourth annual summer gathering on Sunday afternoon, June 14 in Cleveland State University’s Waetjen Auditorium with a glorious performance of a piece you might never have thought you’d hear arranged for nearly forty trombones, four flugelhorns, tuba, harp, organ, and solo soprano. Arranger Mark Lusk said the idea first occurred to him when he passed a fellow student’s door at Eastman and heard heavenly music issuing forth. “That would sound good on trombones,” he thought. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
When you live in a climate like Cleveland’s (or Leipzig’s, for that matter), at the first sign of moderating weather, you want to take your activities out-of-doors — rain, bugs, wind and humidity be damned. In Leipzig, Johann Sebastian Bach led summer concerts in Zimmermann’s Kaffegarten. In Hunting Valley last week, Jeannette Sorrell led two concerts in the “Baroque Music Barn” at the intersection of Shaker Boulevard and Chagrin River Road. On those occasions, the building formerly used to store apples rang out with the music of Bach and Telemann, including a thorny trio sonata, a requiem for a canary, and a virtuoso concerto. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
When summer arrives, Apollo’s Fire lets its hair down and goes off to visit Baroque music’s country cousin — the music of Appalachian America. The ensemble’s previous show, “Come to the River,” now has a prequel: “Sugarloaf Mountain,” an equally irresistible collection of tunes from the old and new worlds chronicling the passage of immigrants from the British Isles to their new homes in the American south — in the shadow of Sugarloaf Mountain. [Read more…]