As a whole, Mozart’s Requiem is a grandiose work, sublime in its evocation of salvation and eternal rest, and fearsome in its visions of the Last Judgment. The grand forces that meet the eye — four soloists, chorus, and orchestra — suggest drama and spectacle, even if the scoring is dark: the lighter hues of flutes and oboes are omitted in favor of basset horns (cousins of the clarinet), bassoons, a choir of trombones, and strings in their lower registers. Even trumpets and timpani are used less for their ceremonial qualities than as emulsifiers of the texture.
Re•Views
CityMusic: Vivaldi recomposed at St. Stan’s (Mar. 16)
by Kevin McLaughlin
By the end of violinist Laura Hamilton’s and CityMusic Cleveland’s convincing performance of Max Richter’s Four Seasons Recomposed (after A. Vivaldi) on Saturday, March 16 at the Shrine Church of St. Stanislaus, you had the uncanny feeling that what you were hearing was not so much a new piece but an old piece in a dream.
In each of the twelve movements Richter brings Vivaldi in and out of focus by isolating and repeating melodic fragments against an attenuated accompaniment. In the slow movements more of the melody is preserved — the Largo in “Winter” for example — but the original harmonic framework is altered. [Read more…]
Apollo’s Fire “Hispania, a Voyage from Spain to the Americas” (Mar. 21)
by Kevin McLaughlin
Apollo’s Fire makes the enjoyment of old music easy. Less interested in the virtues of museum preservation, this band delights in having practices and creations of the past party with the present.
Their most recent show, “Hispania, a Voyage from Spain to the Americas,” is ostensibly an excursion by sea through sixteenth-century Spain and Latin America in ballades, dances, and instrumental fancies. But where another period ensemble might have rowed their boat with deliberate and reverential strokes, Jeannette Sorrell and her joyous troupe made this trip a theatrical thrill ride. I attended the performance at St. Rocco Parish on March 21.
Finnish guest conductor Dalia Stasevska draws on musical nature in Cleveland Orchestra debut (Mar. 21)
Daniel Hathaway | Cleveland Classical
Originally posted on Cleveland.com
CLEVELAND, Ohio — Works by two Finnish composers bracketed a major piece by a woman with close ties to Akron on Thursday evening at Severance Music Center. The concert marked the Cleveland Orchestra debut of Finnish guest conductor Dalia Stasevska (currently chief conductor of the Lahti Symphony) as well as the return to the Severance stage of Texas-born mezzo-soprano Josefina Maldonado (who first appeared here in John Adams’ El Niño in November, 2022).
Oberlin Opera: L’Orfeo in Hall Auditorium (March 17)
by Daniel Hathaway
The ancient Greek legend of Orpheus and Eurydice has interchangeable endings.
At the end of Claudio Monteverdi’s musical fable L’Orfeo, first performed at the ducal palace in Mantua on February 24, 1607 and staged by Oberlin Opera Theater in four Hall Auditorium performances last weekend, the god of music lives on to continue to enchant everything that hears him sing, having been snatched from the clutches of Pluto in a classic deus ex machina intervention.
Those who prefer happy-ever-after endings can rejoice that Monteverdi didn’t set the alternate conclusion of Alessandro Striggio the Younger’s libretto, in which Dionysius’ Maenads, having grown tired of his incessant mourning for Eurydice, dramatically tear Orpheus limb from limb.
Oberlin’s production, directed by Stephanie Havey and conducted by Christian Capocaccia, offered the rare opportunity to hear Striggio’s poetic verse and Monteverdi’s inventive score performed by college age voices and period instruments. [Read more…]
Les Délices: Song of Orpheus at Disciples Center (March 10)
The ancient Greek legend of Orpheus and Eurydice is much on the minds of two local organizations this month.
From March 21-24, Oberlin Opera staged four performances of Claudio Monteverdi’s 1607 L’Orfeo in Hall Auditorium.
From March 8-10, Les Délices related the tale of Orpheus’ ill-fated visit to the Underworld to rescue his wife Eurydice from the clutches of Pluto in music by Philippe Courbois, Jean-Philippe Rameau, Georg Philipp Telemann, and most recently by Jonathan Woody in his cantata By much love betray’d.
Also a celebrated baritone, Woody took the role of the god of music himself, assisted by mezzo soprano Sophie Michaux, baroque oboist Debra Nagy, violinist Shelby Vamin, gambist Rebecca Landell, and harpsichordist Mark Edwards. I heard the last of three performances on Sunday, March 10 at Disciples Center. [Read more…]
Artemis captivates at Finney Chapel (Mar. 13)
by Max Newman
For students at Oberlin College, jazz is something that is always present. It floats through quads, down streets, over buildings, from speakers, and live from students in the Conservatory’s jazz department. That makes Oberlin a perfect destination for groups of jazz visionaries when it comes to performing, really strutting their stuff. And for the unbelievably talented collective Artemis, who performed at Finney Chapel on March 13, strutting their stuff is exactly what they did in a mesmerizing performance that will last long in the minds of all who were there.
Highly notable was the chemistry among the five musicians, who gave the impression of being a single living entity experiencing complex emotions as it moved through the world. When one musician moved forwards for a solo, it didn’t feel like a separate act, but rather an extension of this collective expression. It was impossible to look away.
Imani Winds bring music for thought to Oberlin (Mar. 7)
by Kevin McLaughlin
The Imani Winds completed a brief residency at Oberlin Conservatory in spectacular and moving fashion with a recital of new and involving works in Warner Concert Hall on March 7.
A pre-concert panel — which brought together Oberlin faculty members with the Imani Winds’ Monica Ellis and Chamber Music Detroit’s Bryan Jones — helped frame the music to come. Jeff Scott’s Fallen Petals of Nameless Flowers, an unflinching look at the U.S. criminal justice system historically misapplied to young men of color, served as the emotional and consequential center of the program, and the through-line of the discussion.
Jody Kerchner shared her activity as Director of the Oberlin Music at Grafton Choir, playing excerpts of music written and performed by its incarcerated members while they listened in real time on a livestream.
Pianist Garrick Ohlsson, Cleveland Orchestra team up for refined, unfussy evening of Mozart (Mar. 14)
By Kevin McLaughlin, Cleveland Classical
Originally published in Cleveland.com
CLEVELAND, Ohio — Though we missed hearing pianist Igor Levit, who withdrew due to illness, it was a pleasure, as always, to welcome Garrick Ohlsson to Severance Music Center on Thursday, March 14. With Franz Welser-Möst and The Cleveland Orchestra musicians as partners, the pianist strode onstage to render as refined and unfussy a performance of a Mozart Piano Concerto as one might hope to hear.
The Concerto No. 27 in B-flat, K. 595 — Mozart’s last — was composed in 1788, though not performed until March of 1791. Many keyboard players like to ascribe to Mozart the same pathos that attached itself to Schubert in his final years of life, but Ohlsson knows better. Mozart’s music rarely reflects immediate personal crises, and this particular concerto wasn’t designed for that anyway. (Photo by Yevhen Gulenko)
Cleveland Chamber Choir sparkles in “Choral Splendor: Old and New” (Mar. 2)
by Kevin McLaughlin
Composers are always looking back to their elders — and whether out of deference, anxiety, homage, or a desire to understand, it is right and good to admit your debt to the past.
Several contemporary composers (Claudia Hinsdale, Jeff Scott, Joshua Estok, Andrew Rindfleisch, and Caroline Shaw) honored old masters — and did themselves honor in return — in a satisfying program of pairings on Saturday, March 2, at the First Lutheran Church of Lorain. Artistic director Gregory Ristow and the exceptional voices of the Cleveland Chamber Choir were their co-travelers in time.
As one of the earliest examples of a composer referencing an older style, Crucifixum in carne (probably by Medieval composer Pérotin, looking back at the anonymous original) served as an appropriate introduction. Here, the old was intertwined with the new as an elongated cantus firmus undergirded fancy new polyphony. Sung by thirteen unaccompanied male voices led by assistant conductor Peter Wright, the piece resonated warmly in the sanctuary.