by Nicholas Jones
The challenge for any group that takes on The Four Seasons is to “make it new,” as the poet Ezra Pound enjoined his fellow modernists. Performed and recorded time and again, Vivaldi’s most famous pieces are in perpetual danger of being played (and heard) as baroque elevator music. Apollo’s Fire, with soloist Olivier Brault, met the challenge head-on in a dramatic, fresh interpretation of these Venetian masterpieces. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
1935, 1936, 1940, 1946, 1947, 1951, 1955, 1959, 1963, 1967, 1971, 1975, 1979, 1983, 1985, 1989, 1993, 1997, 2001, 2005, 2007, 2011 — and now 2015. Those are the 23 years in which the 83-year-old Baldwin Wallace Bach Festival has featured Johann Sebastian Bach’s “Great Catholic Mass,” as his sons described it. That makes it a tradition, for sure, but Dirk Garner’s concept in his first year as the festival’s new artistic director was notable for its infusion of new energy and vitality into a work that needs a regular shaking-out in order to remain fresh. [Read more…]
by Timothy Robson
Italian organist and scholar Edoardo Bellotti, a faculty member at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York, played a highly musical and satisfying concert on Saturday afternoon as part of the 83rd BW Bach Festival in Berea. He performed on the 1974 Rudolf Janke organ at the United Methodist Church of Berea. The north German character of the organ fit Bellotti’s program. Bellotti is also a noted improvisor, and at the end of the concert he created two excellent examples of his skills, both in Baroque style. [Read more…]
by Timothy Robson
A new era began this weekend for the revered Baldwin Wallace Bach Festival, now in its 83rd season, with a new artistic director, Dirk Garner, and orchestral conductor Octavio Más-Arocas. In any such transition the new regime has the opportunity to assess tradition and determine the direction forward. If the first concert of the 2015 festival on Friday, April 17, in BW’s Gamble Auditorium, is any indication, the organization is in good hands, with a vivid sense of imagination and purpose, yet not losing track of the past. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Born in Romania, displaced by the Nazis, educated in Hungary, and finally settling first in Vienna then in Germany after the 1956 Hungarian revolution, György Ligeti spent a lot of his life on the move. Musically nomadic as well, he chased after a number of different compositional styles. Two of Ligeti’s pieces composed thirty years apart formed the backbone of the Oberlin Contemporary Music Ensemble’s arresting program in Gartner Auditorium of the Cleveland Museum of Art on Saturday afternoon, April 11. [Read more…]
by Mike Telin
In his 2015 edition of Festival Europe, music journalist and travel writer Frank Kuznik provides would-be festival-goers with an abundance of helpful information about 70 European classical music festivals. Additionally, Kuznik entices readers with his insightful festival descriptions, accompanied by 90 exquisite photographs. Even if Europe is not in your travel plans for this summer, one look at this attractive guide and it surely will be in your plans for next summer. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Guest conductor Marie Bucoy-Calavan led the well-prepared Summit Choral Society, four superb soloists, and an accomplished chamber orchestra drawn from the Akron Symphony in a spirited concert of works by Handel and Haydn on Sunday afternoon, April 12 at Greystone Hall in Akron. The venue, the performances and the weather combined to provide near-perfect conditions for the sold-out 60-minute concert — an entirely rewarding way to spend part of a weekend afternoon. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Commemorations of war anniversaries have fueled the programming of many arts organizations in recent months. Akron Symphony artistic director Christopher Wilkins chose to mark the 150th anniversary of the end of the American Civil War with a sensitively curated program of music by Michael Tippett, Kurt Weill, Paul Hindemith, John Williams and Aaron Copland last Saturday evening, April 11 at E.J. Thomas Hall. While centered on the events of 1865 involving Abraham Lincoln, the program also took note of racial injustice in South Africa and Nazi Germany. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Almost a year to the day since her last appearance at Severance Hall with The Cleveland Orchestra, Mitsuko Uchida returned last weekend to lead and solo in two Mozart piano concertos, revisiting selected works she had performed during her complete Mozart cycle here between 2002 and 2007. As they did last year, a large audience of her Cleveland fans turned out to hear her and to enjoy a Mozart symphony led from the concertmaster’s chair by William Preucil. [Read more…]
by Mike Telin
The opportunity for young composers to work directly with professional musicians is crucial to their development. Each year, as part of Cleveland Contemporary Players Artist in Residency Series, students at Cleveland State University are able to work directly with some of the leading artists and ensembles in the world of contemporary classical music. Over the past few years, Andrew Rindfleisch, CSU professor of composition and director of the series, has brought the Slee Sinfonietta, the Jack Quartet, and pianist Jenny Lin to the CSU campus for residencies that have include workshops, master classes and lectures. Additionally, students have the chance to hear their compositions performed by visiting artists. [Read more…]