by Mike Telin
Since their founding in 2008, the Mivos Quartet have quickly established themselves as leading interpreters of the contemporary classical string quartet literature. On Saturday, March 28 at Transformer Station, the Mivos proved exactly why that is during their hour-long program featuring works by Mincek, Stauning and Lachenmann. Never has a concert consisting almost exclusively of extended techniques felt so much like a meal of comfort food. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
The Piano Trio With No Name (pianist Wu Han, violinist Philip Setzer, and cellist David Finckel) launched their most recent touring project — eventually to include all six of the Beethoven trios — with a brilliant performance on the Tuesday Musical Series at E.J. Thomas Hall in Akron on March 31. They’ll be back next season to finish the job. [Read more…]
by Timothy Robson
Trinity Cathedral in downtown Cleveland was packed on Friday evening for its annual Good Friday concert. This year Todd Wilson, the Cathedral’s director of music, presented Johann Sebastian Bach’s Passion According to St. John. It was musically a very fine performance, using period instruments, a chamber-sized chorus (mostly, more on that below) and a group of talented soloists who were all well-versed in historically-informed performance practices. The program booklet contained a lengthy, informative essay by musicologist Judith Eckelmeyer. [Read more…]
by Mike Telin
Since performing its inaugural concert in 2013, the Cleveland-based new music ensemble Ars Futura has quickly established itself as a dynamic force in the area’s burgeoning contemporary classical music scene. Judging from their engaging BOP STOP performance on Monday, March 23rd as part of NEOSonicFest, the ensemble is not only a collective of six accomplished players, but flutist Madeline Lucas Tolliver, clarinetist Drew Sullivan, violinist Tara Lynn Ramsey, cellist Daniel Pereira, pianist Shuai Wang and percussionist Luke Rinderknecht also know how to present the music in a way that leaves you wanting more. [Read more…]
by Tom Wachunas
I’m fairly sure that from its inception, the Canton Symphony Orchestra’s much-anticipated Beethoven Festival that commenced on March 28 & 29 posed some challenging program questions. Which works could best celebrate the composer’s genius while sating the appetites of his most ardent aficionados? Should the festival, spread across four concerts, be built upon only the symphonies? [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
For the fourth event in its five-concert, 32nd season, Heights Chamber Orchestra invited pianist Emanuela Friscioni to be its guest artist in a rare performance of Francis Poulenc’s Piano Concerto. The largely avocational orchestra is playing its first season under its new music director, Mark Allen McCoy. In addition to the Poulenc, HCO offered its audience Charles Gounod’s Funeral March of a Marionette and Franz Schubert’s Symphony No. 6 in C at First Baptist Church on Sunday afternoon, March 29. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
In 1815, Wellington and Blücher defeated Napoleon at Waterloo, John McAdam was building roads in Britain out of crushed stone, and the US launched its first steam warship, the U.S.S. Fulton. And on Christmas Day of that year, Boston’s Handel and Haydn Society gave its inaugural concert. Two hundred years later, after reinventing itself more than once, H+H (as it’s now known) has the honor of being the oldest continuously performing arts organization in the country. H+H is celebrating that milestone with a variety of activities, including a handsome exhibition of historical artifacts at the Boston Public Library in Copley Square, and two performances of J.S. Bach’s Matthew-Passion at Symphony Hall.
I joined a group of fellow members of the Music Critics Association of North America in Boston last weekend to learn more about the history of Handel and Haydn, and we all attended the Passion concert on Friday evening, March 27. [Read more…]
by Mike Telin
Looking at the Cleveland Chamber Symphony’s March 21st program, you might think the concert was part of a festival of world premieres. However, the program for their Gamble Auditorium concert at Baldwin Wallace was actually part of the 2015 edition of the orchestra’s NEOSonicFest. The evening included a work by Henry Cowell, as well as world premieres by Jeremy Allen, CCS’s music director Steven Smith and Clint Needham. [Read more…]
by Mike Telin
It’s been interesting to watch the evolution of composer Margaret Brouwer’s Blue Streak Ensemble over the past few years. Unlike many composers who form groups for the sole purpose of bringing their own compositions and arrangements to the public, Brouwer has been guided from the beginning by the mission to present her music alongside that of other living composers, as well as those from the past. On Sunday afternoon, March 15 at Fairmount Presbyterian Church, Brouwer realized her mission in a beautifully programmed concert featuring three of her own works, one arrangement, and pieces by two giants of the classical music canon. The concert was splendid from start to finish. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
NEOSonicFest planned a big agenda for its fourth concert at CSU’s Waetjen Auditorium on Tuesday, March 24. The Cleveland Chamber Symphony brought works by five “Young and Emerging Composers” to life under music director Steven Smith; Liza Grossman and the Contemporary Youth Orchestra reprised Stefan Podell’s Concerto for Two Violas and Orchestra with Lynne Ramsey and Jeffrey Irvine; and the two orchestras played side-by-side under Smith’s direction in a performance of Bernard Rands’ London Serenade to honor the memory of CCS founder Edwin London. [Read more…]