Read Daniel Hathaway’s review of the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s premiere of Michael Gandolfi’s Ascending light with organist Olivier Latry and Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 6, Andris Nelsons, conducting, on Classical Voice North America.
Re•Views
Tri-C Classical Piano Series: Israeli pianist Adi Neuhaus at CMA (Mar. 22)
by Daniel Hathaway
In curating the 2014-2015 Tri-C Classical Piano Series, Emanuela Friscioni chose to showcase three young pianists from three different countries. This season’s performers have ranged in age from 11 (Gavin George of Granville, OH) to 23 (Beatrice Rana of Italy). The last of the three was 19-year-old Israeli pianist Adi Neuhaus, who played Bach, Beethoven, Chopin, Scriabin and Liszt for a large audience in Gartner Auditorium of the Cleveland Museum of Art on Sunday afternoon, March 22. [Read more…]
Youngstown Symphony’s Mozart and “City Lights” (March 21)
by Robert Rollin
Last Saturday evening, March 21, the Youngstown Symphony presented the second program of its Powers Auditorium classical series, City Lights, an interesting concert intermingling Mozart and film music by Charlie Chaplin. Conductor Randall Craig Fleisher gave a short prelude, astutely pointing out that both Mozart and Chaplin shared an ability to include humor, while at the same time imbuing their outputs with pathos. [Read more…]
Cleveland Classical Guitar Society: Los Angeles Guitar Quartet at Plymouth (Mar. 21)
by Daniel Hathaway
During its more than three decades as an ensemble, the Los Angeles Guitar Quartet has generated a huge and loyal following. LAGQ’s local fans supplied the group with a large, enthusiastic audience on Saturday evening, March 21 at Plymouth Church in Shaker Heights for a two-hour show that touched nearly every possible corner of the repertoire with the group’s forty magic fingers. [Read more…]
Cleveland Orchestra with Jahja Ling & Daniil Trifonov (March 19)
by Daniel Hathaway
If you didn’t catch one of last weekend’s Cleveland Orchestra concerts, you missed an extraordinary experience. Pianist Daniil Trifonov, making his Severance Hall debut on Thursday evening, March 19, was simply breathtaking in Shostakovich’s first concerto — in cahoots with principal trumpet Michael Sachs and guest conductor Jahja Ling. And Ling’s interpretation of Rachmaninoff’s second symphony — the only other work on the program — was as sonorously thrilling as it was expertly paced. [Read more…]
Cleveland Wind Octet at Chagrin Methodist Church (Mar. 20)
by Jarrett Hoffman
They should do this more often. Making only their second group appearance, the Cleveland Wind Octet — including members of The Cleveland Orchestra and a couple of esteemed local friends — brought the crowd to its feet at Chagrin Falls’ United Methodist Church last Friday. Performances of a classic, an arrangement, and a new piece composed by one of the group’s own were sublime. [Read more…]
Roomful of Teeth at CMA (March 20)
by Timothy Robson
The a cappella vocal group Roomful of Teeth made a big roomful of noise at the Cleveland Museum of Art’s Gartner Auditorium on Friday, March 20 before a large, enthusiastic audience. This remarkable group, founded in 2009, has won a Grammy for their 2012 eponymous first album, and one of the major works on the program, Partita for 8 voices by member Caroline Shaw, won the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for music. [Read more…]
Flutist Matthias Ziegler at Transformer Station (Mar. 12)
by Jane Berkner
An inspiring moment in our travels prompts many of us to write in our journals, or for the more ambitious, to create a travelogue. For Swiss flutist Matthias Ziegler, it resulted in the reinventing of his flute, enabling him to perform the sounds that he heard on an exotic instrument in a foreign place. His brainchildren were on display in a concert of original works at Transformer Station on Thursday, March 12 as part of the Cleveland Museum of Art’s Performing Arts Series. [Read more…]
Review: NEOSonicFest Concert No. 1 — reVoice at Survival Kit Gallery (Mar. 20)
by Daniel Hathaway
The Cleveland Chamber Symphony’s second annual NEOSonicFest opened on a very informal note with a performance by reVoice on Friday Evening, March 20 at Survival Kit Gallery in the sprawling complex of old warehouses called the 78th Street Studios on Cleveland’s West Side. The event, featuring mezzo-soprano Megan Elk, sopranos Susan Fletcher & Rachel Morrison and pianist Lorenzo Salvagni, seemed as improvisatory as some of the numbers on the playlist. [Read more…]
Oberlin Opera Theater: La finta giardiniera (Mar. 11)
by Jarrett Hoffman
“I could not make this opera stranger than it already is,” Oberlin Opera Theater director Jonathon Field told ClevelandClassical in a recent interview. After witnessing the opening night of Oberlin’s production of La finta giardiniera, with its jumbo-sized rabbits that march in slow motion across the stage, I have to disagree. If this opera was strange to begin with, Field didn’t hold back in giving it an extra nudge off the deep end. [Read more…]