by Jeremy Reynolds
At Severance Hall on Thursday, May 28 on a stage still covered in tarps to protect the artificial grass used in the production of Strauss’s Daphne (May 27 and 30), the Cleveland Orchestra gave a spirited performance of another of the canon’s great nature-inspired works: Beethoven’s Symphony No. 6, “Pastoral.” The second half of the program featured Richard Strauss’s Symphonia Domestica, Opus 53. [Read more…]
by Mike Telin
On Thursday, May 28 at Masonic Auditorium, CityMusic Cleveland, under the direction of Avner Dorman, presented the first of two performances featuring a percussion concerto on the first half and a selection of show tunes on the second. What do these two musical styles have in common? Perhaps nothing, but in the words of Duke Ellington, “if it sounds good it IS good,” and from beginning to end, this was one good concert. The performance was presented as part of CityMusic’s “Wishes and Dreams: A Homeless Children Project.” [Read more…]
by ClevelandClassical Staff
The number of recitals during the fifteenth edition of the Cleveland International Classical Guitar Festival at the Cleveland Institute of Music increased to six. ClevelandClassical correspondents attended the recitals by Jason Vieaux and Yolanda Kondonassis, Ricardo Gallén, Paul Galbraith, and Antonis Hatzinikolaou, all of which attracted large, enthusiastic audiences to Mixon Hall between May 28 and May 31. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
“Daphne” means “Laurel” in Greek, and Ovid’s tale in Metamorphoses of how a river nymph came to be transmogrified into a sacred tree has all the elements that an opera composer could wish for: a sylvan setting, gods meddling in human affairs, passion versus purity, jealousy that leads to murder, a drunken orgy, and an ennobling ending. Jacopo Peri took on the story in 1597 (one of several operas he wrote, now mostly lost), as did Marco da Gagliano (1608), Heinrich Schütz (1627, his only opera, entirely lost), Alessandro Scarlatti (1700) and, most recently, Richard Strauss (1938). [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Franz Welser-Möst returned to the Severance Hall podium on Thursday, May 14 to lead The Cleveland Orchestra in a dynamic concert of music by Paul Hindemith, Jörg Widmann and Antonín Dvořák. Though the marketing department successfully advertised Dvořák’s “New World” Symphony as the main attraction (resulting in a large turnout for a Thursday evening), Christian Tetzlaff’s riveting performance of Widmann’s Violin Concerto was the most musically intriguing entry on the program, with The Orchestra’s reading of Hindemith’s Concert Music for Strings and Brass not far behind. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
After playing two rounds with no eliminations, the original pool of 24 young pianists in the Cleveland International Piano Competition’s Young Artists Competition was trimmed to 12. The semifinal round pared that number down to six finalists — three each in the Senior and Junior divisions. The final round with Gerhardt Zimmermann and the Canton Symphony Orchestra, played in front of a sold-out house in Gartner Auditorium at the Cleveland Museum of Art on Thursday evening, May 21, would determine who would win first, second and third prizes in each division, as well as who would be awarded the Mozart, Bach and Audience prizes. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
There was plenty of piano music to be heard at Baldwin Wallace Conservatory during the ten days of the Cleveland International Piano Competition’s recent Young Artists Competition, but in addition to the performances by the twenty-five contestants, ages 12-18, four seasoned recitalists were invited to play solo programs as well. Mariam Batsashvili knows her way around international competitions, while Vassily Primakov, Sean Chen and Alexander Schimpf are veterans of CIPC itself. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
The six Senior Division semifinalists in the Cleveland International Piano Competition’s Young Artist Competition filled Gamble Auditorium at Baldwin Wallace Conservatory with thousands of well-played notes on Tuesday afternoon and evening, May 19 — and undoubtedly presented difficult choices for the jury. That panel of judges would trim the field down to three Senior Division finalists for the final round with the Canton Symphony Orchestra at the Cleveland Museum of Art on Thursday (the three Junior Division finalists were named on Monday evening). [Read more…]
by Nicholas Jones
Pianist Lura Johnson returned to her hometown of Oberlin Sunday to play an intriguing and delightful program of the “first pieces” of four composers. Titled “Opus One: Something to Prove,” the program included first published piano works by Alexander Zemlinsky, Alban Berg, Dmitri Shostakovich, and Johannes Brahms. The concert was presented in the meeting house of First Church in Oberlin (1834), part of an initiative by the church to revitalize the historic use of the facility as a community space.
by Nicholas Jones
Robert Vernon, the longtime principal viola of The Cleveland Orchestra, played chamber music Monday night at West Shore Unitarian Universalist Church with six of his friends for the season finale of the Rocky River Chamber Music Society series. It was an evening of gorgeous chamber music by players who clearly enjoyed performing together.