by Mike Telin
The Junior Division continued with its second round on Saturday, May 16, at 10:00 am in Gamble Auditorium.
Nina Yifang Hu (14, USA) kicked things off with an engaging performance of Liszt’s “La campanella” from his Grandes études de Paganini, which she followed with a nicely-shaped and well-voiced rendition of Chopin’s Nocturne No. 8 in D-flat Major, Op. 27, No. 2. Hu was in her element during Liebermann’s Gargoyles, Op. 29, playing with sensitivity and wonderful technique.
by Timothy Robson
The distinguished American church musician and organist Bruce Neswick appeared in recital in Akron on Friday, May 15 as part of Holy Trinity Lutheran Church’s Arts @ Holy Trinity concert series. Neswick is Interim Canon for Music at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral in Portland, Oregon. He was previously on the faculty at the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University and served as director of music for the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City.
by Nicholas Jones
May Wine is a delightful spring punch made out of a bit of everything — the fruitiness of Riesling, the bubbly of Prosecco, the tart bite of strawberries, and the sweet pungency of the flowers and leaves of woodruff (also wonderfully known as sweet-scented bedstraw), blooming now in northern Ohio. For their final concert of their fifth season, the BlueWater Chamber Orchestra served up a bowl of musical May wine, more than welcome on one of the first warm evenings of the season. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Rebranding is sometimes just a marketing ploy to sell the same old product with a shiny new veneer. But when Opera Per Tutti changed its name to Cleveland Opera Theater last fall, the announcement came with an ambitious set of new plans. On Friday evening, May 8, the new company reached its first milestone with a first-class production of Puccini’s Tosca in COT’s new performing space, the acoustically excellent Masonic Auditorium. [Read more…]
by Nicholas Jones
Ever since Haydn established the string quartet as the ensemble de rigueur, chamber music for strings has tended to operate in base four. There are many variants on the quartet (“4 ± n”, as a math teacher might write it), but even when you subtract a violin (Beethoven) or add a viola (Mozart), a cello (Schubert), or a double bass (Dvořák) — or, as in this concert, when you pump it up to a sextet (Brahms) or an octet (Mendelssohn, Shostakovich) — the quartet remains the norm. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
An elemental legend set to music by an imaginative composer, and performed by an exacting conductor, a first-class orchestra, a responsive, adaptable chorus, and four veteran soloists made The Cleveland Orchestra’s performance of Hector Berlioz’s La Damnation de Faust on Thursday evening, May 7 an unforgettable experience. May the houses for the two remaining concerts on Saturday evening and Sunday afternoon be packed to the rafters — a concert this gripping happens only once in a great while. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
A full evening devoted to the music of Joseph Haydn is sure to be filled with sophisticated musical rhetoric, and at least a good handful of surprises. Last Thursday evening at Severance Hall, visiting British conductor Matthew Halls and The Cleveland Orchestra dug deeply into the fabric of an overture and a symphony, and with the help of the fastidiously exciting pianist Marc-André Hamelin, into one of the Austrian master’s piano concertos. Though the fourth work was obviously not by Haydn, its performance by duo hornists Richard King and Jesse McCormick would have deeply impressed whoever actually wrote it. [Read more…]
by Timothy Robson
There were many happy faces worn by parents and friends of the Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra (COYO) members on Sunday evening, May 3, after their concert at Severance Hall. And with good reason – it was superb, and several times during the course of the evening, at least one listener had to remind himself that this was a student ensemble, not a professional orchestra. [Read more…]
by Jane Berkner
It’s rare to hear an entire concert of solo flute, but that was the case on Monday night, April 27 on the Lorain County Community College’s Signature Series in the Studio Theater of the Stocker Arts Center in Elyria. One lone treble voice without harmonic accompaniment can lack depth and variety, yet flutist Brandon George performed a multi-faceted program of Baroque and modern works, imbuing them with a fascinating spectrum of sounds. [Read more…]
by Jarrett Hoffman
Oberlin is famous for many things, but nightlife on a Thursday isn’t one of them — which is why April 30 was unusual. Down on College Street the Apollo Theatre held the midnight premiere of the second Avengers film; a few blocks northwest, the ‘Sco dance club was buzzing in the basement of the student union; and across the street, the Cat in the Cream coffeehouse played host to the last concert of the school year for Oberlin’s jazz-classical intersection, its Performance and Improvisation (PI) Series. This late-night guest recital on International Jazz Day featured jazz artist Billy Drewes.