by Daniel Hathaway
Gaetano Donizetti’s Don Pasquale centers around the title character’s cynical marriage scheme, designed to disinherit his nephew, Ernesto, who wants to tie the knot with a widow the Don doesn’t like. It doesn’t go well for Don Pasquale, who ends up playing the fool. Although Opera Circle Cleveland’s production on Sunday at the Westlake Schools Performing Arts Center took a while to get funny, strong singing and acting added up to an engaging afternoon of comic opera. [Read more…]
Electrifying keyboard playing opened and closed Saturday evening’s Cleveland Orchestra concert at Severance Hall (February 21). At the outset, organist Paul Jacobs treated the large audience to an alluring taste of the organ music of Johannes Brahms, plus a thrilling performance of one of Johann Sebastian Bach’s most handsomely-constructed preludes and fugues. At the end, pianist Yefim Bronfman joined Franz Welser-Möst and the Orchestra in a reading of Brahms’s first concerto so magisterial that future pianists probably need not apply. 
Formed for the occasion, the Dutch a cappella vocal quartet, Quink, made a fine initial impression at the Holland Festival in 1978, and has been touring ever since. Remarkably, after 37 years, founding members Harry van Berne, tenor and Kees Jan de Koning, bass, are still singing in the ensemble, along with mezzo-soprano Elsbeth Gerritsen, who joined in 2006, and soprano Marjon Strijk, who signed on in 2008. 
The program notes mentioned that Johannes Brahms and Hans von Bülow enjoyed programming Brahms’s piano concertos, deciding at the last moment who would conduct and who would play piano. Some feat that, but Yefim Bronfman may top it this weekend when he plays both concertos in pairs of concerts over four days with Franz Welser-Möst and The Cleveland Orchestra. 
This month’s Arts Renaissance Tremont concert brought the Amici String Quartet to the auditorium of Pilgrim UCC Church on Sunday afternoon, February 15, for the second performance in the group’s complete cycle of Beethoven quartets. A quick calculation suggests that this project will play out over five or six seasons (16 quartets, average of three quartets per performance), depending on how the Große Fuge figures in. 
The music of Jan Sibelius is a conundrum for many conductors and soloists. Make it sound too German or too Russian and its special qualities go missing in action. Spanish guest conductor Juanjo Mena was on the right track with Sibelius’s seventh symphony on Thursday evening at Severance Hall, while guest violinist Alina Ibragimova made something entirely her own of Sibelius’s violin concerto. 
The Cleveland Museum of Art Performing Arts Series took the Gartner Auditorium audience on an exotic trip on Wednesday, February 11. Through the artistic world of the Ragamala Dance Company choreographers Aparna and Ranee Ramaswamy collaborated with jazz saxophonist Rudresh Mahanthappa to create a fusion of Carnatic Indian and American Jazz forms. 
Originally planned for November of 2012 (when Hurricane Sandy intervened) then rescheduled for February of 2013 (when the artist fell ill), pianist Garrick Ohlsson’s recital on the Oberlin Artist Recital Series finally became a reality on Tuesday evening, February 10. It was well worth the wait. 
Oberlin Conservatory students packed Stull Recital Hall on Thursday, February 5 for a performance by Brooklyn-based chamber music ensemble PROJECT Trio. The group, made up of flutist Greg Pattillo, cellist Eric Stephenson, and bassist Peter Seymour, met while studying at the Cleveland Institute of Music, and now they are performing concerts around the globe. In their return to Northeast Ohio, they brought their distinctive style of music-making and their accompanying message of charting a unique pathway in the world of music.