by Daniel Hathaway
The last Cleveland performance by the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center in 2010 brought two pianists and two percussionists to town for music by Shostakovich, Crumb and Bartók and shifted the Cleveland Chamber Music Society’s center of gravity westward to Waetjen Auditorium at CSU. On Tuesday evening, the Societies colluded once again, but this time the agenda was all strings and the venue was Plymouth Church in Shaker Heights. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Cleveland composer H. Leslie Adams (left), an Oberlin Conservatory graduate, spent the decade from 1997 to 2007 writing his Twenty-six Etudes for Solo Piano. He describes them in the liner notes to two recent recordings as “studies of varying styles, moods, tonalities, and thematic natures — each providing different technical challenges, while expressing my personal sense of beauty.” [Read more…]
by Daniel Hautzinger
Certain chamber music ensembles make intuitive sense. A string quartet has four voices with matching timbres, perfect for writing balanced counterpoint, while a wind quintet provides a variety of colors and allows for cohesive ensemble playing, since all the players must breathe. But the Prima Trio’s combination of clarinet, violin (or viola), and piano is less obvious. Each instrument hails from a different family, each with a distinct tone color and disparate methods of articulation and phrasing. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Visitors from Boston were the headliners for the Akron Symphony concert at E.J. Thomas hall on Saturday evening. Guest conductor Benjamin Zander and 20-year-old cellist Jonah Ellsworth brought along major works by Antonin Dvořák and Dmitri Shostakovich and gave them compelling performances. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
The first faculty concert of Oberlin’s Winter Chamber Music Festival on January 9 brought a capacity-plus crowd to Kulas Recital Hall and gave students in the program the first of several opportunities to hear how things are done by the veteran chamber players who are coaching them this month. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hautzinger & Mike Telin
—Oberlin, January 7, by Daniel Hautzinger
It’s difficult to meaningfully describe a concert of contemporary music like the one presented by Chartreuse + in Oberlin’s Clonick Hall on January 7. If you’ve never experienced the aural worlds dreamed up by composers who expand the palette of sounds available on traditional instruments, it’s unlikely that you’ll be able to imagine the concert even with the aid of the finest written depiction. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Pierre Boulez first treated Cleveland Orchestra audiences to Maurice Ravel’s complete ballet music for Daphnis et Chloé in 1970. As part of the orchestra’s 90th birthday tribute to the French composer and conductor who has maintained a long-term relationship with the ensemble, Franz Welser-Möst revisited Ravel’s wonderful score on Thursday evening for the first of three concerts in Severance Hall. Though — as the song goes — the weather outside was frightful, The Cleveland Orchestra and Chorus lit a delightful indoor fire full of sensual warmth and ecstasy. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hautzinger
If you had to guess the composers of two of the pieces performed by the Wasmuth Quartet on January 6 by sound alone, you would almost certainly guess wrong. As part of Oberlin Conservatory’s Chamber Music Intensive & Festival, the young string quartet presented music by Haydn, Webern, and Ligeti in Kulas Recital Hall, but probably not the Ligeti or Webern you would easily recognize. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
On Saturday evening in Akron’s St. Bernard’s Church, the Summit Choral Society gave the second of three Christmas Candlelight Concerts, to a full house, proving that a Christmas concert can offer both substantial and lighter fare and remain thoroughly engaging without resorting to the false allure of tinsel-pop. The two-hour-long program featured the adult Masterworks Chorale, as well as the Society’s youth ensembles — the Touring Choir, Concert Choir and 2014 Alumni Choir — in a dozen selections, many of them written in the last decade or so. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Last December, Cape Breton fiddling phenomenon Natalie MacMaster brought her husband and fiddling partner Donnell Leahy and their children along for a heartwarming program of Nova Scotian fiddling at the Cleveland Museum of Art. This year, MacMaster popped down from Ontario in the middle of her family’s Christmas tour for a one-night show with Brett Mitchell and the Cleveland Orchestra at Severance Hall. [Read more…]