by Nicholas Jones
When the Jesuit church of Saint-Louis in Paris asked for music for their 1694 Christmas Eve mass, their music director Marc-Antoine Charpentier took inspiration from an unlikely source — popular Christmas music of the sort sung in farmhouses and country churches far from Paris. [Read more…]
by Nicholas Jones
In the dark days of December, the seasonal need for light and hope seems to unite the faithful, the lapsed, the secular and even the skeptical in a desire for choral music. Tallis Scholars, the distinguished English choir, recently brought a program of great Renaissance vocal works to the Cleveland Museum of Art, singing with enough soul and skill to light us at least through the impending solstice. [Read more…]
by Jarrett Hoffman
Centaurs, dancing mushrooms, ballet hippos, and figure skating fairies accompanied The Cleveland Orchestra Thursday night at Severance Hall. Selections from the 1940 film classic Fantasia and its modern counterpart, Fantasia 2000, were projected over the orchestra for Disney Fantasia Live in Concert, part of the orchestra’s 2014 Holiday Festival series. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
When you’re taking the risk of performing Handel’s most celebrated oratorio from end to end, you need to field a quartet of soloists with alluring personalities, bring together a stellar chorus and orchestra, and be able to count on your own fine sense of pacing — otherwise this two-and-a-half hour work could become tedious soon after the “Hallelujah” chorus. Jeannette Sorrell and Apollo’s Fire had all of these elements securely in place on Saturday night at First Baptist Church in Shaker Heights. Its version of Messiah — presented with a sense of theater, as Handel intended it to be — scintillated, charmed and inspired the large audience from Overture to “Amen.” [Read more…]
by Timothy Robson
As part of its 2014/15 performing arts series, the Cleveland Museum of Art is presenting five concerts by the Oberlin Contemporary Music Ensemble, directed by Timothy Weiss. The third, featuring works by Pierre Boulez, Harrison Birtwistle and Richard Wernick, took place on Saturday, December 13, in Gartner Auditorium. The audience enjoyed top-notch performances, showing not only technical prowess but also a strong sense of the musicality of each of these difficult works. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
It’s difficult to say what falls more charmingly on the ear at this time of year — Italian baroque Christmas concerti or concerted French Noëls. Under the direction of music director Guy Victor Bordo, Akron Baroque gave its audience a taste of both on Thursday evening at First Congregational Church, plus three arias by the equally alluring soprano, Madeline Apple Healey. [Read more…]
by Mike Telin
For the past nineteen seasons, Liza Grossman has been inspiring young musicians to become enthused about contemporary music. On Sunday evening, December 7, in Cleveland State University’s Waetjen Auditorium, the fruits of her tireless labor were fully realized in a glorious concert that began the Contemporary Youth Orchestra’s twentieth anniversary season. [Read more…]
by Robert Rollin
With all the bad news and sadness we encounter today nationally, internationally, and in everyday life, the Warren Civic Chorus’s performance of Handel’s Messiah was a magnificent gift to the city of Warren. The oratorio is a vivid, positivistic, religious affirmation of belief in future salvation, and a powerful, vocal, choral and instrumental depiction of its biblical subject matter. [Read more…]
by Jarrett Hoffman
A party raged at Severance Hall Friday night. Everybody in the house — young and old — had their hands in the air and their bodies on the dance floor, the bartender tapping on bottle caps along to the music. No, this wasn’t during the performance by The Cleveland Orchestra — maybe someday. It was afterwards, in the majestic Grand Foyer, its golden ceiling and tall pillars overlooking a performance by the twelve-piece Latin jazz group Sammy DeLeón y su Orquesta, who invited listeners to take to the dance floor. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
One size didn’t fit all the pieces on last Thursday evening’s program at Severance Hall. Guest conductor Marek Janowski ordered up a small Cleveland Orchestra for Beethoven’s Haydnesque first symphony, brought on a very large Cleveland Orchestra for Hindemith’s Symphonic Metamorphosis on Themes of Carl Maria von Weber, then sent most of those players home, leaving a medium-sized Cleveland Orchestra to end the evening with Beethoven’s second symphony. [Read more…]