by Daniel Hathaway
There are probably other 11-year-old pianists who can wow an audience with technical fireworks, but it’s difficult to imagine another young performer who could come close to Gavin George in sheer musical maturity. On Sunday afternoon, the Granville, Ohio-based student of Antonio Pompa-Baldi applied his steady and reliable fingers to a full recital of music by Bach, Haydn, Liszt, Prokofiev, Rachmaninoff and Chopin. [Read more…]
by Robert Rollin
Last Friday night E. J. Thomas Hall overflowed to the rafters for an appearance by the stellar violinist Joshua Bell with the Akron Symphony. Conducted by music director Christopher Wilkins, the Symphony collaborated with the Tuesday Musical Association to sponsor the event. Bell’s exemplary performance of Max Bruch’s Violin Concerto No. 1 in g, op. 26, was the highlight of the evening. [Read more…]
by Nicholas Jones
To enter the world of Baroque opera is to abandon realism, especially with Handel’s magical Alcina, his 1735 recasting of the bizarre inventions of Italian chivalric romance. Almost every one in the opera is disguised, transformed, or betrayed — Bradamante, a young maiden dressed in her brother’s armor, pursues her fiancé Ruggiero, whom she discovers snuggling with the sorceress Alcina; Astolfo, a hapless warrior of whom we learn little except that his son Oberto very much misses him, has been turned into a lion quite reminiscent of Bert Lahr in The Wizard of Oz; a second sorceress (Morgana, sister to Alcina, it turns out) happily betrays her lover Oronte in the very first scene as she falls in love with Bradamante . . . and I could go on. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
The Elgar concerto was on the agenda for Cleveland native and international cello heroine Alisa Weilerstein’s most recent homecoming. On Thursday evening at Severance Hall, Weilerstein put her individual stamp on that iconic work in a penetrating and daring performance with The Cleveland Orchestra and Giancarlo Guerrero. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
German-American composer Kurt Weill called his Street Scene an opera, but there are enough influences from the other side of musical theater to make the piece an intriguing hybrid. Oberlin Opera Theater explored all the facets of Weill’s 1947 “Broadway opera” in its masterful production in Hall Auditorium on Wednesday evening. [Read more…]
by Tom Wachunas
What is it about witnessing a live performance of orchestral music that makes it so uniquely …magical? While the advanced technology of digital recordings these days can certainly produce thoroughly engaging aural experiences, there’s still much to recommend the notion that seeing is believing. [Read more…]
by Nicholas Jones
Up and down the streets of Cleveland Friday night wandered the usual Halloween goblins and ghouls, but inside the Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist were spirits of a more heavenly persuasion. Vox Luminis, a young Belgian choir specializing in early music, presented a beautifully crafted program that was at once passionate and serene. [Read more…]
by Jarrett Hoffman
Some performers like to talk to the audience during a concert, providing insight into the program, inviting them to get up and dance, or maybe just shooting the breeze. Last Sunday night, October 26, on the Cleveland Museum of Art’s Performing Arts Series at Transformer Station in Ohio City, Vietnamese traditional performer and composer Vân-Ánh Vanessa Võ took audience participation a step further. [Read more…]
by Mike Telin
All was perfect inside Plymouth Church this past Saturday evening, October 18. The responsibility for that perfection lay squarely in the hands of Polish classical guitarist Lukasz Kuropaczewski, who was making his Cleveland debut. The program was presented as part of the Cleveland Classical Guitar Society’s International Series. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Carlton Woods and BlueWater Chamber Orchestra had a fine time celebrating the Halloween weekend in their concert at Plymouth Church in Shaker Heights on Saturday evening. The featured work on the program was Jon Deak’s The Headless Horseman of Sleepy Hollow, an action-packed concerto for string quartet and orchestra, with narration read by WCLV president Robert Contrad. [Read more…]