by Daniel Hathaway
Musicians who are inclined to talk to the audience during concerts should take their lead from Timothy Weiss. On Saturday afternoon in Gartner Auditorium of the Cleveland Museum of Art, the director of the Oberlin Contemporary Music Ensemble gave cogent and dryly humorous introductions to music by Luke Bedford, Philip Cashian and Morton Feldman, and conducted a brief, impromptu interview with composer Sean Shepherd. [Read more…]
by Timothy Robson
Since the demise some years ago of Opera Cleveland and Lyric Opera Cleveland, opera performances in Cleveland have been few and far between. Several plucky companies, including Opera per Tutti, have popped up in the last few years, offering small-scale productions, often of more unusual repertoire. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Ornate, exotic, and opulent, Claudio Monterverdi’s Vespers of 1610 defines the meaning of “Baroque” — and as a religious work, it just might be a Puritan’s worst nightmare. On Friday evening, the 37 singers and instrumentalists of Apollo’s Fire gave the large audience in St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Akron a dazzling guided tour of its many and varied attractions. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Images of water linked the three works on Thursday evening’s Cleveland Orchestra program at Severance Hall: destructive water in Toshio Hosokawa’s Meditation (To the Victims of Tsunami 3.11); the water of memory and lament in the central song in Hector Berlioz’s Les Nuits d’été; and the magical waters of the Rhine River in Robert Schumann’s third symphony. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
There were no horses in the parade, but the procession that brought the musicians of Les Délices onstage at the Bop Stop Saturday evening hinted at the military origins of the stirring French baroque music to come. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Pietism and fatalism inspired the disquieting poetic images that soprano Yulia Van Doren and the Cleveland Orchestra and Chorus presented in works by Johann Sebastian Bach and Johannes Brahms last Thursday night in Severance Hall. Those depressing thoughts might have put a damper on the proceedings, had not the music in both cases been so appealing. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Pity poor Johannes Brahms, whose op. 51, no. 1 quartet came last on the program played by the excellent Belcea Quartet on the Cleveland Chamber Music Society series last Tuesday evening at Plymouth Church. He didn’t really stand a chance after the emotionally wrenching performance the quartet had just given of Alban Berg’s Lyric Suite. [Read more…]
by Robert Rollin
Last Sunday afternoon’s screening of Harold Lloyd’s silent film comedy Speedy delighted the Stambaugh Auditorium audience in Youngstown and offered improvised organ accompaniment by Todd Wilson. This type of improvisation was common in the 1920’s and even helped the late, noted musicologist Donald Grout pay for his higher education. [Read more…]
by J.D. Goddard
On Friday evening, October 17, a standing-room only crowd gathered in the sanctuary of Saint John’s Cathedral to hear the magnificent Cleveland Orchestra and Chorus under the direction of Franz Welser-Möst in a free concert that featured Bach’s Missa Brevis, BWV 232. [Read more…]
by Jarrett Hoffman
Standing ovations can be awkward. A few people will stand, and gradually the rest of the audience will follow suit, preferring to comply but almost reluctant to do it. You might not find a more genuine standing ovation than the one classical guitarist Anton Baranov received last Thursday night, October 14, in Oberlin’s Kulas Recital Hall. [Read more…]