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Re•Views

Review: Canton Symphony — a rewarding program of American works (January 25)

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by Tom Wachunas

WATTS-AndreAmerican composer Arthur Foote (1853-1937) once wrote that “…the object of the artist should be to tell us in music…the truths of life and the beauty and sublimity of life.” It is an operative philosophy that inspired his best works. The most famous of those is his Suite for Strings in E Major, which was the first selection on the January 25 Canton Symphony Orchestra Masterworks program that spotlighted American composers. I think it fair to say that the other composers on this program shared Foote’s musical outlook.

His Suite for Strings is a brilliant platform for showcasing the depth and sensitivity of this orchestra’s string section. From the lush and pastoral sweep of the first movement, the delightful precision of the Tchaikovsky-esque Pizzicato second movement, and throughout the churning power of the finale, the orchestra was altogether breathtaking. [Read more…]

CD Review: Massimo La Rosa, trombone — Sempre Espressivo

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by Daniel Hathaway

LaRosaSempreThree years after releasing his CD, Cantando, Cleveland Orchestra principal trombone Massimo La Rosa has once again teamed up with pianist Elizabeth DeMio — and added four Cleveland Orchestra string colleagues — for a new solo album entitled Sempre Espressivo. Recorded in July, 2013 at Mixon Hall at the Cleveland Institute of Music and Clonick Hall at the Oberlin Conservatory, the album was shepherded into production by the eminent team of Elaine Marton (Sonarc Music) and Thomas C. Moore (5/4 Productions) and engineered by 5/4’s Michael Bishop.

The playlist is an intriguing mix of music intentionally written for the trombone and arrangements of solo pieces originally conceived for other instruments. The original works are Frank Martin’s Ballade, Camille Saint-Saëns’s Cavatine and Ferdinand David’s Concertino. The arranged pieces are Puccini’s Intermezzo from Manon Lescaut and Antonio Carlos Gomes’s Grande Valsa de Bravura — both repurposed by Yury Leonovich — and La Rosa’s own adaptations of Wagner’s Träume (Wesendonck Lieder), Giovanni Battista Pergolesi’s Sinfonia in F and J.S. Bach’s first solo cello suite in G. [Read more…]

Review: Oberlin String Quartet Intensive & Festival — The Cavani Quartet in Kulas Hall (January 17)

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by Mike Telin

CavaniQuartetWhy is it that we so often take for granted the musical greatness that exists in our own town? Case in point: the Cavani Quartet.

Appointed quartet-in-residence at the Cleveland Institute of Music in 1988, the Cavanis are the only ensemble to have twice received the Guarneri String Quartet Award for Artistic Excellence (2005 and 2011). In addition to their numerous recital appearances at CIM they are also committed to taking the great string quartet literature out of the recital hall and into the neighborhoods. An example is the Beethoven & Brotherhood Project – during which the Cavanis played the complete quartets of Beethoven, one at a time, in sixteen public libraries throughout the Cleveland area.

As educators, the Quartet developed CIM’s Intensive Quartet Seminar, the Apprentice Quartet Program and The Art of Engagement for student ensembles devoted to the serious study of chamber music. [Read more…]

Review: Cleveland Orchestra with Franz Welser-Möst, Yefim Bronfman, and a Widmann premiere (January 16)

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by Daniel Hathaway

hereFor the second of his January homestand weekends before the orchestra travels to Miami for its residency, Franz Welser-Möst gave Severance Hall audiences a Mozart symphony, a Beethoven piano concerto and the United States premiere of a substantial and brilliant new work that has been making the rounds of European and Asian concert halls.

Replacing Radu Lupu, the superb pianist Yefim Bronfman returned to Severance Hall on Thursday for a memorable reunion with the orchestra in Beethoven’s fourth piano concerto. Playing calmly and with a perfect sense of proportion and scale, Bronfman made this most engaging of concertos sound like an easy piece of work (which it really is not).

Welser-Möst and the orchestra provided a warm cocoon of sound around the soloist and arrived at tricky meeting points with pinpoint timing. The wind section achieved a particularly impressive blend. [Read more…]

CD Review: Zuill Bailey — Britten Cello Symphony and Sonata

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by Daniel Hautzinger

Bailey-Britten-CDRight at the end of his centenary year (2013), Benjamin Britten is being celebrated in a new Telarc release of the Cello Symphony and Sonata, recorded by Zuill Bailey and released January 14, 2014.

Both pieces, along with three suites, were written for the legendary cellist Mstislav Rostropovich. Britten and Rostropovich were friends and collaborators, and recordings exist of Britten conducting the Symphony with Rostropovich as soloist, and of the two performing the Sonata (Britten was a fine pianist as well as a composer).

Rostropovich and Britten cast both works as epic dramas, life and death conflicts. Bailey works on a smaller scale: in the Symphony, he becomes a dire prophet warning of the apocalypse.

Titled “symphony” instead of “concerto,” it positions the cellist more as a narrator than a soloist, while the orchestra becomes both the setting and the characters. [Read more…]

Review: CMA at Transformer Station — Third Coast Percussion (January 19)

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by Daniel Hautzinger

Third-Coast-PercussionRhythm. It’s the first thing that pops into someone’s head when they hear the word “percussion.” But percussion is such a broad term that it can stretch far beyond just playing beats. Third Coast Percussion’s packed CMA concert at Transformer Station on January 19 provided many such examples of percussion’s fantastic versatility.

Surrounded by paintings in Transformer Station’s gallery space, Sean Connors, Robert Dillon, Peter Martin, David Skidmore, and their setup of bells, marimbas, drums, bottles, and wood planks could have been an art exhibit themselves. The evening began in a more “traditional” percussion vein (whatever that means when a percussionist can be called on to play everything from a snare drum to a train whistle) with former Third Coast member Owen Clayton Condon’s Fractalia (2012). Numbering Steve Reich, electronica, and Taiko drumming among its influences, the piece is thrilling with oscillating marimba lines and bombastic drum solos, sounding almost like a song the progressive rock band Rush might have played in the 80s. [Read more…]

Review: Oberlin String Quartet Intensive & Festival — The Wasmuth Quartet (January 14)

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by Daniel Hautzinger

Wasmuth-SQFor much of its existence, chamber music was performed in private homes for small gatherings of friends. A recital by the Wasmuth Quartet on January 14 in Oberlin Conservatory’s Stull Recital Hall had the feeling of those earlier soirees, an intimate and cozy evening. The concert was part of Oberlin’s month-long String Quartet Intensive and Festival.

Stull is small as performance spaces go, with no raised stage. For the Wasmuth’s concert, standees crowded the back and extra seating surrounded the performers on three sides, putting some audience members nearly within arm’s reach of the musicians. Such a close setting also grants an unusual acoustic: resonance is lost, but every detail cuts through. That exposure could be a nightmare for a performer, but the Wasmuths easily adjusted to the venue.

And good thing they did: the sprightly lines of Haydn’s String Quartet Op. 50 No. 6 (“The Frog”) were lithe in their hands, every note clear and bright. [Read more…]

Review: Cleveland Orchestra — All Brahms concert with Julia Fischer and Franz Welser-Möst (January 9)

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by Daniel Hathaway

Julia Fischer

Circled by video cameras — including a giraffe-like “jib” that hovered ominously over the front seats on stage right — Franz Welser-Möst and The Cleveland Orchestra played the first in a split set of four all-Brahms concerts with the outstanding violin soloist Julia Fischer on Thursday evening at Severance Hall.

The first pair of performances were being recorded for eventual release on DVD and television and over the course of four days, the concerts would include two different overtures and symphonies and four iterations of the violin concerto. Thursday’s concert featured works written in the seven-year period between 1878 and 1885: the Academic Festival Overture, the Violin Concerto, and the Symphony No. 4 in e minor.

Sometimes concert programs are designed to challenge the audience or to juxtapose works in interesting and revelatory ways. Sometimes — as in a retrospective art exhibition — programs are curated for the sheer pleasure of enjoying a body of work brought together in one place. [Read more…]

Review: Canton Symphony Casual Series opens with Bass-ic Virtuosity (January 9)

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by Tom Wachunas

PALMER-CoryAmong the more delightful inventions of human creativity is the string section of an orchestra. Think of it as the aural equivalent of a painter’s palette laid out with a full spectrum of pigments. Just as certain hues (singly or in combination) can conjure certain subjective responses from viewers, so too the timbres of particular stringed instruments are well-suited to elicit specific emotional states or images in the listener.

I tell you this in a spirit of surprise at the opening concert of this season’s Canton Symphony Orchestra (CSO) Casual Series. These are informal, recital-style performances in Cable Recital Hall, spotlighting members of the CSO. The January 9 concert featured CSO Principal Bassist Cory Palmer along with guest pianist Katherine Monsour Barley. The eclectic program included the Baroque era Sonata in g minor by Henry Eccles; four short, early 20th century pieces by Serge Koussevitzky; four more short works for solo bass by contemporary composer Dave Anderson; and Elegy and Tarantella by Giovanni Bottesini, often remembered as “the Paganini of the double bass.” [Read more…]

Review: Oberlin String Quartet & Intensive — A Viennese Evening (January 10)

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by Daniel Hautzinger

Kulas-Oberlin“Viennese” is often a byword for “light.” It conjures images of bourgeois gentlemen nibbling cream-filled pastries while being entertained by effortless waltzes like “The Beautiful Blue Danube.” The second concert in Oberlin Conservatory’s String Quartet Intensive and Festival, “A Viennese Evening” on Jan. 10 in Kulas Recital Hall, was thus a charming and pleasant affair.

The program began with an oddity, Ferdinand Rebay’s Quartet in d minor for guitar and string trio. Rebay (1880-1953) spent most of his life in Vienna and died in obscurity after being blacklisted by the Nazis, as violist and organizer of the Festival Michael Strauss explained during intermission. Rebay is so unknown that Friday night was the U.S. premiere of the work. Strauss was joined by three other Oberlin faculty members for the piece: violinist David Bowlin, cellist Darrett Adkins, and guitarist Stephen Aron, who suggested the performance.

Guitar is rare in chamber music. Rebay, perhaps understanding its lack of projection, mostly uses the guitar in the d minor quartet to flesh out the harmony or to add rhythmic excitement. [Read more…]

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