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Gregorio Benítez takes flight in Messiaen’s Catalogue d’oiseaux (Oct. 11)

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by Peter Feher

Some of the best birdwatching in Cleveland this season has, unusually, been at Severance Music Center.

The songs of dozens of different species could be heard in Reinberger Chamber Hall on Friday evening, October 11, when Spanish pianist Gregorio Benítez presented selections from Olivier Messiaen’s Catalogue d’oiseaux (Catalog of birds).

This just happened to be the same weekend that The Cleveland Orchestra, upstairs in Mandel Concert Hall, was performing two avian-inspired works: Esa-Pekka Salonen’s Cello Concerto, which ends with an echoing seagull effect, and Jean Sibelius’ Fifth Symphony, whose finale is meant to depict swans in flight.

[Read more…]

Inspired conducting and solos grace Cleveland Orchestra’s performance of Mahler’s Symphony No. 3 (Oct. 17)

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by Daniel Hathaway

This article was originally published on Cleveland.com.

CLEVELAND, Ohio —  On Thursday evening at Severance Music Center, The Cleveland Orchestra launched a trio of performances of Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 3 with Finnish conductor Klaus Mäkëla at the helm and the assistance of mezzo-soprano Jennifer Johnson, the upper voices of the Cleveland Orchestra chorus, and the Cleveland Orchestra Children’s Chorus.

Mahler 3 is a famously long piece — its first movement alone lasts as long as the following five. Paying close attention to the composer’s explicit instructions, and never letting things get too big too soon, Mäkëla expertly paced the work, creating an arch that gathered the 110-minute performance into a glorious whole rather than treating it as a continuous series of unrelated climaxes. [Read more…]

Cleveland Chamber Music Society: Imani Winds go all out with Michelle Cann (Oct. 15)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

Imani Winds has mastered the art of extemporized risk-taking. If most of the notes on Tuesday, October 15, were predetermined, the specialness was in what was not on the page. It’s what one aspires to hear from the best chamber music performances and in jazz: aligned individual and group invention, conversational interplay, courage of dynamics, tempos, and timbres edging on extremes — music-making never again to be heard in exactly the same way.

Flutist Brandon Patrick George, oboist Toyin Spellman-Diaz, clarinetist Mark Dover, horn player Kevin Newton, and bassoonist Monica Ellis were joined by pianist Michelle Cann — a potent spark of invention in her own right — in a program of varied, but logically grouped works by Paquito D’Rivera, Lalo Shifrin, Francis Poulenc, and Valerie Coleman. Ellis described the evening’s sequence as “concentric circles” coinciding in Paris, or at least in a French aesthetic.

[Read more…]

Quince Ensemble at CIM: patience pays off (Oct. 16)

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by Stephanie Manning

The Quince Ensemble doesn’t specialize in instant gratification. The vocal quartet likes “slow music,” as soprano Amanda DeBoer Bartlett has explained in interviews, and she repeated that sentiment onstage on October 16. “Not slow in tempo, but slow in development.”

That ethos can also form the arc of entire programs, as Quince demonstrated to its audience at the Cleveland Institute of Music. Before the concert in Mixon Hall reached its apex with Courtney Bryan’s Requiem, the quartet built up to the finale by demonstrating just what their voices can do.
[Read more…]

Kent Keyboard Series: Conrad Tao premieres Adam Roberts’ Book of Flowers (Oct. 6)

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by Daniel Hathaway

Greeting pianist Conrad Tao after his Kent Keyboard Series recital on October 6 in Ludwig Recital Hall, I exclaimed, “What a marathon!” He gently corrected me. “Two marathons!”

Indeed, Sunday’s amazing, two-hour performance by the seemingly indefatigable pianist included not only the debut of Kent State composition professor Adam Roberts’ Book of Flowers — sixteen “character pieces” written for Tao — but also Claude Debussy’s formidable twelve Études, written in 1915.

The title of Roberts’ magnum opus is metaphorical. [Read more…]

Les Délices makes magic in “Moonlit Mozart” (Oct. 5)

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by Peter Feher

There were no sets, costumes, or actors in sight when the strains of Mozart’s Overture to The Magic Flute started up at Disciples Christian Church in Cleveland Heights on Saturday, October 5. Yet Les Délices, the enterprising and adaptable period-instrument ensemble led by oboist and artistic director Debra Nagy, was putting on a serious production all the same.

Eight specialist wind players had come together for “Moonlit Mozart,” the first concerts of Les Délices’ 2024-25 season. (Two additional performances, in Akron on October 3 and in Rocky River on October 6, filled out the weekend.)

“This is a bucket-list program for me,” Nagy explained from the stage, detailing the reasons why this once-standard combination of instruments is so rarely heard today. [Read more…]

BlueWater Chamber Orchestra meditates on the passage of time (Oct. 5)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

On October 5 at the Church of the Covenant, artistic director Daniel Meyer led the BlueWater Chamber Orchestra in an engaging program of new and familiar works, including David Biedenbender’s River of Time, with former BlueWater principal trumpet and co-artistic director Neil Mueller as soloist.

As a glorious opener, the Cleveland School of the Arts R. Nathaniel Dett Concert Choir (Robert McCorvey, director) and the BlueWater Orchestra combined forces during four spiritual and gospel arrangements. CSA also supplied select string players from the school to sit alongside the professionals, adding tonal depth and youthful energy. [Read more…]

A remarkable night with the Cleveland Orchestra: Salonen conducts Salonen (Oct. 10)

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by Daniel Hathaway

This article was originally published on Cleveland.com.

CLEVELAND, Ohio — There’s a little Finnish invasion happening at Severance Music Center this weekend. On Thursday, October 10, conductor and composer Esa-Pekka Salonen joined cellist Senja Rummukainen for the Cleveland premiere of his Cello Concerto (to be repeated on October 12 and 13).

The concept of terroir, the combination of factors that gives wine grapes their distinctive character, can also be applied to music. Both the Salonen concerto and its companion piece, Jean Sibelius’ Fifth Symphony, breathe a Nordic feeling, expressed more perfectly in notes than in words. And it’s not merely coincidental that both works end with references to birds.

The concerto — beautifully constructed thematically, harmonically, and rhythmically — is an enchanting journey for soloist and orchestra alike. Rummukainen was the perfect match for the sonic and technical intricacies of the piece, and who is better equipped to guide its performance than its composer. [Read more…]

Great Lakes Theater goes Into the Woods (Sept. 28)

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by Peter Feher

This season, Great Lakes Theater is uniquely positioned to put on a near-perfect production of Stephen Sondheim’s Into the Woods.

The regional company, in residence at the Hanna Theatre, has time and again mounted some of the most appealing shows at Playhouse Square — more intimate than the Broadway tours that stop just down the street but no less lavishly performed.

You could say it was all for the best that the recent New York revival of Into the Woods — with its rotating celebrity cast paying larger-than-life tribute to Sondheim, who died in 2021 — never made it to Cleveland. [Read more…]

Recording review: Poiesis Quartet fearlessly forges something new (Bright Shiny Things)

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by Stephanie Manning

Creating something new can come with a lot of expectations. Founding an ensemble. Releasing a debut album. Recording a world premiere, or two. But whatever you might expect from the Poiesis Quartet, they want you to take them exactly as they are.

It might sound like quite the proclamation for the young string quartet, founded two years ago at Oberlin Conservatory by violinists Sarah Ma and Max Ball, violist Jasper de Boor, and cellist Drew Dansby. But their debut recording, as we are — to be released on October 18 — sees the four players completely confident in themselves and the music they’re performing.

The name “Poiesis,” from the ancient Greek ποιεῖν, refers to this act of making what has never been made before. Accordingly, the two pieces on the album are each world premiere recordings (though each have had multiple live performances). Both works also have strong ties to Northeast Ohio, with one by Baldwin Wallace composer-in-residence Clint Needham and the other by Cleveland Orchestra trombonist Richard Stout. [Read more…]

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