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Review: VIVA! & Gala at CMA (January 30) Chanticleer: stunning concert in a spectacular space

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 by Daniel Hathaway

InCHANTICLEER 1978, when Louis Botto founded Chanticleer with nine singers in San Francisco, the idea was to perform Medieval and Renaissance music using the male voices for which that repertory had been written. Thirty-five years later, the group numbers twelve, countertenors and male sopranos have been added to extend its range, and Chanticleer — named for the clear-voiced rooster in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales — has expanded its repertory and inspired a whole modern renaissance of composition for a cappella voices. That the group now subtitles itself “an orchestra of voices” isn’t just marketing hype. Male choral singing any more accomplished than this would be difficult to imagine.

On Wednesday evening, Chanticleer sang its program, “The Siren’s Call” in the new Ames Family Atrium of the Cleveland Museum of Art, the first of several VIVA! & Gala performing arts series events to make use of that amazing space. [Read more…]

Review: CCMS: Steven Isserlis & Kirill Gerstein at Plymouth Church (January 29)

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by Daniel Hathaway

Isserlis-GersteinChamber music recitals all too often follow the Chinese menu approach — one piece from Column A, one from Column B… Not so with the program the British cellist Steven Isserlis and Russian-born pianist Kirill Gerstein are touring with this month, which is fascinating for its choices and clever in its ordering of pieces. And this pair of musicians, who got together by accident but seem perfectly suited for one another, put it across brilliantly to the large Cleveland Chamber Music Society audience at Plymouth Church on Monday evening, an intergenerational crowd infused with young cellists, pianists and chamber musicians.

Here was the ground plan: both of Brahms’s cello sonatas, early and late, introduced by short pieces by Bartók and Busoni based on folk music and separated by two of Liszt’s late cello arrangements of his earlier songs. Liszt the revolutionary and Brahms the conservative didn’t get along at all during their lifetimes, but seemed as happily at ease with their proximity here as did Gerstein’s high-tech tablet computer (no page turner needed!) and Isserlis’s retro, gut-wound cello strings.  [Read more…]

CD Review: New live recordings: Mitsuko Uchida in Mozart with The Cleveland Orchestra & New Year’s with FWM and the Vienna Philharmonic

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by Daniel Hathaway

TheUchida Mozart second in Dame Mitsuko Uchida’s new cycle of Mozart concertos with The Cleveland Orchestra features live performances of Nos. 9 and 21 recorded last April 5-7 in Severance Hall (the first recording in the series, including concertos Nos. 20 and 17 won a 2011 Grammy Award for best classical performance).

In his review of one of those live performances last season for this publication, Nicholas Jones wrote, “Sensitive and confident, utterly secure in passage work, energetic and lyrical by turns, she packed these familiar concertos with beauties, pleasures and surprises … Uchida’s rapport with the orchestra shone through the performances, which she conducted from the keyboard. Her style was part of the music’s rhythmic energy — playing a phrase, shooting up from the piano bench, her hands a-flutter as if they were finding notes in space in the active passages or, in the sombre parts, turned palm upwards as if imploring the gods (or the musicians?)”  [Read more…]

Review: Canton Symphony and Andre Watts: Burnin’ down the house (January 26)

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by Tom Wachunas

ViveWATTS-Andre le Français was the theme for the January 26 concert by the Canton Symphony Orchestra at Umstattd Hall, featuring works by Debussy, Ravel, Franck and Saint-Saëns. Maybe a more apropos title for the evening would have been Vive le Watts, as in the eminent pianist, André Watts. His return to Canton (the last being in 2010) begins a three-year CSO residency. The 2014-15 season promises to be especially momentous, when he will perform all of Beethoven’s piano concertos with Maestro Gerhardt Zimmermann conducting.

In some ways, the concert brought to mind a twist on the old adage, “a watched pot never boils.” For programmatically, this watched pot, so to speak, did finally bubble over, and explosively so, though only after a long, lingering simmer. [Read more…]

Review: Roberta Flack with the CIM Orchestra: Set the Night to Music at Severance Hall (January 26)

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by Mike Telin

When Flack-Robertathe incomparable Roberta Flack entered Howard University on a full music scholarship at the age of 15, her aspirations were to become a concert pianist. “The romantics are my guys” she told ClevelandClassical.com during a recent interview. “Chopin, Schubert, Schumann, Liszt and Rachmaninoff. I love all of them, they are all heavy on the melody.” Although it would be her voice rather then the piano that lead to stardom, on Saturday, January 26 in Severance Hall Ms. Flack proved time and again that like the romantics, she knows how to shape a melody when she joined Carl Topilow and the Cleveland Institute of Music Orchestra in a benefit concert titled Set the Night to Music.

Ms. Flack, who is well-known for her narrative skills as a singer as well as her purity of tone, possesses a voice that is timeless. Now in her early 70’s, she is still capable of moving from a whisper to a full-bodied sound seemingly without effort. And, Ms. Flack is one classy entertainer as well. For one hour she, her top-notch back-up band and the talented CIM Orchestra enthralled a capacity audience with stories and song. [Read more…]

Review: CMA VIVA! & Gala: A brilliant realization of King Lear by Contemporary Legend Theatre of Taiwan (January 25)

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by Timothy Robson

FridayCLT-King-Lear evening’s production by the Contemporary Legend Theatre of Taiwan of King Lear, based on Shakespeare’s play, will be considered one of the highlights of this season. Shakespeare’s tragedy of falsehood, humiliation, madness and redemption through love was adapted, directed and performed by Wu Hsing-kuo, artistic director of Contemporary Legend Theatre. Mr. Wu has performed in theater, movies and television. American opera goers saw him in 2006 in the role of Yin-Yang Master in Tan Dun’s The First Emperor at the Metropolitan Opera. The performance was accompanied by an orchestra of nine musicians on traditional Chinese classical instruments, which were amplified. The performance also included pre-recorded sounds that were mixed into the live music. Wu Hsing-kuo was not himself amplified. The music composer was Lee Yi-Chin, and the vocal composer was Lee Men.

The performance, part of the Cleveland Museum of Art VIVA! & Gala series, was originally scheduled for the Gartner Auditorium at the museum, but was moved to the Breen Center for the Performing Arts on the campus of St. Ignatius High School in Cleveland’s Ohio City area. And for good reason: the production has extensive lighting and theatrical effects which would have been impossible in the museum auditorium. [Read more…]

Review: Cleveland Classical Guitar Society & BlueWater Chamber Orchestra present Robert Gruca with the BlueWater String Quartet (January 20)

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by Daniel Hathaway

OurBlueWaterLogo politicians could learn a lot about working together from three of Cleveland’s musical groups. The Cleveland Classical Guitar Society is joining with BlueWater Chamber Orchestra and Les Délices to present joint concerts this month and next. On January 20, CCGS and BWCO presented guitarist Robert Gruca with the BlueWater String Quartet in Spanish, Italian and Latin music at First Unitarian in Shaker Heights. Next month, Les Délices will play two concerts with lutenist Nigel North and soprano Carrie Henneman Shaw on February 16 and 17 jointly sponsored by CCGS.

Collaborations like these can be beneficial in a number of ways: combining two distinct audiences, sharing expenses, developing unusual programs. The list goes on. Though the longterm effects of such joint projects are still to be measured, good vibes abounded at Sunday’s well-attended concert.  [Read more…]

Review: Kronos Quartet at Cleveland Museum of Art (January 18)

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by Daniel Hathaway

“Eclectic”Kronos-Quartet doesn’t begin to describe the musical tastes of the Kronos Quartet. “Omniludic” (we just made that up) would be more like it. Musical omnivores, the Kronos are ready and eager to play music of any genre, and violinists David Harrington and John Sherba and cellist Jeffrey Zeigler have the technical and stylistic chops to do that — and to moonlight on a few other instruments too.

In their wide-ranging program in Gartner Auditorium of the Cleveland Museum of Art on January 18, the Kronos Quartet offered compelling performances of works by Bryce Dessner, Ram Narayan, Dan Becker (a first performance), Laurie Anderson, Steve Reich, Omar Souleyman and Aleksandra Vrebalov, plus arrangements of Vietnamese and Swedish tunes, to a large and rapt audience. [Read more…]

Review: Akron Symphony with Alexander Schimpf (January 19)

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by Daniel Hathaway

GermanSCHIMPF-Alexander pianist Alexander Schimpf performed with a Northeast Ohio orchestra under the baton of Christopher Wilkins for the second time in two years on Saturday evening. His first appearance on August 6, 2011 — with The Cleveland Orchestra in Beethoven’s fourth concerto — won him top prize in the Cleveland International Piano Competition. His second collaboration came as part of that prize package — a series of bookings with orchestras — as he returned to be the featured soloist in Chopin’s first concerto with the Akron Symphony at E.J. Thomas Hall.

It was clear from the contingent of Cleveland fans who drove down to hear Schimpf that the Cleveland Competition continues to support its laureates not only with post-contest bookings but with enthusiastic moral support. On Saturday, both Akron and Cleveland listeners were obviously thrilled by Schimpf’s gorgeously assured performance of a work the pianist has lived with for more than a decade: Chopin No. 1 was the first work he ever played with an orchestra, at the age of 18. [Read more…]

Review: Oberlin Orchestra at Carnegie Hall (January 19)

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by Michael Cirigliano II

Special to ClevelandClassical.com

CappingOberlinOrchestraCarnegieHall off a week of performances that brought their jazz, new music, and Baroque ensembles to four of New York City’s prized venues, the Oberlin Conservatory of Music imported its prestigious orchestra to Carnegie Hall for a varied program that included contributions from two of the school’s most famous alumni, pianist Jeremy Denk and Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Christopher Rouse.

Conductor Raphael Jiménez was wise to showcase the divergent talents of his ensemble on the program’s first half, programming both the high camp of Ravel’s La Valse and the Viennese delicacy of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 21. After a tentative and shadowy opening in the Ravel, the orchestra’s rich colors slowly began to emerge, led by a glossy violin section that displayed impeccable intonation that endured even as the composer continued to process his stately waltz through the fractured machine of a postwar Cubist landscape.  [Read more…]

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