by Daniel Hathaway
Andrew Sijie Li, 15, from Boston, Canada & Hong Kong, led off the Wednesday afternoon piano-with-piano session with an assured performance of Beethoven’s Concerto No. 3 in c. The opening movement was grand, the slow movement had a lovely vocal quality, and he kept in close contact with his collaborator Annie Lin. [Read more…]
This article was originally published on Cleveland.com
The Cleveland Orchestra performs The Lord of the Rings The Two Towers on Friday at the Blossom Music Center.Roger Mastroianni
by Daniel Hathaway
CUYAHOGA FALLS, Ohio — News flash! War broke out here on Friday night as a vast coalition of enemy forces assembled on the Plains of Rohan, surrounded, then stormed the Hornburg, breaching the Deeping Wall during a fierce battle, and forcing its defenders and residents to retreat. The tide finally turned when an army of trees marched into the fray, hurling boulders at the attackers and flooding the battlefield with water from the river Isengard.
by Peter Feher
The Cleveland Orchestra put together an intricate and intriguing musical puzzle on July 22 at Blossom Music Center. Each piece on the brilliantly balanced program — which showcased the sensibilities shared by 20th-century composers in France, the Soviet Union, and Japan — held the key to understanding and appreciating the others.
The Orchestra, guest conductor Kahchun Wong, and the evening’s soloist, cellist Zlatomir Fung, (left) were more than up to the task of fitting it all together. Spareness, precision, and sensitivity to detail were the features uniting the mix of repertoire, and the musicians gave superb performances where not a note was wasted.
Claude Debussy’s La mer is a study in symphonic texture — all the more beguiling because the composer was not, by usual standards, a master orchestrator. [Read more…]
This article was originally published on Cleveland.com
by Daniel Hathaway
CUYAHOGA FALLS, Ohio — Pianists Jean-Yves Thibaudet and Michael Feinstein joined their four hands and Feinstein’s engaging vocals in a newly-minted cabaret show at Blossom on Sunday evening, July 23. “Two Pianos: Who Could Ask for Anything More?” explores well-known and rediscovered music by George Gershwin and other selections from The Great American Songbook, along with works by 20th-century classical composers interleaved with anecdotes and engaging chit-chat.
The show, now making the rounds of summer festivals, can either be performed with just two artists on a pair of grand pianos or with a full symphony orchestra. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
The last hurdle to be cleared on the way to the awarding of prizes in Piano Cleveland’s Competition for Young Artists brought the finalists to the stage of Gartner Auditorium at the Cleveland Museum of Art on Saturday, July 15 to play concerto movements with the Canton Symphony Orchestra, led by Steven Byess.
Six items were on the docket: the three Junior Division players chose the opening movements of concertos by Beethoven, Mozart, and Grieg, while the three Seniors each chose Chopin, with only one repetition. Piano Cleveland president Yaron Kohlberg emceed the proceedings. I watched the well-produced webcast.
Concertos, which occupy a singular position in the orchestral ecosystem, are often performed with only a read-through beforehand, which means that both the soloist and the orchestra have to show up well-prepared. But anything can happen in the heat of battle — and adjustments have to be made on the spot with intelligence and sensitivity. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
In 1858, a French government critic described Offenbach’s first two-act operetta, Orpheus in the Underworld, as “a profanation of holy and glorious antiquity.” But instead of reacting to its “blasphemy and lascivious goings on” with shock and horror, Parisians flocked to see the show, which ran for a then-record of 288 performances.
Ohio Light Opera shows why in the production I saw — cleverly staged by Steven Daigle, brightly conducted by Michael Borowitz, and colorfully designed by Daniel Hobbs — in its opening performance at Freedlander Theatre at the College of Wooster on July 13. Satire can scarcely ever be overdone, and the opportunity to skewer society’s sacred cows — or its gods — opens many doors wide.
by Daniel Hathaway
The six pianists who advanced to the final round of Piano Cleveland’s International Competition for Young Artists cleared the first hurdle on their way to winning first, second, and third place prizes with performances in the Chamber Music Round on Thursday evening in Mixon Hall at the Cleveland Institute of Music.
Demonstrating how well they can play with others, the finalists performed single movements of piano trios with members of The Cleveland Orchestra, collaborations that couldn’t help but inspire them to new heights.
For this round, the Juniors enjoyed the expertise of violinist Yun-Ting Lee and cellist Martha Baldwin, cello, while the Seniors joined forces with violinist Jessica Lee and cellist Dane Johansen. I attended via the live webcast. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Surely one of the highlights of Piano Cleveland’s International Piano Competition for Young Artists this summer will turn out to have been an inspiring guest recital by the amazing Venezuelan pianist Gabriela Montero.
In Reinberger Chamber Hall at Severance on Sunday evening, July 9, Montero presented pristine, penetrating performances of works from the literature, followed by four ingenious improvisations on musical material submitted by the audience. I watched the recital via the excellent live webcast.
Seated Radu Lupu-style on a straight-backed chair at the Steinway, Montero began with an exploratory journey through Chopin’s Polonaise Fantasy in A-flat, followed by Schumann’s intense portraits of the characters who showed up for the masked ball in his Carnaval. After intermission, she gave a finely etched and effortless reading of Stravinsky’s Piano Sonata with carefully managed dynamics. [Read more…]
by Mike Telin
On Friday, June 30, ChamberFest Cleveland presented a delightful evening of chamber music to a capacity audience at Dunham Tavern. The program, “Words Misunderstood,” included an oddity by György Ligeti, ear-catching 21st-century works by Caroline Shaw and Gabriella Smith, and some engaging German Romanticism by Max Bruch.
Performed without the “obligatory” intermission, the concert began with György Ligeti’s Poème symphonique (for 100 metronomes). An oddity or an absurdity, depending on your point of view, here the work was presented as Ligeti intended — as a serious piece of music. Ten musicians made their way to their groups of ten mechanical metronomes, each set to a different tempo, all of them sitting on the wooden shelf that ran along three walls of the venue.
by Peter Feher
Camille Saint-Saëns forbade public performances of The Carnival of the Animals during his lifetime, but he might have made an exception for ChamberFest Cleveland this summer.
On June 24 at the Cleveland Institute of Music’s Kulas Hall, ChamberFest conjured some of the informal spirit of Saint-Saëns’ lighthearted work as it would have been heard in 1886 among the composer’s circle of intimates. It was in keeping with ChamberFest’s theme this season — “Lightness of Being” — even when the evening seemed elaborate and embellished and the music-making sounded seriously first-rate. [Read more…]