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Benjamin Britten’s Albert Herring at Oberlin: taking a comic opera seriously (Nov. 2)

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by Daniel Hathaway

In a video interview for Minneapolis Opera, Dame Jane Glover recalled the sage advice her director gave to the cast of Benjamin Britten’s Albert Herring when she conducted his only comic opera at Glyndebourne.

Never try to be funny. You have to be real. These people are saying these things because they mean it. It is quite easy to get carried away into something that is caricature and therefore shallow as opposed to real and profound.

Oberlin Opera Theater director Stephanie Havey and her excellent student ensemble obviously concurred on Thursday evening, November 2, staging a production in Hall Auditorium that was delightful and authentic in every respect. The denizens of the fictional village of Loxford all seemed to be playing themselves rather than just animating cardboard figures ordered up from central casting. [Read more…]

Akron Symphony celebrates the organ with Robert Mollard (Oct. 21)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

The sound of an organ in orchestral settings is always an aural thrill. A cornucopia of colors and sonorities on its own, the organ, when mixed with strings, winds, brass, and percussion, more than doubles the pleasure and the fun.

In his welcoming remarks, music director Christopher Wilkins drew attention to the evening’s sonic star and focus — a digital impersonator of sounds, painstakingly prepared by Robert Mollard to sound just like a pipe organ. Putting out fullness and variety, if not always the seismic events associated with cathedral organs, Mollard nevertheless created excitement and beauty in his appearance with the Akron Symphony at E.J. Thomas Hall on Saturday, October 21.

Since the first official work on the program, Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson’s Worship: A Concert Overture, takes as its basis the hymn tune Old 100th (“Praise God from Whom All Blessings Flow”), two bonuses were in store to orient us. Principal flute Barbara O’Brien played the unadorned tune in gorgeous, silvery tones, and Mollard let loose with Robert Hebble’s Toccata on Old Hundredth, a festival of organ prowess.

[Read more…]

Cleveland Orchestra Chorus:
Whitacre’s The Sacred Veil (Oct. 20) 

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by Kevin McLaughlin

The Sacred Veil, as one might expect from an hour-long work about death and grief, is not an easy listen. Eric Whitacre’s music, evocative and emotional, makes potent company with Charles Anthony Silvestri’s words, a chain of poems on the loss of his wife Julia Lawrence Silvestri (Julie), who died of ovarian cancer in 2005 at the age of 36. The inclusion of Julie’s own poetry, along with Whitacre’s, increases the impact.

On Friday, October 20 during a performance by The Cleveland Orchestra Chorus, the Severance Music Center audience, perhaps expecting lighter fare, listened closely, though gloomily. Told through particularities — one couple’s experience of early love and childbirth, the young woman’s diagnosis, prognosis, and ultimately her death — Sacred Veil’s power lies in its wider applicability. The words, projected in supertitles above the stage, penetrated the heart; the music sealed the deal.

[Read more…]

Cleveland Chamber Music Society: Belcea Quartet at Disciples (Oct. 17)

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by Daniel Hathaway

Patrons of the Cleveland Chamber Music Society attending the season opener with the Belcea Quartet at Disciples Church on October 17 found Schubert’s E-flat Quartet stickered over with Beethoven’s Op. l8, No. 4 in their printed programs.

The reason? The Belcea were welcoming Suyeon Kang as their new second violinist this season, and wanted to take the Beethoven out for a final spin before playing it in New York’s Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall two days later.

Last Tuesday’s performance also introduced Disciples as the default venue for CCMS’s 74th season, and the space gets high marks for its accessibility and clear, transparent acoustic — as well as for its comfortable seating (no pews).

That acoustic supported the Belcea’s outstanding playing. [Read more…]

Oberlin Artist Recital Series: Seraph Brass at Finney (Oct. 13)

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by Daniel Hathaway

In Medieval angelology, “Seraph” refers to the highest order of the nine ranks of angels, often depicted playing trumpets, whose members are associated with light, ardor, and purity.

In brassology, “Seraph” denominates an all-female brass organization, now in its 10th year, whose playing embraces all those astral virtues, plus impressive stamina, breathtaking virtuosity, and an engaging sense of showmanship.

Although angels are traditionally genderless, Seraph Brass was established “with a mission to showcase the excellence of female brass players and highlight musicians from marginalized groups, both in personnel and in programming.”

Performing in their usual configuration as a quintet, Seraph founder and trumpeter Mary Elizabeth Bowden, trumpeter Raquel Samayoa, hornist Rachel Velvikis, trombonist Elisabeth Shafer, and tubist Robyn Black recently visited Oberlin to give master classes, hold a lunch conversation, and play an evening performance on Friday, October 13. [Read more…]

Renée Fleming & Friends at Severance (Oct. 15) 

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  by Peter Feher

“Farewell” was the final word that the audience heard at Severance Music Center on Sunday, October 15. The evening couldn’t have ended in a more fitting fashion, considering the talent that made this performance in Mandel Concert Hall one for the history books.

In 2017, soprano Renée Fleming disputed The New York Times’ intimation that she was retiring from the operatic stage, but the no-nonsense diva has closed a certain chapter in her singing career in order to embark on another. Since turning 60, Fleming has focused almost exclusively on projects to which she has a personal connection, evangelizing on behalf of the composer-friends who have written pieces for her.

Penelope, by the late musical polymath André Previn, is one such work and something of an all-star chamber production. [Read more…]

Detroit Opera: playing with perspective in Madame Butterfly (Oct. 15) 

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by Kevin McLaughlin

The Madame Butterfly performed at Detroit Opera last Sunday, October 15, reminded us of this opera’s stubborn beauty. Puccini’s ravishing score, coupled with radiant singing, sparkling sets, and inspired lighting and costumes, overtook potential criticism of its perspectival flaws.

Don’t get me wrong — there is much bigotry and male and racial chauvinism to call out in David Belasco’s play and Giuseppe Giacosa’s and Luigi Illica’s libretto, as well as a lack of agency of the lead. And Detroit’s Japanese and Japanese American artistic team of Matthew Ozawa (artistic director), Kimie Nishikawa (scenic design), Maiko Matsushima (costumes), and Yuki Nakase Link (lighting) did so, but without changing much.

Their version (a co-production with Cincinnati Opera, Pittsburgh Opera, and Utah Opera) leans into the white male fantasy aspect of the story, rather than mitigate or excuse it. [Read more…]

CityMusic Cleveland celebrates Black Excellence (Oct. 19) 

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by Kevin McLaughlin

“Celebrating Black Excellence” was CityMusic’s organizing theme for the latest of their 2023-24 season presentations, held at the sound-absorbent East Zion Baptist Church on Thursday, October 19.

You can quibble about how “Black” the program was, with a lineup that included Artie Shaw’s Clarinet Concerto, selections from George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess, and Manuel de Falla’s Ritual Fire Dance.

But as for “Black excellence,” there was an abundance. Works by Jessie Montgomery, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, and William Grant Still each sparkled in smart, moving, and inspiring ways. And the three vocal soloists, all current students at Oberlin Conservatory, shone.

[Read more…]

Apollo’s Fire: Splendour in London at Church of the Gesu (Oct. 15)

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by Daniel Hathaway

After the dreary and destructive 17th-century Puritans had committed regicide, pillaged churches, padlocked theaters, and nearly succeeded in quashing all culture in England, Britain was thirsty for some public grandeur once the monarchy had been restored in the 1660s. At Westminster Abbey, the Chapel Royal, and in London’s newly reopened theaters, Henry Purcell was ready to supply it.

On Sunday, October 15 at Gesu Church in University Heights, Jeannette Sorrell led Apollo’s Fire and Singers in “Splendour in London,” a smorgasbord of Royal music by Purcell and his equally celebrated 18th century successor, George Frideric Handel. [Read more…]

An evening with Bombino at the Cleveland Museum of Art (Oct. 11)

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by Max Newman

Really good concerts will allow you to enjoy the music on show; the best ones will allow you to live inside of it. Tuareg musician Bombino’s performance at the Cleveland Museum of Art’s Gartner Auditorium on Wednesday, October 11 was certainly an example of the latter. The concert was magical from start to finish.

For someone known as the “Sultan of Shred,” Bombino started off with rather subtle, serene instrumentation: Bombino himself on acoustic guitar, Kawissan Mohamed Alhassan on a more quiet, textural electric guitar, Corey Wilhelm on a large hand drum, and, most interestingly, Djakrave Dia on a seemingly hollow wooden dome, loudly mic’d, that made a water drop-esque noise when softly hit.

[Read more…]

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