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The Cleveland Orchestra:
Bychkov, Labèques, and a premiere (Dec. 7)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

Maybe it was the time of year, the familial ties of the visiting conductor and pianists, the anticipation of a new work, or maybe all of it, but somehow a rosy glow enveloped the Cleveland Orchestra concert on Thursday, December 7.

Semyon Bychkov’s appearance on the podium, the U.S. premiere of Julian Anderson’s Symphony No. 2, the return to Cleveland by the Labèque sisters — even Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet Overture-Fantasy (normally a two-hankie affair) — all warmed the heart on this winter’s night.

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Cyrus Chestnut offers a night of holiday comfort food for the soul. (Dec. 8)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

Originally published on Cleveland.com

Cyrus Chestnut is good company for the holidays. On Friday, December 8 he seemed genuinely delighted, even a little surprised, to have so many people in attendance in Mandel Hall at Severance Music Center to hear him play.

“Wow,” he said, walking onstage with his trio, “So many people!” And, though he didn’t actually say it, he probably thought, “Well, as long as you’re here, do you know the Charlie Brown Christmas soundtrack? It goes like this…”

Chestnut is an endearing presence onstage. His shyness and slightly awkward patter are kept out of the squeamish zone by the grand virtuosity of his piano playing. The minute after telling the story about his fame in high school for his ability to play the Charlie Brown song (Linus and Lucy) and then forgetting the next song on his setlist, he promptly whirled around to summon magnificence from the keyboard.

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Oberlin Artist Recital Series: Dynamic Buffet from Pianist Jeremy Denk (Nov. 30)

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by Daniel Hathaway

Oberlin alumnus Jeremy Denk returned to Finney Chapel on Thursday, November 30 to play an intriguing program on the Artist Recital Series. Inspired in part by Judy Chicago’s 1979 permanent installation at the Brooklyn Museum that sets 39 personalized place settings for famous women at an enormous table, for the first half of his program, the pianist chose pieces by nine women to create a dynamic musical menu.

The second half featured a pair of 19th-century works by Robert Schumann and Johannes Brahms, composers with close personal connections to Clara Schumann, whose Romanze, Op. 21, No. 1 launched the whole evening. [Read more…]

Marc-André Hamelin at Severance (Nov. 19)

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by Peter Feher

If Marc-André Hamelin had never studied music, he might have become a great novelist instead. At least, that was the impression that the expert Canadian pianist gave during an engrossing solo performance in Reinberger Chamber Hall on November 19.

Hamelin’s program, perhaps the most ambitious entry in The Cleveland Orchestra’s recital series at Severance Music Center this season, offered a master class in sensitive storytelling.

And the narrative brilliance had everything to do with the alchemical mix of performer and repertoire. On Sunday, Hamelin tackled three multi-movement works whose composers shared a couple of important inclinations. They all were good, but not great pianists themselves, and they all wrote programmatic music, or pieces that tell a story. [Read more…]

Oberlin Small Jazz Ensembles at The Cat (Nov. 19)

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by Max Newman

Oberlin Conservatory’s jazz department has a storied and star-studded history, with alumni such as pianist Sullivan Fortner, trumpeter Theo Croker, and violinist Jenny Scheinman, as well as a faculty that includes saxophonist Gary Bartz, an NEA Jazz Master and two-time Grammy winner. There is clearly a pipeline of talent here that has not ended, as heard at the Oberlin Small Jazz Ensembles concert on November 19. 

This was clearly a display of possible future stars. However, what was really striking was how each ensemble worked as a group to create distinct atmospheres and feelings. There was the emotionally intimate Gabi Allemana Ensemble, whose gorgeous arrangements filled the room with bliss, sadness, longing, contemplativeness, and everything in between. There was the playful, organ-centric Ori Josell Ensemble, who, even in the absence of their saxophone player, managed to get the audience on the edge of their seats with a series of arrangements impossible not to bob your head to. There was also the ragtime- and New Orleans jazz-inspired Colin Leonard Ensemble, whose energetic performances closing out the night felt celebratory.

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Cleveland Orchestra’s pairing of  Mahler’s Fourth Symphony with Betsy Jolas is a perfect match (Nov. 30)

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by Kevin McLaughlin
This article was originally published on Cleveland.com
Photo by Roger Mastroianni

CLEVELAND, Ohio — The Cleveland Orchestra’s pairing of Mahler’s Fourth Symphony with the U.S. premiere of Betsy Jolas’ “Ces belles années…” at Severance Music Center on Thursday night had you scratching your head at first. But the minute soprano Lauren Snouffer began to sing Jolas’ words, it started to make sense.

Snouffer walked onto the stage cautiously — as if unsure she should be there at all — at about the three-quarter mark to deliver a series of musically angular but disarming lines about celebrating the joy of one’s experiences.

A Cleveland Orchestra co-commission, “Ces belles années…” also contains hidden allusions to the classic “Happy Birthday” tune as a nod to Jolas’s beloved Aix-en-Provence Festival, which celebrated its 75th anniversary in 2022. [Read more…]

Apollo’s Fire at Lakewood Methodist — “Fire & Joy: from Bach & Vivaldi” (Nov. 17)

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by Daniel Hathaway

Baroque music reaches some of its loftiest heights in concertos, and those by Antonio Vivaldi (who left us some 500) and Johann Sebastian Bach (who seeded his cantatas with concerto-like movements, wrote a collection of six famous concertos, and rearranged — or lost — goodness knows how many others) are among the most popular with ensembles like Apollo’s Fire.

On Friday, November 17, the ensemble brought its program “Fire & Joy: from Bach & Vivaldi” to Lakewood Methodist Church as a stop on its local tour that included performances in Akron, Cleveland Heights, and University Circle. Artistic Director Jeannette Sorrell chose concertos by Vivaldi and Bach, pairing them with brief Bach cantata sinfonias.

The concert began with Vivaldi’s D-minor Double Violin Concerto — which Bach arranged for organ during his time at Weimar, when Italian orchestra concertos were all the rage. [Read more…]

Cleveland Orchestra offers up Tchaikovsky, Dvořák as it continues holiday concert tradition

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by Daniel Hathaway
Originally published on Cleveland.com. Photo by Roger Mastroianni from an earlier Cleveland Orchestra concert

While other organizations are taking time off, The Cleveland Orchestra has continued its admirable tradition of playing concerts on the Friday and Saturday evenings and Sunday afternoon of Thanksgiving weekend at Severance Music Center.

Those Fridays in particular have seen some memorable performances, and the concert on November 24 was no exception. Played to a capacity, multi-generational crowd enlivened by an enthusiastic influx of families and young listeners, led by the insightful Finnish conductor Pietari Inkinen making his debut with the orchestra, and featuring a defining performance of a beloved concerto by one of the most thrilling violin soloists on the international circuit, the experience was simply overwhelming.

From the ovation they gave when Augustin Hadelich merely appeared onstage, Friday’s audience suggested that he was a major factor that drew them to Severance Music Center. [Read more…]

BlueWater Chamber Orchestra: Jinjoo Cho soars in Barber Concerto (Nov. 17)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

In a pre-holiday offering, Bluewater Chamber Orchestra’s audience received gifts simple and somber, with intermittent thrills, on Friday evening, November 17. In an all-American program, the pleasures were many: Cindy McTee’s moving Adagio for strings, Barber’s firework of a Violin Concerto, and Copland’s wise portrait of rural America, Appalachian Spring.

[Read more…]

Arts @ Holy Trinity, Akron: Organist Peter Sykes (Nov. 19)

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by Daniel Hathaway

The last time that Boston-based organist Peter Sykes played at Akron’s Holy Trinity Lutheran Church, his program featured his own arrangement of Gustav Holst’s The Planets.

On Sunday afternoon, November 19, Sykes returned to help celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Arts @ Holy Trinity concert series with an engaging program of miniatures by William Byrd, Max Reger, and Louis Vierne, introduced and concluded by big works by Dietrich Buxtehude and Johann Sebastian Bach.

With a nod to his hosts and a twinkle in his eye, Sykes quipped in his opening remarks that his concert would begin and end with pieces by Lutherans. [Read more…]

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