Photo: Roger Mastroianni
This article was originally published on Cleveland.com
by Kevin McLaughlin
The world premiere of a percussion extravaganza stole the show on Thursday night in Mandel Hall at Severance Music Center, and may have set a record for the most percussion ever assembled on one stage.
Beginning the concert, Franz Welser-Möst’s account of Mozart’s Symphony No. 29 was airy and buoyant, despite larger-than-fashionable forces (42 strings). The outer movements were joyous and rhythmically meticulous, and the Orchestra’s ability to coalesce and balance was uncanny.
The Akron Symphony fully embraced tradition with its opening-night concert this season. In an all-out performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony on September 29 at E.J. Thomas Hall, the Orchestra was recreating a major moment from its history. And at the end of the evening, as the finale of the “Ode to Joy” resounded throughout the hall, the program transformed into a complete celebration.
It’s certainly not something you hear every day: a concert-lecture of Korean traditional music played on the modern violin. Can this kind of thing work? Should it?
The concert by CityMusic Cleveland on Thursday, September 21 in Fairmount Presbyterian Church was a reminder of two things: that there is an abundance of appealing music yet to be heard or played out, and there are exceptional performers in Cleveland ready to play it. The consistently splendid CityMusic (now in its twentieth year) maintained its high standard with a program of infrequently heard works by George Walker, Joseph Bologne, Tōru Takemitsu, and W.A. Mozart, aided by guest solo violinists Kyung Sun Lee and Jung-Min Amy Lee 
Valerie Coleman joined the flute and composition faculty at New York’s Mannes School of Music in 2021, but her work has found a second home at Oberlin Conservatory since then. 
