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Puccini’s Gold Rush Opera centers American Dream Festival (May 13)

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by Daniel Hathaway

During his visit to New York in 1907 to supervise the Metropolitan Opera’s first productions of Madama Butterfly and Manon Lescaut, Giacomo Puccini got the idea of writing an opera to be set during the 1849 California Gold Rush after seeing David Belasco’s 1905 play, The Girl of the Golden West. The opera received its world premiere by the MET in 1910.

This week, three concert performances of La Fanciulla del West serve as the centerpiece of The Cleveland Orchestra’s Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Opera & Humanities Festival this month at Severance Music Center and around town, a richly-programmed look into the concept of what James Truslow Adams dubbed “The American Dream” in his 1931 Great Depression Era book, The Epic of America.

For the Cleveland production, which opened on May 13, the Orchestra is front and center. The principal singers perform from a raised platform connected to the organ chamber whose front pipes have been removed for entrances and exits. Secondary characters sing from another platform on stage right, and the male chorus is located on the other side. [Read more…]

No Exit: season highlights at Heights Arts (May 13)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

No Exit gave another of their enticing concerts on Saturday in one of Cleveland’s friendliest of venues, the Heights Arts Gallery on Lee Road. Highlighting selections from the ensemble’s 2022-2023 season, the May 13 program featured music for solo clarinet, string duo, and percussion, all written during the last two decades or so.

If there was anything to complain about, it was the loud air fan in the gallery ceiling that just…never…stopped. The lasting impression of this No Exit concert, however, was of interesting new works played by musicians who really knew what they were doing.

[Read more…]

Alisa Weilerstein reinvents both the old and new with FRAGMENTS (May 11)

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by Stephanie Manning

It’s not uncommon for performers to experiment with a Bach Cello Suite, typically alternating movements with ones from other pieces. But to save the Prelude for last? That’s a little more unusual — yet that wasn’t the only time Alisa Weilerstein chose to do things in reverse.

The cellist’s concert at Severance Music Center on May 11, FRAGMENTS 1, defied many traditions of a solo recital. Audience members gathered knowing the project’s basic conceit — that the evening would feature movements from J.S. Bach’s Cello Suite No. 1 interspersed with works by 5 of the 27 composers Weilerstein commissioned for this multi-year project. But the specifics of which music would be heard, and when, remained a secret until the programs were distributed at the concert’s conclusion.

[Read more…]

Akron Symphony: sincerity and solace in Brahms’ German Requiem (May 13)

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by Stephanie Manning

It’s not unusual to hear Johannes Brahms’ German Requiem with chorus and piano four-hands, rather than chorus and orchestra. Music-loving Clevelanders may even have heard that version recently, as it’s been popping up on local programs. But on Saturday, May 13, the Akron Symphony Orchestra and Chorus teamed up for a performance of the work that would satisfy lovers of both versions alike.

Before the Requiem, however, the Orchestra and music director Christopher Wilkins opened the evening with Valerie Coleman’s Umoja. Best known in its arrangement for woodwind quintet, the piece gained an orchestral version a few years ago — one that uses the diverse timbres of the bigger ensemble to put a new spin on the work. [Read more…]

Many sides of Mozart with Labadie and The Cleveland Orchestra (Apr. 20)

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by Peter Feher

Mozart was the main event at Severance Music Center on April 20, but The Cleveland Orchestra gave only a teaser of what it can do with this great composer.

Chalk it up to the small and generally intimate scale of the performance. Guest conductor Bernard Labadie, a specialist in 18th-century repertoire, led the Orchestra — pared down to period-ensemble numbers — in half a dozen Mozart pieces, many of them excerpts from longer works. You could think of the program as a preview for next season here in Cleveland, which opens with a soundtrack of the composer’s greatest hits (accompanying the film Amadeus live in concert) and closes with a production of The Magic Flute.

On Thursday, everything was building to Mozart’s Symphony No. 41 (“Jupiter”). [Read more…]

Cleveland Women’s Orchestra shines in music by White, Sibelius & Dvořák (Apr. 30) 

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by Kevin McLaughlin

In 1993 Dolores White was commissioned by the Cleveland Women’s Orchestra to write Celebration, Salute to the Arts for the centennial celebration of the Chicago World’s Fair, and the resulting work was premiered by CWO that year at the Cleveland Museum of Art. It is fitting, then, that the Orchestra’s program on Sunday, April 30 featured that work, both as tribute to the longtime Cleveland-based composer — who died on March 23 — and as a wider celebration of the arts and women’s contribution to it. The concert at Severance Music Center also featured Dane Johansen in a silky performance of Dvořák’s Cello Concerto, and the King Christian II Suite of Jean Sibelius.

Conductor Jungho Kim (pictured) began by describing the orchestra’s commission of Celebration, and his meeting with the composer not long before her passing to discuss the upcoming concert. At age 90, White was so occupied by performances and personal appearances that she only had a few minutes to meet with Kim outside her apartment. Unconcerned by passing cars and street noise, as the conductor recalled, White intently pointed out important passages in the score. Kim was moved by her unflagging energy and attention.

[Read more…]

The Jerusalem Quartet: another Chamber Music Society gem (May 2)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

A great string quartet, it is said, plays as one: four players and sixteen strings channeled as a single instrument, even as each player worth his or her own salt retains something distinctive. Time and rehearsals, with luck and hard work, will result in a convincingly melded whole.

The Jerusalem Quartet plays with a remarkably blended, superbly unified voice. On Tuesday evening, May 2 at Disciples Christian Church, unity was in evidence in a splendid program of Prokofiev, Shostakovich, and Bartók — another gem in the Cleveland Chamber Music Society’s series.

Before composing his Second String Quartet in F major in 1941, Prokofiev felt some pressure by local arts officials to incorporate folk melodies — not his usual practice — drawn from the northern Caucasus region, a remote corner to which the composer had recently been relocated. Whether Prokofiev was being subversive or sincere, there is power in his unvarnished, almost raw representation. On Tuesday night the Jerusalem leaned into the rawness.

[Read more…]

Oberlin Artist Recital Series: pianist Bruce Liu at Finney (Apr. 30)

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by Daniel Hathaway

Canadian pianist Xiaoyu Liu was 15 when he won second place in the Thomas and Evon Cooper International Piano Competition in 2012 with his performance of “Rach 2” at Severance Hall with Jahja Ling and The Cleveland Orchestra.

Having in the meantime won the top prize at the 18th Chopin Competition in Warsaw in 2021, Liu returned to Oberlin on April 30 — now as 26-year-old Bruce Liu — to play a solo recital on the Artist Recital Series in Finney Chapel.

There are two distinct topics to address in reporting on a solo performance. First, was the program a good fit for the performer and the occasion? Second, how well did the performer put the music across?

As might be expected, Liu gave his audience plenty of Chopin, choosing contrasting pieces from different categories of the Polish composer’s oeuvre — a rondo, a ballade, a set of variations, a sonata, and three “new” études, ending with Franz Liszt’s improvisatory musings on a notorious opera character already introduced in the variations set.

[Read more…]

Three perspectives on Americanness with The Cleveland Orchestra (Apr. 27)

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by Stephanie Manning

Maybe it was the enduring popularity of Dvořák’s “New World.” Or the excitement of a world premiere. Or the chance to see three contrabass clarinets, three contrabassoons, and three tubas on stage. Whatever the reason, Mandel Concert Hall was packed to the gills on April 27 for an exciting concert by The Cleveland Orchestra.

With one Cleveland Orchestra premiere and one world premiere on the program, Antonín Dvořák’s Symphony No. 9 almost seemed like the odd one out — yet it drew the evening together in some compelling ways. Though “New World” is familiar to many, the orchestra’s sparkling performance often made it feel just as exciting as a first listen. Every brass chorale was suitably grand, and the ensemble capped off the jaunty third movement with a stunningly rich last chord.

Some uncharacteristic cracks did show through in the second, with an ill-articulated opening, and a too-brisk tempo from music director Franz Welser-Möst. The whole symphony received this speedier interpretation, but it was this movement that was most affected, with the usually calm aura left feeling slightly on edge. Still, this was the exception and not the norm. The first movement, for example, was virtually recording-quality, with some impeccable playing all around.

[Read more…]

Cleveland Classical Guitar Society: David Russell (Apr. 22)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

For the grand finale to this season’s International Series, the Cleveland Classical Guitar Society welcomed David Russell in a much-anticipated appearance at Plymouth Church in Shaker Heights. With easygoing charm and astonishing skill, Russell delighted and flabbergasted the capacity crowd on Saturday night, April 22 in a program of familiar and unfamiliar works.

In his opening remarks, Guitar Society executive director Erik Mann announced that this would be the last CCGS concert to take place at Plymouth Church, with the series moving to the Maltz Performing Arts Center next season. The intimacy of Plymouth will be missed, but the recently refurbished Maltz will give the series an upgrade in prestige.

[Read more…]

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