by Peter Feher
Mozart got top billing on pianist Víkingur Ólafsson’s November 30 recital in Reinberger Chamber Hall, but another composer should have had the honor. Haydn’s musical sensibility was the key to understanding the bold claims and idiosyncratic style of the evening’s program, “Mozart and Contemporaries.”
Happily, both composers — along with several lesser-known figures of the Classical era — featured in Ólafsson’s performance, the first in a series of high-profile piano recitals that The Cleveland Orchestra will present at Severance Music Center this season. It was an up-close look at one of classical music’s more thought-provoking soloists in recent years — and at one of his signature projects.
“When we see an idea expressed in the language of art, our sensory reactions often open the heart and mind to interaction in ways that mere facts may not,” writes the celebrated harpist Yolanda Kondonassis, who is the founder and director of the
Oberlin Opera Theater’s fall double bill of Jacques Offenbach’s farce Le mariage aux lanternes and Rossini’s operetta L’occasione fa il ladro gave director Jonathon Field and two fine student casts a crack at producing both a puff piece and a classical bel canto title on the same program. They proved fully capable of meeting all challenges, bringing professional-level acting and singing to the Hall Auditorium stage. I saw the performance on November 12.
The Cleveland Orchestra started settling into their holiday routine over the weekend. Blockbuster pieces are always on the schedule at Severance Music Center after Thanksgiving, and the crowd-pleasing program on Friday, November 25 was no exception.
Change has been in the air at the Cleveland Institute of Music this year. After officially celebrating its centennial (delayed by the pandemic) in September, the CIM Orchestra returned to Severance Music Center on November 22 as part of their recent partnership with The Cleveland Orchestra. Under the direction of Carlos Kalmar — another recent addition to the school — the students gave great energy to their final concert of 2022.
Whether you know her as Cendrillon, Aschenbrödel, La Cenerentola, La Cenicienta, Soluschka, or, most likely, Cinderella, the story of that downtrodden stepchild is an irresistible fairy tale. It’s been turned into many operas, but perhaps most magically by Jules Massenet in his Cendrillon, beautifully produced by CIM Opera Theater in Kulas Hall on November 13.
We’ve all heard the hype — “Trust me, you’ve never heard anything like this before.” At long last that cliché proved to be correct on November 4 when the Buffalo-based Genkin Philharmonic presented a jaw-dropping, undefinable show for a capacity audience at the Bop Stop .
Whatever piece ACRONYM is playing, there’s a good chance you haven’t heard it before. While the ensemble focuses on Baroque music, it’s not from composers the casual listener might know — instead, the group hones in on less-familiar tunes from the 17th century. Some of these pieces haven’t been heard in the 400 years since they were composed, but ACRONYM makes them sound refreshingly contemporary, bringing them to life in stunning splendor.
On a recent chilly Sunday in Cleveland Heights, waves of sleet skittered down from the heavens, ricocheting off anything that stood in their way. But the real storm was brewing inside St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, where Apollo’s Fire and director Jeannette Sorrell took the stage for their latest program. “Storms and Tempests” entertained a packed house on November 13, as the Baroque orchestra played up the drama of both nature and love.