by Daniel Hathaway
“Man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upward,” a line from The Book of Job, inspired the title of a full-length opera that received its Cleveland premiere last weekend at the Maltz Performing Arts Center. I saw the last of four performances on Sunday afternoon, June 12.
With libretto and music by Cathy Lesser Mansfield, the opera, which really more resembles a staged oratorio, filled the stage of Silver Hall with the 40-member cast and chorus.
The Sparks Fly Upward traces the saga of three families, two Jewish (the Rosenbaums and the Steins), one Christian (the Webers), beginning in the fall of 1938, when the Nazis start deporting Jews to Poland and the atrocities of Kristallnacht signal troubles to come. [Read more…]
Over the past few years Petra Poláčková has enthralled audiences at the Cleveland International Classical Guitar Festival, and on Sunday afternoon, June 5, at the Cleveland Institute of Music’s Kulas Hall, the young Czech musician demonstrated why she has become a Festival favorite.
The post-COVID era may be on the horizon, but it hasn’t arrived yet. That dastardly microbe that has wrought havoc in the performing arts world for more than two years is still on the prowl.
Anyone who has been paying attention to the world of contemporary chamber music during the past twenty years will recognize the names of flutist Molly Barth and guitarist Dieter Hennings — together known as Duo Damiana. 
If you were sitting in Mixon Hall last Wednesday, you might have thought you were in the midst of a recording session rather than a recital. And with good reason: the Catalyst Quartet was in top form playing a program that previewed several works on the group’s upcoming album.
The guitar is an instrument that can travel anywhere and play just about anything. Listeners got the chance to take in some of that variety at the Cleveland International Classical Guitar Festival, which returned in person to the Cleveland Institute of Music last weekend. Original arrangements and inventive pairings — pieces with harp, cello, and more — added to the schedule, but a sense of what makes a performance “classical” emerged as well.
On Thursday June 2 in Kulas Hall at the Cleveland Institute of Music, Drew Henderson (Canada) opened the Cleveland International Classical Guitar Festival with a program of Baroque and Romantic music.
A particularly gratifying take-away from the May 22 Canton Symphony Orchestra MasterWorks program at Umstattd Hall was that one need not be in an actual rocket ship to experience the beauties and mysteries of the cosmos.
The Cleveland Orchestra worked overtime last weekend, making every note count. The season at Severance Music Center came to a close with final performances of Verdi’s Otello, plus two additional programs that showed just how much repertoire the players can master. These special, one-off concerts, presented under the banner “Breaking Convention,” fit the experimental model the ensemble has established in recent years, trying out tricky music in unconventional formats around the schedule of an opera.