by Daniel Hathaway
Rebounding with vigor on January 5 from its loaded holiday schedule while other ensembles were still in recovery mode, The Cleveland Orchestra gave a thoroughly enjoyable concert of completely unrelated works, including a new concerto by James Oliverio featuring principal timpani Paul Yancich, and not-so-often performed symphonies by Joseph Haydn and Carl Nielsen.
Presiding over this interesting stew like an adventurous chef, guest conductor Alan Gilbert threw in a surprising ingredient or two that the smallish audience of 800 lapped up as if hungry for something both piquant and nourishing after a diet of Noëls.
The Mandel Hall stage was full of drums — the normal number at the back of the orchestra, plus seven more set in a tight circle where the first violins usually hold forth — for the opening work, Oliverio’s Legacy Ascendant, Concerto for Timpani and Strings, commissioned by The Cleveland Orchestra. [Read more…]
“Colors,” the theme for CityMusic Cleveland’s current season, seemed a particularly apt descriptor for their concert on December 9. While Lakewood Congregational Church was decorated in holiday greenery, the musicians inside forewent traditional black attire for shades of festive red. But those two colors weren’t the only ones in play. Led by principal guest conductor Stefan Willich, the Chamber Orchestra provided all kinds of vivid imagery in the second program of their 19th season.
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.”
“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 .