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Re•Views

Cleveland Orchestra at Severance with Yo-Yo Ma delights (Nov. 6)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

This article was originally published on Cleveland.com

CLEVELAND, Ohio — Yo-Yo Ma was the picture of cello perfection on Thursday evening, Nov. 6 at Severance Music Center, performing with The Cleveland Orchestra as if for the thousandth time — or the first.

Relaxed, head tilted in his familiar way, he seemed tuned to some private channel of truth and beauty. When not playing, he listened with delight, urging on the musicians around him.

Ma offered Dvořák’s Cello Concerto at the end of “An Evening with Yo-Yo-Ma,” beautifully wrapped like an early holiday gift. He strode onstage with purpose, revealing a heart as large as the hall, making his entrance not as a soloist demanding attention, but as a voice rising from within. He answered the horn heroics with warmth, then crooned the second theme like a benediction.

[Read more…]

VOCES8’s Oberlin debut: a delightful 20th anniversary program (Oct. 28)

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by Stephanie Manning

VOCES8’s 20th anniversary called for plenty of celebration and plenty of humor.

When the British a cappella group visited the Oberlin Artist Recital Series on October 28, they brought a program of audience favorites that delighted the sold-out crowd in Finney Chapel. Known for their ethereal voices and crystal clear harmonies, the octet demonstrated all that and more as they bridged the sacred and secular in “Songs From 20 Years.”

This two-decade milestone gave good reason to celebrate not only the singers, but also their longtime arranger-in-residence, Jim Clements. Responsible for some of the group’s most requested pieces, Clements is like “the secret burger sauce in the Big Mac,” joked tenor Blake Morgan.

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Guitarist Leonela Alejandro makes engaging Cleveland debut at CCGS (Oct. 25)

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by Stephanie Manning

When an artist is on tour for months at a time, it can be hard not to feel homesick. Leonela Alejandro knows that experience well. Her current cross-country tour — celebrating her win at the 2024 Guitar Foundation of America International Concert Artist Competition — began in September and continues through next May.

That’s a lot of time away from Puerto Rico, where the 25-year-old guitarist grew up and began her musical education. So, as she explained to the audience at the Maltz Performing Arts Center on October 25, her Cleveland program brought a little bit of her home country with her. Presented by the Cleveland Classical Guitar Society, Alejandro’s local debut brought out her most engaging abilities as a performer, making the case that she is a young artist to watch. [Read more…]

No Exit opens season with “American Descent” at Praxis Fiber Workshop (Oct. 25)

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by Mike Telin

There was not an open seat to be had at Praxis Fiber Workshop on Saturday, October 25 when the adventurous new music ensemble No Exit began their 17th season with a program of four thoroughly engaging works.

As a prelude to the program, James Rhodes presented two movements from Garth Knox’s Viola Spaces, a collection of eight etudes each of which focus on an extended technique.  

No. 2, “Ghosts,” examines the technique of sul tasto — on the fingerboard. Beginning with a pitchless bowing on the strings, Rhodes brilliantly produced spooky, breathy, brushing sounds.  In No. 6, “Harmonic Horizons,” Rhodes took listeners on a tour of the instrument’s harmonic series. Here he produced an interesting mix of straight-tones, double-stops, trills, and slides in every register of the viola.

[Read more…]

Cleveland Women’s Orchestra marks 90th Birthday at CMA (Oct. 26)

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by Daniel Hathaway

The Cleveland Women’s Orchestra, “the lone survivor of the numerous women’s orchestras that existed in the early 20th century,” as described in the program, celebrated its 90th birthday with a concert in Gartner Auditorium at the Cleveland Museum of Art on Sunday afternoon, October 26.

The original purpose of those ensembles was to provide performance opportunities for talented female musicians barred by gender from the ranks of symphony orchestras. As that world has all but disappeared, the Cleveland Women’s Orchestra has played on. [Read more…]

Cleveland Orchestra with pianist Garrick Ohlsson at Severance (Oct. 30)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

This article was originally published on Cleveland.com

CLEVELAND, Ohio — Frequent guest pianist Garrick Ohlsson returned to Severance Music Center on Thursday, Oct. 30, 50 years after his first appearance with The Cleveland Orchestra.

The concert, conducted by Franz Welser-Möst, reminded us why we cherish these performances year after year: consistent excellence, both familiar and new music, and the company of an artist whose quiet dignity and calm brilliance have become a reliable part of the city’s musical life.

The program opened with “Permissions,” a ten-minute churn by Tyler Taylor, the Orchestra’s new Daniel R. Lewis Composer Fellow. The Louisville, Kentucky-born composer and horn player brings a performer’s instinct for timbre and ensemble dynamics to his writing.

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Belcea Quartet at Cleveland Chamber Music Society (Oct. 21)

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by Daniel Hathaway

The complete Shostakovich cycle of quartets that the Jerusalem Quartet served up last May in five well-attended performances at the Cleveland Museum of Art to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the Cleveland Chamber Music Society was a hard act to follow.

CCMS allowed its patrons some variety by opening its 76th season with a September concert for violin and piano, followed by a bracing program on October 21 from the Belcea Quartet that balanced extreme textures and dissonance with an abundance of sweetness and nuance, while also producing a rich blend and a vast array of articulations. [Read more…]

Les Délices: “Bohemian Rhapsody” at West Shore UU Church (Oct. 19)

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by Daniel Hathaway

Although Les Délices’ most recent subscription program actually featured music by composers from what is now the western part of the Czech Republic, it borrowed its marketing title from an American rock anthem and culminated in a major work by a celebrated Austrian.

Never mind a slight bit of confusion. “Bohemian Rhapsody,” which I heard on Sunday, October 19 in the agreeable space of West Shore Unitarian Universalist Church in Rocky River, provided the welcome opportunity to focus in on the classical oboe artistry of director Debra Nagy, and to make at least a nodding acquaintance with historical composers Franz Krommer, Georg Druschetzky, and Katerina Veronika Dusikova-Cianchettini (whose name should be appear on classical radio hosts’ audition scripts), as well as the more recent Nathan Mondry. [Read more…]

Cleveland Chamber Choir shines with music to mark the hours and seasons (Oct. 25)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

Often called The Vespers, Sergei Rachmaninoff’s All-Night Vigil reaches for something beyond an evening service. Its fifteen movements, rooted in Russian Orthodox chant, rise and surround like incense — not to display magnificence, but to deepen the mystery. Rachmaninoff was so fond of the work that he requested the fifth movement, the Nunc dimittis, be sung at his funeral.

On Friday evening, October 25, the Cleveland Chamber Choir, directed by Gregory Ristow, presented this monumental work in Trinity Cathedral — a resonant space of tradition and calm, where the beauty of the setting matched the beauty of the sound.

[Read more…]

Tuesday Musical opens season with epic works from pianist Marc-André Hamelin (Oct. 21)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

On Tuesday evening, October 21, pianist Marc-André Hamelin opened Tuesday Musical’s 2025–26 season in Akron’s E.J. Thomas Hall with a program of unusual range and scale. He mapped the human mind and heart across an often-epic landscape — Beethoven’s granite Hammerklavier, Robert Schumann’s not merely scenic Waldszenen, and Ravel’s hallucinatory Gaspard de la nuit.

Composed between 1817 and 1818, the Hammerklavier marks Beethoven’s turn toward the monumental and visionary. Deaf by this time, he wrote for some idealized instrument and listener — music indifferent to ordinary technical or emotional limits. Deemed nearly unplayable at its premiere, it later found champions, Liszt foremost among them, who revealed its vast scope.

[Read more…]

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