by Peter Feher
The Cleveland Orchestra told a familiar story, but with some unfamiliar faces, on July 9 at Blossom Music Center. The narrative sweep of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade was the highlight of an all-Romantic program that let several excellent young musicians take center stage.
From the podium, Elim Chan set an ambitious tone for the evening. The rising star conductor, here in her Cleveland Orchestra debut, has a commanding style, and every twist and turn in Saturday’s performance tracked closely with her baton. [Read more…]
ENCORE Chamber Music held a musical tasting on Sunday afternoon, July 3rd at the Dodero Center for the Performing Arts. “Tales of Travel and Transformation” featured members of the Verona Quartet, artistic director Jinjoo Cho, and other faculty of the summer institute.
Si j’etais vous, I would not trust anyone who tries to solve your problems for you. You have to do it yourself, face up to the bleak black wall looming above and keep standing straight. You succumb if you don’t, and that spells long, regressive rest. Atrophying strength. Decomposition.
Gilbert & Sullivan might be the Ohio Light Opera signature, but the company in residence at the College of Wooster each summer has made other traditions out of its love for lyric theater. One curious case is the 1924 operetta The Student Prince, which OLO reprises for a seventh time in a production running through July 29 at Freedlander Theatre.
Before Austrian composer Franz Lehár hit the Viennese operetta bull’s eye with The Merry Widow, he composed a less well-known show, The Mock Marriage (Die Juxheirat), whose complicated plot, set in America in 1904, gives a nod to such contemporary societal issues as gender identity and the empowerment of women.
The Fantasticks 
If you missed the tail end of ChamberFest Cleveland’s season, don’t be too worried. The highlights from each summer of brilliant, collaborative performances have a way of sticking around — online on the Festival’s YouTube channel and, more recently, on the radio with WCLV. Certainly this year’s finale, on July 2 at the Maltz Performing Arts Center, was full of such memorable musical moments.
Tri-C JazzFest went out with a bang this year. The stages at Playhouse Square got bigger and busier with each act on the schedule for Saturday, June 25. Steady momentum was the theme all around, not least for the Festival itself, which this summer returned to full size, following a detour online in 2020 and the move to a smaller venue, Cain Park, in 2021.
If their first tale of July 2022 was any indication, ENCORE Chamber Music Institute’s “Storytelling” Music & Ideas Festival is true to its name. On July 1, ENCORE premiered and livestreamed “Tales of Wünderkinds: The Hunt & Chase” — a formidable continuation of this year’s primarily narrative-driven Music & Ideas Festival. Interestingly, Jorg Widmann’s Hunt would be the only piece from the evening’s program to share a word with this title. I watched the livestream.
The closing line in the description of Yolanda Kondonassis’ latest CD FIVE MINUTES for Earth is “What is at stake…is only everything we have.” With a line like that, one can reflect on the consequences of their actions, which are often irreversible when applied to such imperative matters like climate change and Earth conservation. A labor-of-love project that commissioned fifteen composers to write for solo harp, this album — released by Azica Records on April 1 — cherishes, urges to protect, and aims to preserve the planet.