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Oberlin Artist Recital Series presents the Danish String Quartet (Nov. 21)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

There’s an old adage about the Danes: they are an amiable people, quick to embrace hygge and humor, yet they hide a deep streak of seriousness when it matters. The Danish String Quartet has made a career out of embodying that balance. Their concerts feel open-hearted, even playful, but the music-making is etched with an intensity as real as an icy wind — one they would probably shrug off if you asked them about it later.

On Friday evening, November 21, in Oberlin’s Finney Chapel, three Danes (Frederik Øland & Rune Tonsgaard Sørensen, violins and Asbjørn Nørgaard, viola) and a Norwegian (Fredrik Schøyen Sjölin, cello) using, in their words, “four simple instruments made of wood” brought ease and gravity to a program that moved from Stravinsky and Jonny Greenwood to late Beethoven and to the folk traditions of their northern homes.

Their spoken introductions were casual in the best way: well-crafted, low-key, and quietly funny. In introducing the first half, Sørensen introduced Stravinsky’s Three Pieces and Jonny Greenwood’s Suite from There Will Be Blood, followed by the Beethoven, as if that were the most natural sequence in the world.

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Akron Symphony goes for glory in Handel’s Messiah (Nov. 15)

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by Peter Feher

The holiday season got off to an early start at E.J. Thomas Hall over the weekend, with the Akron Symphony and Chorus reveling in a performance of Handel’s Messiah.

In truth, it’s tradition for this great oratorio — which embraces the New Testament theme of Jesus as savior — to arrive ahead of schedule. Handel intended the work to be presented each year during Lent, when theaters were otherwise closed and only entertainment of the most ennobling character was allowed. But in the centuries following its 1742 premiere, Messiah crept up the concert calendar to become a Christmas favorite.

Never mind that the famous “Hallelujah” Chorus comes from Part 2 of the oratorio, which recounts Christ’s death and resurrection. Part 1 includes the Nativity, and it was to this opening section that the Akron Symphony and music director Christopher Wilkins devoted themselves on Saturday, November 15.

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Oberlin Opera Theater: Joseph Bologne’s L’amant anonyme (Nov. 9)

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by Daniel Hathaway

When Joseph Bologne, aka Chevalier Saint-Georges, the dashing, mixed-race fencing champion born around 1839 on the Caribbean island of Guadaloupe hung up his sabre, he took up his violin in its place and entered Parisian high society as a composer and virtuoso soloist.

He also organized the commissioning and conducted the premieres of Haydn’s “Paris” symphonies, and helped establish the format and style of the classical string quartet in his spare time.

In addition to penning violin concertos for himself, Bologne wrote symphonies concertantes and half a dozen comic operas, of which only one survives in nearly complete form. L’amant anonyme received a colorful, sweetly tuneful, if dramatically uneventful production by Oberlin Opera from November 6-9 in Hall Auditorium. I saw the show on Sunday afternoon with the Friday-Sunday cast. [Read more…]

Takács Quartet return to Cleveland Chamber Music Society (Nov. 11)

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by Stephanie Manning

“At 50, The Takács Quartet Remains As Essential as Ever,” The New York Times declared earlier this year in an article celebrating the group’s semicentennial. We Northeast Ohioans can consider ourselves lucky that the ensemble visits the area regularly — typically as guests of the Cleveland Chamber Music Society.

David Allen’s Times profile highlighted the Quartet’s increased interest in contemporary composers, an attribute quickly confirmed when looking at their recent touring programs. This month, for example, they have been premiering Clarice Assad’s Clash all over the country.

Clash was sadly missing from the Takács’s November 11 appearance at Disciples Church in Cleveland Heights, where they presented a more standard combination of Haydn, Dvořák, and Bartók. But no matter the repertoire, the Quartet’s playing maintained that engaging quality of a group unafraid to take risks and fully express themselves.

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Cleveland Orchestra with English horn soloist Robert Walters at Severance (Nov. 13)

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by Daniel Hathaway

This article was originally published on Cleveland.com

CLEVELAND, Ohio – The keyword for Thursday evening November 13 at Severance Music Center was stamina.

Without that essential quality, the performance of two demanding works by English hornist Robert Walters and The Cleveland Orchestra, led by guest conductor Tugan Sokhiev, might have fallen flat.

Instead, the concert entered the record books as a meticulously played sonic spectacular.

Geoffey Gordon’s Mad Song, written in 2020 after a fascinating poem by the 18th-century English mystic William Blake, was commissioned for Dimitri Mestdag, solo English horn of the Antwerp Symphony Orchestra.

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Cleveland Classical Guitar Society: Duo Noire at the Maltz (Nov. 15)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

Duo Noire — Thomas Flippin and Christopher Mallett — returned to the Cleveland Classical Guitar Society stage at the Maltz Center on Saturday evening, November 15, with a program that spoke as much to their values as to their technique. The Duo prizes an inclusive repertoire that gives space to new and underrepresented voices.

While everyone settled in, Flippin announced a surprise guest. Damien Goggans, a rising professional and alumnus of the CCGS Education Program, stepped forward to sing Thomas Flippin’s “Etude #1, Oh Mother Glasco (Lullaby)” from 14 Études on the Music of Black Americans. Goggans then joined the Duo for the same piece in a trio arrangement, also by Flippin.

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Oberlin Jazz Ensemble in Finney Chapel (Nov. 8)

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by Max Newman

In an institution like Oberlin Conservatory, with plentiful opportunities to watch smaller ensembles strut their stuff, it’s always refreshing to witness a virtuosic group of musicians play in a big band style. That’s exactly the experience a packed Finney Chapel crowd had on November 8 when the Oberlin Jazz Ensemble, under the direction of Chris Anderson, produced a stirring concert during parents weekend.

A key tenet of a good big band is chemistry, and the OJE had it in abundance. A brilliant, balanced sound filled Finney Chapel’s cavernous interior. The space can often swallow low-end frequencies, but this was a very fluid, smooth-edged sonic experience.

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The Cleveland Orchestra: Vertigo (Nov. 7)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

At Severance Music Center on Friday, November 7, the lights dimmed, Saul Bass’s spirals began to spin, and The Cleveland Orchestra launched into Bernard Herrmann’s score for Vertigo, the second Alfred Hitchcock film (after Psycho) they’d played live-to-picture that week.

Film purists who regard cinema primarily as a visual art argue that live music, especially when it emanates from something as grand as a symphony orchestra in a space like Mandel Concert Hall, upsets the balance. Dialogue and car horns stay neatly in the soundtrack, while music — and the emotion it carries — grows enormous and takes over the experience.

Then again…

A live orchestra intensifies the emotions of the soundtrack, heightening everything that touches flesh and spirit. We become newly sensitized to the score. In Herrmann’s case, harmonies and Wagnerian endless melodies compel us to listen more deeply and, in the process, transform the experience.

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Apollo’s Fire: Mozart’s Requiem, A Tapestry at Severance Music Center (Nov. 8)

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by Daniel Hathaway

There’s a long history in Western sacred music of extending and enriching liturgical forms and texts by adding new material. That’s how we got mass movements titled Kyrie cunctipotens genitor: medieval monks added words to decorate long chains of untexted notes called melismas. J.S. Bach tucked five extra pieces in between movements of his first version of the Magnificat to more clearly place them in the context of Christmas celebrations in Leipzig.

More recently, in 1962 Benjamin Britten added devastating verse by World I “war poet” Wilfrid Owen to the traditional funeral rite of the western Christian Church in his War Requiem, written for the consecration of the new Coventry Cathedral, built next door to the bombed-out shell of the previous church.

Jeannette Sorrell has now added to that tradition with her Mozart’s Requiem: A Tapestry, which cleverly expands and comments on the composer’s work, left unfinished at his death in 1791, with works by Black composers. I heard the premiere of her Tapestry in an often brilliant performance by Apollo’s Fire at Severance Music Center on November 8. [Read more…]

CIM Opera’s engaging Puccini double bill prompts both laughs and tears (Nov. 7)

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by Stephanie Manning

The three one-act operas that make up Giacomo Puccini’s Il trittico (The Triptych) are typically connected by theme, rather than location. Although the trio of works take place in 13th-century Paris, 17th-century Siena, and 20th-century Florence respectively, they all deal with keeping someone’s death a secret — whether tragically or comedically.

CIM Opera Theater’s recent production of two-thirds of the triptych brought the action into one particular place and time, as director Dean Southern moved both Suor Angelica and Gianni Schicchi into 1918’s New York City. What stood out more, however, were the impressive performances from across the large cast, which I heard on November 7 in Kulas Hall.

[Read more…]

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