by Daniel Hathaway
The annual quartet of free concerts presented on the Tri-C Classical Piano Series usually happens at the Cleveland Museum of Art, taking profit of the crowds that show up early on Sunday afternoons to entice museumgoers to make a detour into Gartner Auditorium during their visit.
Although the Museum had just opened again earlier in the week, in-person concerts were not on the agenda. Instead, Classical Piano Series director Emanuela Friscioni and her husband Antonio Pompa-Baldi invited a virtual audience into their handsome, sun-dappled music room for an intimate, exquisitely-played program of four-hand piano works by Schubert and Debussy topped off with the premiere of a new work by their fellow Italian, Luca Moscardi. [Read more…]
A varied, compelling, and concise program came to life through excellent performances when percussionists Andrew Pongracz and Mell Csicsila of Duo Anime visited Survival Kit on January 14. The live-streamed concert was presented as part of the Local 4 Music Fund’s Tuning In series.
Art often transcends without trying, remaining rooted in its specific regional, topical, or historical niche yet appealing well beyond. A humble central-German cantor became Bach, an observer of social posturing in a narrow slice of the gentry became Austen, an aerosol virtuoso known to tag lower-Manhattan walls became Basquiat.
The Local 4 Music Fund continued its “Tuning In” series on December 17 with an engaging, emotionally wide-ranging program of piano quintets, streamed live from the Steinway Piano Gallery of Cleveland.
Music From The Western Reserve concerts always fall on Sunday, even as streams. December 13 was therefore as close to Beethoven’s likely birthdate on the 16th as the presenters could come to throwing a virtual party. Debuting their stream before that occasion made little difference in the concert’s power: over a week later, pianist Daniel Shapiro’s stunning interpretations remained lodged in this reviewer’s mind. As social media lit up with tributes and music-lovers around the world raised a glass, Shapiro’s MFTWR video remains on YouTube, where those interested can still listen and learn what it means to truly engage with Beethoven.
Improvisation: the act of creating something without preparation. 
I know noble accents 
Both accessible and deeply original, the music of London-born composer Anna Clyne is a convergence of tradition and invention, sometimes set against each other to provide a fascinating contrast, other times wrapped up into one enchanting package — familiar sound and fresh sensibility. Her latest album, 
Robert Schumann wrote his three string quartets in a span of less than two months during the summer of 1842. We think of such intensely productive times as manic, especially for Schumann, who is now thought to have suffered from bipolar disorder. But in some ways, the music of Op. 41 belies that.