by Jarrett Hoffman
The Cleveland Orchestra is launching its own record label with a major release. Having turned 100 during the 2018-19 season, the ensemble looks ahead with A New Century. The six works across three discs were recorded in concert in Severance Hall under the baton of Music Director Franz Welser-Möst from 2017 to 2019.
by Daniel Hathaway
The portents weren’t good for the week of March 8: first the disorienting switch to Daylight time was to click in on Sunday, then a full moon would rise on Tuesday, then the 13th of the month was scheduled to fall on Friday. Midweek, the spread of COVID-19 added a spiraling series of postponements, cancellations, and shut-downs to an already unlucky period. Like other educational institutions, Oberlin College and Conservatory found themselves making decisions about how to proceed, only to change plans several times. [Read more…]
by Nicholas Stevens
That old saw about absence making the heart grow fonder: how true it feels now! With concerts canceled to prevent the kinds of confined massing that facilitates the spread of COVID-19, musicians are suffering. Critics have already filed reports on the grim uncanniness of clear schedules and empty halls. Just before this writer’s exile from the scene, however, a spark of life shot skyward, and now stands as a last memory of live performance before social distancing. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
In 2016, Les Délices’ “Songs Without Words” concerts paired 17th-century art songs with jazz standards. This season, the (usually French) Baroque ensemble’s “Torchsongs Transformed” program has built on that idea. On Saturday evening, March 7 at Lakewood Congregational Church, soprano Hélène Brunet joined previous cast members Debra Nagy (oboe), Mélisande Corriveau (viola da gamba), and Eric Milnes (harpsichord) in new pairings of French Baroque arias with 20th-century love laments. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
The Cleveland Chamber Music Society sailed into relatively uncharted waters on March 3, hosting the Bay Area male vocal ensemble Chanticleer in “Trade Winds.” This musical voyage took its name from a triptych by Zhou Tian, part of a varied program that called in at multiple ports for Italian madrigals, settings of Ave Maris stella (“Hail Mary, Star of the Sea”), an Edwardian part song, a Portuguese Mass, songs from the Pacific, and English sea shanties. [Read more…]
by Mike Telin
On May 4, 1970, the Ohio National Guard fired into a crowd of protesters at Kent State University, killing four students and wounding nine others. The 50th anniversary of this horrific event was the focal point of Cleveland Chamber Choir’s recent program “We March On! Music of Social Justice.” The thought-provoking concert also poignantly addressed anti-Semitic violence, the civil rights movement, hate crimes, police brutality, and women’s suffrage. [Read more…]
by Peter Feher
The Cleveland Orchestra brass were busy with Bruckner the prior weekend, but then on Sunday, March 1, The Orchestra’s second trumpet player, Jack Sutte, played a recital at Christ Church Episcopal in Hudson, part of Music from The Western Reserve’s 2019–2020 concert series. His program emphasized artistry over athleticism and served as a good reminder that sensitive, sustained solo playing naturally differs from the big orchestral approach. [Read more…]
by Timothy Robson
Jerusalem, sacred city of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The location of horrific violence and oppression for over two millennia. But yet a magical city in which Jews, Christians, and Muslims have lived and interacted with each other in harmony. It was the latter aspect of Jerusalem that Jeannette Sorrell and Apollo’s Fire highlighted in their sensational program “O Jerusalem! Crossroads of Three Faiths.” I heard the performance on Wednesday, March 11 at the Cleveland Museum of Art. Gartner Auditorium was well filled, and it now turns out that Apollo’s Fire gave the last major performance at the Museum for an unknown period of time, due to precautions around COVID-19. [Read more…]
by Mike Telin
Is there a more fun-filled, accessible opera than Mozart’s The Magic Flute? Its classic fairy tale plot — good versus evil combined with a search for enlightenment and love — is timeless. Its characters are sympathetic, and it’s filled with beautiful arias and catchy tunes that are certain to cause the most wonderful earworms long after you leave the theater.
by Daniel Hathaway
Members of The Cleveland Orchestra and friends who perform from time to time as the Cleveland Chamber Collective presented the premiere of a work by Geoffrey Peterson and the sneak preview of a Cleveland Orchestra-commissioned piccolo concerto in a chamber format. Filling out the program were well-known pieces by Beethoven and Debussy, performed in front of a small audience at Disciple’s Christian Church in Cleveland Heights on Sunday evening, March 1. [Read more…]