by Timothy Robson
On Sunday afternoon, February 16, The Cleveland Orchestra accomplished the seemingly impossible feat of performing two concerts simultaneously at different parts of the Cleveland metropolis. One was the final performance of this week’s subscription concert, the other a free community concert at Lakewood Civic Auditorium.
by Daniel Hathaway
Today’s touring string quartets hew to so uniformly high a standard that it’s often little individual touches that make ensembles stand out. The Polish musicians who make up the Apollon Musagète Quartet showed up at Plymouth Church in Shaker Heights for their debut on the Cleveland Chamber Music Society series on February 4 in matching plaid suits and black shirts. And jettisoning their jackets, they played standing (except for the cellist). [Read more…]
by David Kulma
CityMusic Cleveland is best known for the free orchestra concerts it gives all over the Cleveland area, often in large churches and synagogues. But another feature of this group’s programming is its chamber music series at Praxis Fiber Workshop in Collinwood. This cosy art space was perfect for the concert I heard on Friday, January 24. People filled the room, and the music enveloped the space for an immersive experience. I highly recommend trying to get a seat in the quasi-alcove off to the side.
by David Kulma
During Daniel Meyer’s short tenure as artistic director and conductor of BlueWater Chamber Orchestra, the ensemble has risen to a new level of quality. On Saturday, February 1 at Plymouth Church, Meyer and his ensemble performed an excellent program titled “A Classical Feast,” focusing on music from the late 18th century.
by Nicholas Stevens
As the 250th anniversary of Beethoven’s birth sweeps classical music audiences along a twelve-month, field-wide festival of heroics, experiments, rhapsodizing, and apocalyptic drive, a challenge arises for performers who plan to acknowledge the occasion. In a season peppered with all-Beethoven programs, how does one stand out? Of the many approaches that could thrill an audience and do justice to the composer, which ones serve the ensemble just as well? On a late January evening, the Amici Quartet offered their answer: impeccable playing and utter unity. [Read more…]
by Nicholas Stevens
When UNESCO made its first list of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2008, it welcomed Kabuki theatre, Sardinian folksong, and dozens of other media into a globe-spanning canon. These, the committee declared, stood out among the untold multitudes of human creative practices. Among them ranked the Iraqi maqam, in which poetry, chamber music, and lighter songs flow into extended, semi-improvised performances. As the ensemble Safaafir and singer Hamid Al-Saadi recently proved to Northeast Ohioans, the centuries-old coffeehouse art form still holds the power to thrill. [Read more…]
by Timothy Robson
Founded in 1912, the St. Olaf Choir from Northfield, Minnesota, has cultivated an international reputation as one of the best collegiate choirs in the United States. With their long-time conductor Anton Armstrong, the choir made a stop at Severance Hall in Cleveland on February 3 as part of their 100th annual tour that also included Carnegie Hall, Yale University, and the University of Illinois, Urbana. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
At first glance, Moon in the Mirror: an Operatic Monodrama in Seven Scenes, with libretto by Zhang Er and Martine Bellen and score by Stephen Dembski, bears a striking resemblance to Arnold Schoenberg’s Pierrot lunaire. Both are centered around a solo soprano who meditates on aspects of the human condition in the pale, ghostly light of Earth’s only satellite — itself a mirror that merely reflects, producing no light of its own. [Read more…]
by Peter Feher
The three works on The Cleveland Orchestra’s Thursday, January 30 program all evoked other music — a different composer, another piece, or a famous performance. Opening the concert was Prokofiev’s Sixth Symphony, decidedly a B-side in the composer’s symphonic catalogue. [Read more…]
by Tom Wachunas
Among many fascinating aspects of the January 25 performance by the Canton Symphony Orchestra was the ensemble’s untiring attentiveness to the conductor. Here was a remarkable connectivity, a sharpened focus, a palpable state of eager readiness. The musicians were always alert, ever poised to respond instantaneously and with riveting precision to signals from the podium. Those signals were transmitted in delightfully animated fashion by assistant conductor Matthew Jenkins Jaroszewicz. [Read more…]