by Daniel Hathaway
Departing slightly but refreshingly from the time-honored pattern of classical era quartet + modern piece + major romantic work, the Dover Quartet brought a challenging but engaging contemporary quartet by David Bruce to the Cleveland Chamber Music Society series at Plymouth Church on December 3, prefacing it with an evanescent Britten quartet and following it with dependably sturdy Brahms. [Read more…]
by Nicholas Stevens
Mass media can make it feel as though the true color of the holiday season is a uniform Federal Reserve-issue sage, barely veiled by the colors of different proud traditions. The same ten songs blare in every grocery aisle. Yet on the ground, people find ways to wring something vital and unique out of a month when every icon of cheer feels somehow recycled. CityMusic Cleveland, prone to giving end-of-year concerts packed with music that knows no season, has found a way to reconcile seasonality with a respite. [Read more…]
by Nicholas Stevens
Opera has long dwelled on the point where love and suffering converge. When poets and composers made their first stabs at reconstructing Greek tragedy and created this genre instead, they retold myths of women who transformed to dodge lecherous gods, or of men duped into losing a lover twice. Artists have reiterated the idea of unhappy love for four centuries, each new opera of loss and longing a vertebra in the genre’s spine. Last week, I flew to Germany to hear a new opera as fixated on the consuming pressures of love as anything in the canon, yet also radical in its attention to the hearts, brains, and senses of ordinary, modern-day mortals. [Read more…]
by Peter Feher
“Holiday Concert” doesn’t do justice to the Cleveland Philharmonic Orchestra’s December program. The ensemble staged an orchestra concert proper, followed by a festive coda, on December 14 at Cleveland State’s Waetjen Auditorium (the first of two performances). A certain Renaissance flair marked the evening’s two big pieces, selections from Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet and Poulenc’s Gloria. [Read more…]
by Peter Feher
The best children’s music, like the best children’s literature, has something in it for the adults. Wisely, the Suburban Symphony Orchestra put together a family concert on December 8 at the Maltz Performing Arts Center that could appeal to young and old alike. Ravel’s delicate, miniature Mother Goose Suite made up the brief first half of the program, but Lemony Snicket’s The Composer is Dead, with music by Nathaniel Stookey, was the real family fare for the afternoon. [Read more…]
by Nicholas Stevens
On Sunday, November 24 at the Cleveland Museum of Art, the audience in Gartner Auditorium clustered to the left, embracing the asymmetry typical of a piano recital. Yet if one shape came to mind repeatedly during the program, it was the ultimate figure of symmetry: the circle. Soloist Soyeon Kate Lee would come full circle that day, playing Mozart sixteen years after winning the Mozart Prize at the 2003 Cleveland International Piano Competition. [Read more…]
by Mike Telin
If a singer has a beautiful voice, yet doesn’t deliver the lyrics like they’re talking to you, your attention will only be held for so long. But when vocalist La Tanya Hall sings the opening line to the Nat Adderley classic All you need to say, you just want to shout out, ‘that’s right, give me some more advice.’ The song also serves as the perfect opening track for her latest recording, Say Yes, on Blue Canoe Records. [Read more…]
by Mike Telin
On their recent recording, Hypothetical Islands, the excellent ensemble Splinter Reeds, offer up a fascinating collection of compositions, embodying a kaleidoscopic world that can only be created by reed instruments. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Chicago-based harpsichordist Jory Vinikour, a frequent visitor to Cleveland — he most recently played Poulenc’s Concert champêtre with The Cleveland Orchestra in March of 2018 — has released a fascinating recording on the Cedille label devoted to harpsichord concertos written during the 20th century revival of the instrument. [Read more…]
by Mike Telin
On his latest CD, violinist David Bowlin presents an astonishing array of works that showcase his extraordinary ability as an interpreter of diverse styles of contemporary music. [Read more…]