by Nicholas Stevens
Shakespeare is everywhere these days: not just at the roots of today’s literature, poetry, philosophy, pop culture, and theatre, but as the ultimate canonic figure in the arts. His fame helps keep him famous. Titles of novels riff on the fact that his work remains required reading; Supreme Court justices make headlines for doubting his authorship; tempests in teapots brew when people move his portrait. Classical music, with its piano-adorning composer busts, boasts figures of comparable monumentality. In presenting music on Shakespearean themes and scenarios in a recent concert, however, the Akron Symphony seized a chance to savor works of rarer vintages. [Read more…]
It is always a delight to hear Mitsuko Uchida play the piano. In many ways, she’s the Platonic ideal of a classical musician. Focusing on Viennese classics and other heavyweights, she plays with finesse and precision. Her touch is always beautiful, never veering into the bombastic or straying into the muffled. Everything is in good taste.
If you had to have musicians living above you, judging from their performance at Pilgrim Church on Sunday, October 13, cellist Darrett Adkins and pianist Cicilia Yudha are two you would want to have. Their concert, which opened Arts Renaissance Tremont’s 29th season, featured intriguing works that proved a cello recital doesn’t always need to include music by the three B’s to hold you in rapt attention.
The music of Hungary occupies a unique place in the world of classical music. Musicians active between the mid-1800s and early 20th century understood the nation as either a land of best-kept secrets and hidden musical diversity, or as a foreign wonderland where exotic dance tunes and virtuosic fiddling occupied a lonely throne. In a recent concert, cimbalom soloist Alexander Fedoriouk and members of The Cleveland Orchestra explored both sides of the old divide: the Hungary that one expects and the richer, stranger version as well.