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DIARY, Tuesday, May 20, 2025

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by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING TODAY:

Today at 12 noon, the Church of the Covenant in University Circle presents organist Ralph Holtzhauser in music by Denis Bedard, Brenda Portman, Charles Tournemire, Simon Preston, and Mark Miller.

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

The Canton Symphony has released details of its 2025-2026 season. Its classical series will include performances led by guest conductors Wesley Schulz, JoAnn Falletta, Tito Muñoz, Roger Kalia, Jeri Lynne Johnson, Mélisse Brunet, and Francesco Lecce-Chong. Featured soloists and ensembles will include Meg Su, guitar, Nikki Choi, violin, Mark Kosower, cello, Averi Ellis, narrator, Jessica Leigh Payne, soprano, Sunghoon Han, bass-baritone, the Canton Symphony Chorus, and Zhan Shu, violin. Tickets for these and other series events will be available on July 1. Read the announcement here.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

On this date in 1896, Clara Wieck Schumann died in Frankfurt am Main. The pianist, teacher, and wife of Robert Schumann was known principally as a concert pianist, a career she pursued for more than six decades — four of them after Robert’s death in 1856. [Read more…]

DIARY, Tuesday, December 10, 2024

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by Daniel Hathaway

Messiaen at La Trinité, 1940

HAPPENING TODAY:

At noon, organist Evan de Jong plays works by J.S. Bach and Johann Adam Reincken at the Church of the Covenant.

Tonight at 7 pm, Apollo’s Fire takes Jeannette Sorrell’s interpretation of. George Frideric Handel’s Messiah to St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Akron.

And tonight at 7:30, John Kennedy, who conducted Oberlin’s concert performances of Rhiannon Giddens’ and Michael Ables’ opera Omar last weekend, extends his stay to lead the Oberlin Chamber Orchestra in works by Gabriella Smith, John Cage, and Louise Farrenc in Finney Chapel.

For details of these and other upcoming events, visit our Concert Listings.

NEW RELEASES:

The Cleveland Orchestra has announced that its recording of Hector Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique, led by Music Director Franz Welser-Möst, is now available worldwide for digital streaming and download in spatial audio on all major platforms, marking the fourth recording to be released by the Orchestra in 2024. Read a press release here.

The Cavani Quartet announces the launch of The Art of Collaboration: Chamber Music Rehearsal Techniques and Team Building, by Annie Fullard and Dorianne Cotter-Lockard. Click here to visit a website dedicated to the book launch.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

French composer and organist Olivier Messiaen (pictured above) was born on December 10, 1908 in Avignon. [Read more…]

DIARY: Tuesday, September 24, 2024

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by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING TODAY: 

At Noon, organist Christa Rakich plays original works & music by J. S. Bach at the Church of the Covenant.

And three concerts are on the docket for tonight, all beginning at 7:30.

The Cleveland Chamber Music Society launches its 75th season with the all-male vocal ensemble Chanticleer (pictured). “Music of a Silent World,” at The Cultural Arts Center at Disciples Church celebrates the music of nature in works by Majel Connery, William Byrd, Heinrich Isaac, Robert Schumann, Tom Petty, Lawrence, and Ayanna Woods, and a gala reception follows.

Meanwhile, two masters of the keyboard go head to head. The London-based, Siberian-born pianist Pavel Kolesnikov will present J.S. Bach’s complete “Goldberg Variations” in Reinberger Chamber Hall at Severance Music Center, and British-born organist David Briggs, currently artist-in-residence at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York, will make the Holtkamp organ in the Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist, sound orchestral in a program that includes his own Improvised Symphony in 4 Movements.

Visit our Concert Listings for details of upcoming performances.

SEASON ANNOUNCEMENT:

No Exit New Music has announced details of its 16th season, “New Season, New Sounds,” which begins with performances from October 17-19 at Cleveland State University’s Drinko Auditorium, Waterloo Arts, and SPACES. See the detailed schedule here.

TODAY’S ALMANAC: 

British conductor and musical scholar Christopher Hogwood died of a brain tumor in Cambridge on this date in 2014. One of the forerunners in the early music revival movement, Hogwood relaunched the 18th-century Academy of Ancient Music in 1973, clearing a pathway for such later conductors as Roger Norrington, John Eliot Gardiner and Trevor Pinnock. The AAM eventually outgrew its concentration on Baroque music and recorded the complete symphonies of Mozart and Beethoven, as well as all of Mozart’s piano concertos with Robert Levin.

Hogwood was also noted for transforming Boston’s Handel and Haydn Society into a period instrument ensemble, along with his influential guest conducting appearances with a number of symphony orchestras. His career is detailed in Barry Millington’s obituary in The Guardian.

Click here to watch Hogwood’s performance of Haydn’s last symphony with the NHK Symphony Orchestra (misidentified as the AAM!), and here to watch a performance he led of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 15 with Robert Levin, who provided his own improvised cadenzas.

To see Christopher Hogwood in action as a musical scholar who served on the faculty of London’s Gresham College, here are two lecture-concerts: London: Music Under the Shadow of Handel, and an analysis of Messiaen’s Quatuor pour la fin du Temps.

DIARY: Tuesday, September 26, 2023

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By Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING TODAY:

At noon, Oziah Wales plays Julius Reubke’s Sonata on the 94th Psalm at the Church of the Covenant.

Not happening: The Severance Music Center concert by the Cleveland Institute of Music Orchestra originally scheduled for this evening has been postponed.

Check our Concert Listings for forthcoming events.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

On September 26, 1800, New England composer William Billings died in Boston, French conductor Charles Munch was born in Strasbourg in 1891, and American composer and trombonist William Dawson was born in Anniston, Alabama in 1890.

Billings departed the scene too early to have left recordings, but Ross W. Duffin and Quire Cleveland brought his infectious motet I Am the Rose of Sharon to life in a concert at Historic St. Peter’s Church in April, 2014. The piece sets words from the Biblical Song of Songs (“Stay me with flagons, comfort me with apples…”) Watch here. Pictured  below: Billings’ hymn tune Chester from 1781. [Read more…]

Cellist Zlatomir Fung brings Shostakovich to his Cleveland Orchestra debut (July 22)

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by Peter Feher

The Cleveland Orchestra put together an intricate and intriguing musical puzzle on July 22 at Blossom Music Center. Each piece on the brilliantly balanced program — which showcased the sensibilities shared by 20th-century composers in France, the Soviet Union, and Japan — held the key to understanding and appreciating the others.

The Orchestra, guest conductor Kahchun Wong, and the evening’s soloist, cellist Zlatomir Fung, (left) were more than up to the task of fitting it all together. Spareness, precision, and sensitivity to detail were the features uniting the mix of repertoire, and the musicians gave superb performances where not a note was wasted.

Claude Debussy’s La mer is a study in symphonic texture — all the more beguiling because the composer was not, by usual standards, a master orchestrator. [Read more…]

DIARY: Wednesday, March 22, 2023

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By Daniel Hathaway

IN THIS EDITION:

. Weiss & Jones give CIM faculty recital

. Akron Symphony to celebrate 70th season

. Almanac: a “slightly evil” take on the demise of Jean-Baptiste Lully

HAPPENING TODAY:

7:30 pm – CIM Faculty Recital: Richard Weiss, cello, Joela Jones, piano and accordion (pictured). De Falla’s Suite Popular Española, Errollyn Wallen’s Dervish (2001), Matyas Seiber’s Introduction & Allegro & Debussy’s Two Arabesques (arr. Choisnel/Roques), La Plus Que Lente Valse (arr. Kocsis) & Cello Sonata in d. Mixon Hall, 11021 East Blvd, Cleveland. Free, but a reservation is required.

IN THE NEWS:

The Akron Symphony Orchestra will open its 2023-2024 concert season with Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony on September 29. The program will celebrate the 50th anniversary of EJ Thomas Hall. “We are thrilled to be a part of EJ Thomas Hall’s 50th anniversary celebrations and honored to have the opportunity to open the Akron Symphony Orchestra’s 70th season at this historic venue. [Read more…]

DIARY: Wednesday, November 16, 2022

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IN THIS EDITION:

. Symphonic video game music at Trinity

. Fellowships announced at CIM

. Cleveland Jazz Orchestra Tickets

. Conference Report: Black and indigenous sounds in the Early Atlantic World

. Happy Birthday to Paul Hindemith  — Samuel Coleridge-Taylor makes first American tour —  Philadelphia Orchestra gives first concert at the Academy of Music

TODAY’S EVENTS:

At 12:00 pm, the Trinity Brownbag Concert series will present the Amethyst String Quartet. Their program focuses on symphonic video game music, illustrating how classical music has influenced this billion-dollar industry. Trinity Cathedral, 2230 Euclid Ave., Cleveland. Freewill offering.

IN THE NEWS:

The Cleveland Institute of Music has announced the twelve scholars named to its 2023 Future of Music Faculty Fellowship. Click here for more information.

The Cleveland Jazz Orchestra has announced that individual tickets are now on sale for all shows at the Maltz Performing Arts Center. Click here for more information.

INTERESTING READS:

Last month, scholars studying facets of early Black and indigenous sounds came together to share their research and ask a few big questions. Is this a new, interdisciplinary field of study, where sound is central to help understand life, culture, literature, and music? Click here to read Miguel Valerio’s interesting report in Early Music America. [Read more…]

Sords set to resume touring after long hiatus

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by Daniel Hathaway

Before the novel coronavirus blew into the music world in 2020, bringing with it what he calls “the Great Silence,” violinist Andrew Sords was among the busiest touring soloists and chamber musicians in the industry. He reckons that he spent nearly 200 days on the road in 2019, compared to 40 this year.

This Saturday, October 29 at 7:00 pm at the Federated Church in Chagrin Falls, Sords will join colleagues Mari Sato, violin, Eric Wong, viola, John Walz, cello, and Elizabeth DeMio, piano, in works by Brahms, Dvořák, and Rachmaninoff. Dvořák’s Piano Quintet is at the center of the program, a work Sords classifies as “a desert island piece” that should become more of a special undertaking for its performers, rather than just a standard repertory item. “It’s an epic project,” Sords said. “But rehearsing it doesn’t even seem like work.”

That’s a healthy attitude Andrew Sords brings to practicing and rehearsing in general. [Read more…]

Cleveland International Classical Guitar Festival: Davin-Levin guitar & harp duo (June 3)

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by Daniel Hathaway

You’d think that two instruments that create their sound by plucking strings might not provide enough variety to sustain interest over the course of a whole program, but guitarist Colin Davin and harpist Emily Levin have news for you.

The Davin-Levin Duo played the second recital of the 2022 Cleveland International Classical Guitar Festival on June 3 in Kulas Hall at the Cleveland Institute of Music.

Their engaging program, containing original arrangements of 20th-century works and a recent piece, was the first of four during the festival to feature guitarists playing with other instrumentalists, and Davin and Levin made the most of their opportunity to plunge into the rich possibilities of collaboration. [Read more…]

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