The second of four videos just released by The Cleveland Orchestra in advance of its forthcoming presentations of Janáček’s The Cunning Little Vixen introduces the cast of musicians and visual artists who are creating this made-for-Cleveland opera production. Click here to watch the video.
by Daniel Hathaway
After the Blitz, England needed some comedy, and Benjamin Britten stepped up to provide a good dose of it with his 1946 chamber opera, Albert Herring, which premiered at Glyndebourne in 1947.
Populated with characters who might have stepped right out of Miss Marple’s village of St. Mary Mead, Britten’s three-acter was adapted from a story by Guy de Maupassant and translated from France to Suffolk.
The village is in a tizzy because no candidates for May Queen measure up to the formidable Lady Billow’s exacting moral standards. As a compromise, the village committee decides to switch to a May King and nominates Albert Herring, son of a widowed greengrocer whose apron strings have kept him so tightly bound that he’s oblivious of temptation. [Read more…]
by Mike Telin
It’s difficult to know where to begin a conversation with Miya Masaoka. It isn’t because there is a shortage of interesting topics to discuss. On the contrary, Masaoka has built a fascinating career that combines Western experimental improvisation with the tradition of her instrument of choice, the koto.
Since founding the San Francisco Gagaku Society, Masaoka has introduced new ways of thinking about and performing on the koto which include improvisation and expanding the instrument through the use of computers, lasers, live sampling, and real time processing. As a composer, Masaoka’s compositions often include the sound and movement of insects, as well as the physiological responses of plants, the human brain, and her own body.
On Sunday, February 16 beginning at 7:30 pm, you can hear Miya Masaoka in performance as part of the CMA Concerts at Transformer Station series. [Read more…]
by Mike Telin
“What I love about him is that even during a first reading of a piece we already have the gestures,” says violinist Jinjoo Cho about her frequent collaborator, pianist HyunSoo Kim. “We may not have all the notes under the fingers but we are musically on the same page from the very beginning.” Perhaps it’s that certain musical chemistry that has made Cho and Kim audience favorites throughout the Cleveland area.
On Sunday, February 9 beginning at 3:00 pm, Arts Renaissance Tremont presents Jinjoo Cho and HyunSoo Kim in a concert featuring the music of Debussy, Janáček, Tower and Prokofiev at Pilgrim Church in Cleveland’s Tremont neighborhood.
A native of Seoul, South Korea, Jinjoo Cho earned both her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in violin performance at the Cleveland Institute of Music. And she has had considerable success on the competition circuit, including First Prize and Orchestra Award winner of the Buenos Aires International Violin Competition and First Grand Prize and People’s Choice Award winner of the Montréal International Musical Competition. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
On November 22, a far happier occasion to remember than the fiftieth anniversary of the assassination of JFK was the centenary of the birth of Benjamin Britten — and far more appropriate to St. Cecilia’s Day, the patron saint of musicians. A smattering of area tributes to the greatest British composer since Henry Purcell have been planned during 2013, but Trinity Cathedral under Todd Wilson has clearly taken the lead with celebrations of Britten’s music fueling two Brownbag concerts and a gala concert last Friday evening featuring three of his most celebrated vocal and choral works.
Wilson’s choral forces — Trinity Chamber Singers and the Trinity Cathedral Choir — sang the Hymn to St. Cecilia and the festival cantata, Rejoice in the Lamb, respectively, and countertenor John McElliott and tenor JR Fralick teamed with Wilson in the second of Britten’s Five Canticles, Abraham and Isaac.
The key to Britten’s renown as a vocal composer is his choice of excellent texts to set and his dead-on intuition about how to fit music to words. [Read more…]
by Mike Telin
For anyone who loves a great waltz, CityMusic Cleveland has a program tailor-made just for you. Beginning on December 4 and running through December 8, CityMusic continues its tenth anniversary season with five concerts that celebrate that Viennese ballroom specialty.
The free concerts, presented in churches in Cleveland Heights, Lakewood, Willoughby Hills, Cleveland’s Slavic Village and Elyria, will feature soprano Stacey Mastrian in the music of the Strauss family and Franz Lehar. The program will also include the trumpet concerto of another Viennese composer, Johann Nepomuk Hummel, with Cleveland Orchestra second trumpet player Jack Sutte as soloist.
The performances mark the return of guest conductor Stefan Willich to the CityMusic podium. Willich, who is President of the Hanns Eisler Music Conservatory in Berlin and the Founder and Conductor of the World Doctors Orchestra, will lead CityMusic in performances of Johann Strauss Junior’s Overture to Die Fledermaus, The Blue Danube and Tritsch Tratsch Polka, Josef Strauss’ Aus der Ferne Polka (From a Distance) and Johann Strauss Senior’s Radetzky March.
Stacey Mastrian will join Willich and the orchestra in performances of the arias O habet Acht from The Gypsy Baron and Schwipslied from Night in Venice by Johann Strauss Jr. and Lehar’s Vilja Lied from The Merry Widow and Meine Lippen Sie Kussen So Heiss from Giuditta.
Visit the CityMusic Web site for locations and start times.
Published on ClevelandClassical.com November 26, 2013
Click here for a printable version of this article.
by Daniel Hathaway
Franz Welser-Möst returned to the Severance Hall stage on Thursday evening to lead The Cleveland Orchestra in the first of three concerts on consecutive evenings that paired symphonies by Beethoven and Shostakovich under the banner of the orchestra’s “Fate and Freedom Festival.”
In a pre-concert chat in Reinberger Chamber Music Hall with director of artistic planning Mark Williams, Welser-Möst noted that he had been looking for a new way to program a Vienna Musikverein Beethoven cycle and credited the Takács Quartet with the idea of pairing Beethoven and Shostakovich on the same program. (The orchestra will repeat this three-concert cycle in the Austrian capital from November 20-22.)
Whether you care to go deeply into the philosophical and political similarities and contrasts between the two composers, as Welser-Möst did in his program book essay, or simply enjoy hearing a pair of their symphonies in close succession, there was a lot to stimulate the mind and the ear last weekend. Thursday evening’s short performance coupled Beethoven’s third symphony with Shostakovich’s sixth — each written during the composers’ thirty-third year. [Read more…]
by Mike Telin
This weekend, Czech conductor Jakub Hrůša returns to Northeast Ohio to lead The Cleveland Orchestra at Severance Hall and Akron’s E.J. Thomas Hall in performances featuring the music of Haydn, Dvořák, and Janáček.
Although the program was to have included Dvořák’s violin concerto, yesterday the orchestra announced: “With deep regret, and on the advice of his physician, William Preucil is unable to perform as soloist this week with the Orchestra due to a pinched nerve.”
“I will miss Bill because I was looking forward to working with him immensely,” Jakub Hrůša told us this afternoon by telephone. “But the most important thing is for him to recover.”
Dvořák’s violin concerto has now been replaced with the composer’s symphonic poem The Golden Spinning Wheel. “I think it was a most natural decision, apart from replacing the soloist — which nobody wanted, me included.” Hrůša does think it was a very good idea to replace the concerto with one of the composer’s orchestral works. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Sometimes everything works together for the good. On Sunday evening, perfect weather, a gifted young soloist, an engaging program and an energized conductor all conspired to create a memorable evening at Blossom. The soloist was violinist Ray Chen, his vehicle was Vivaldi’s popular quartet of concertos, The Seasons (teamed up with Rossini’s irresistible La gazza ladra overture and Mendelssohn’s scenic Scottish symphony), and the podium was commanded by an old Blossom friend, the estimable Jahja Ling. A large crowd assembled on the lawn and the pavilion was two-thirds full.
Though Chen, who is Australian, playfully suggested beforehand that he might start with Winter and play The Seasons in Down Under order, he began with Spring, as is customary, immediately creating synergy with concertmaster Jung-Min Amy Lee and principal second violinist Stephen Rose in a delightful series of bird calls. [Read more…]
by Robert Rollin
Last Friday evening’s Nightingale Opera Theatre production of Jules Massenet’s opera, Werther, was a delight. Above all it was meticulously prepared. Music Director John Simmons’ piano rendition was so exceptionally flawless that the orchestra was not missed. His expression was constant, and his balance of contrapuntal sections with and without the singers was meticulous.
Equally important was that tempos, climaxes and other details were so well ingrained that the pace was swift and effective. All cast members and even the children’s chorus kept things moving and did not not let the plot’s overwhelming sadness overcome the dramatic flow. The Solon Center for the Arts has an intimate, but well-equipped, stage that helped make scene changes seamless. The fine acoustics made the English translation easily intelligible.
Massenet imbued the opera with a wonderful musical tapestry that Simmons and the cast took great pains to delineate. [Read more…]