by Daniel Hathaway
WEEKEND HIGHLIGHTS:
Turning the calendar page over to March releases a floodgate of events. Here are our classical music recommendations for this weekend, selected from the many in our master concert listings calendar.
On Friday Evening at 7:30, Alain Altinoglu visits The Cleveland Orchestra at Severance Music Center to conduct two of Richard Strauss’s virtuosic tone poems based on the mythic lives of Til Eulenspiegel and Don Juan, and to team up with Cleveland native Alisa Weilerstein in Unsuk Chin’s equally virtuosic Cello Concerto. The merry pranks, romantic conquests and cellocentric fireworks return on Saturday at the same hour.
On Saturday at 4 pm at Heights Theater in the Coventry neighborhood, Les Délices highlights soprano Estelí Gomez in Nicaraguan-American composer Gilda Lyons’Soy la Diosa, as the second chapter of the period instrument ensemble’s Mythology Project centers attention on Latin American folklore and historical legends. The program will be repeated on Sunday at 7:30 at Inlet Dance Theater at the Pivot Center in Ohio City.
On Sunday at 3 pm at Pilgrim Congregational UCC, Arts Renaissance Tremont will present The ART of Influence. Students who are now professional musicians will share the stage with their teachers for a concert illuminating the tradition of mentorship in music. Guests include Cleveland Orchestra percussionists Tom Sherwood & Tanner Tanyeri and hornists Rich King & Megan Guegold (hornists at TCO), and more.
There’s a lot happening early next week as well.
On Monday evening at 7:30 Pittsburgh’s Chatham Baroque (pictured above) will make its Cleveland debut on the Rocky River Chamber Music Society series.
And on Tuesday at 7:30, chamber music fans will have their choice between a Cleveland Chamber Society performance by the Leonkoro Quartet at Disciples Church, and a Tuesday Musical concert by saxophonists Branford Marsalis and Timothy McAllister with pianist Liz Ames at Akron’s E.J. Thomas Hall.
For details of these and other classical events, visit the ClevelandClassical.com Concert Listings.
WEEKEND ALMANAC:
Some big names to mention for February 27: Italian tenor Enrico Caruso, born either on the 27th or the 25th in 1873 in Naples, Russian composer Alexander Borodin, who died during a ballroom concert in St. Petersburg in 1887, German soprano Lotte Lehmann, born in Perleberg in 1883, and Texas pianist Van Cliburn, who lost his struggle with bone cancer in Fort Worth in 2013 at the age of 78.
Cliburn helped take the chill off the Cold War in 1958 when he won the inaugural Tchaikovsky competition in Moscow. Cheered by Muscovites and given the first New York ticker tape parade for a classical musician when he returned to the U.S., Cliburn founded his own competition in his hometown of Fort Worth later that year.
Click here to listen to a live recording of his winning performance of Tchikovsky’s First Concerto. And a 58-minute film by Peter Rosen on Medici-TV documents that event for subscribers (watch a free trailer here).
