Looking for a Valentine’s Day concert? Perhaps we can help you

February 12, 2019 by Daniel Hathaway

by Daniel Hathaway

It’s Valentine’s Day all week this week, and aside from the obvious gifts — flowers, chocolates, and shiny bling — there are a number of ways to take to heart the new advice of gifting your love interest experiences rather than things.

Our Concert Listings have been providing such a service since the website was launched in 2008. Consider this message from one of our readers way back in 2009:

I’m grateful for ClevelandClassical.com for so many reasons. In fact, I learned about Nathan Gunn’s performance at Oberlin through you, which has now become the central feature of my surprise Valentine’s Day date with my fiancée! I owe you big time now.

Here are some suggestions for your own Valentine.

The next Urban Troubadour exploration sticks to one Akron building, but there’s lots to enjoy under the roof of Greystone Hall. “Romantic Valentine’s Evening” on Thursday, February 14 begins with a libation in Barristers’ Lounge, proceeds to a chamber music concert in the Doric Room, and ends in the Ballroom with entertainment, dancing, small plates, and a cash bar. The chamber musicians are flutist Jane Berkner, harpist Jody Guinn, violist Michael Strauss, and cellist Cathy Partlow Strauss, and the Ballroom talent includes vocalist Helen Welch and The Wind Machine. Go here for reservations.

“Lovers, Lutes & Lyres — an Old English Valentine” is the title of Apollo’s Fire’s Baroque Bistro evenings that feature soprano Amanda Powell and master of many plucked instruments Brian Kay. There are three performances: Thursday, February 14 at 7:30 pm at the Music Box Supper Club in Cleveland, Friday, February 15 at 7:00 pm at Nighttown in Cleveland Heights, and Saturday, February 16 at 7:15 pm at Mustard Seed Market in Montrose. Dinner is available each evening at 6. At press time, both the 15th and 16th were sold out and a wait list was being kept. Check out details and make your reservations here.

The Cleveland Orchestra identifies Mozart with Valentine’s Day — perhaps a bit of a stretch, but hey, the second movement of his Eine kleine Nachtmusik is titled “Romanze.” This weekend, Harry Bicket will lead the ensemble in that perennial favorite as well as a Fantasia for mechanical clock and the “Prague” Symphony, and the brilliant soprano Kiera Duffy will star in his motet Exsultate, jubilate. Concerts are on Thursday, February 14 at 7:30 pm, Friday, February 15 at 7:00 pm, Saturday, February 16 at 8:00 pm, and Sunday, February 17 at 3:00 pm. Tickets here. (Read an interview with Kiera Duffy here.)

All those are ticketed events, but trombonist Jiggs Whigham will join the Case Jazz Ensembles for a free Valentine’s Day concert on February 14 at 7:30 pm in Harkness Chapel.

Another brilliant soprano will visit Cleveland on Friday, February 15 at 7:00 pm as BW alumna Jennifer Rowley returns to campus for a solo recital with pianist Jason Aquila. Since her graduation, Rowley has appeared all over the globe, and returned to New York’s Met Opera this season to make her title role debut in Adriana Lecouvreur. This March she sings the title role in Tosca. Her recital in Gamble Auditorium is free. Read a preview article here.

Published on ClevelandClassical.com February 11, 2019.

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About Daniel Hathaway

Daniel Hathaway founded ClevelandClassical.com in September, 2008, after a thirty-one year tenure as music director of Cleveland’s Trinity Cathedral, where he founded the Wednesday Noon Brownbag Concert Series and Trinity Chamber Orchestra. A graduate of Harvard College and the Episcopal Divinity School, he also studied historical musicology at Princeton and Harvard Universities. Before coming to Cleveland in 1977, he served as head of humanities at the Sunset Hill School in Kansas City and as head of arts at Groton School in Massachusetts. In Cleveland, he has served on the music staff of Cleveland Opera, Great Lakes Theater Festival, and the faculty of Laurel School. As an organist, Hathaway has played recitals in the U.S., England, France, Germany, and Austria. He team-teaches Music Journalism at Oberlin College and Conservatory and is a member of the Music Critics Association of North America.

Oberlin Opera stages a Cendrillon of professional quality (Nov. 10)

by Daniel Hathaway

Any regional opera company would be popping its buttons with pride to have produced such an impressive performance of Jules Massenet’s Cendrillion (Cinderella) as Oberlin Opera did in Hall Auditorium on Sunday afternoon, November 10.

Imaginative staging by Stephanie Havey, skillful pacing by conductor James Feddeck, beautiful set design and costuming by Laura Carlson-Tarantowski and Chris Flaharty, respectively, plus dramatic and — for the fairies — enchanting lighting by Jeremy K. Benjamin provided a supportive environment for splendid singing by the cast and brilliant playing by the Oberlin Chamber Orchestra.

Literally thousands of versions of the Cinderella tale exist in cultures around the globe, but many of the details of Massenet’s opera date back to Charles Perrault’s 1697 Cendrillon ou la petite pantoufle de verre, which adds what have now become essential elements to the tale: a young girl mistreated by her stepmother and stepsisters, who temporarily attracts the attention of a handsome prince at a royal ball and is eventually reunited with him to become a princess herself. [Read on…]

Seraph Brass dances through musical travels in Rocky River (Nov. 11)

by Stephanie Manning

Before Seraph Brass arrived in Ohio on November 11, the group’s fall touring season had taken them on the road to Missouri, Florida, New York, and even Peru. And at the Rocky River Chamber Music Society, they gave the audience a taste of the traveling life right from the first piece.

The “Prelude” from Edvard Greig’s Holberg Suite whisked listeners away to Norway, with a melody surely familiar to many. It was extra familiar to the brass quintet themselves, who launched into their opening number without sheet music. Playing memorized is part of the group’s trademark, and they smoothly alternated using music and no music throughout the evening. Either way, the wide-ranging program had those at West Shore Unitarian Universalist Church spellbound.

Trumpet players Mary Elizabeth Bowden and Raquel Samayoa, horn player Layan Atieh, trombonist Lauren Casey-Clyde, and tuba player Robyn Black sounded equally comfortable in Romantic and contemporary repertoire, flipping between both with practiced ease. [Read on…]

Cleveland Orchestra’s Beethoven Concerto Cycle performance featured pairing of rising star and mentor (Nov. 15)

This article was originally published on Cleveland.com

By Daniel Hathaway

CLEVELAND, Ohio — For the third program in The Cleveland Orchestra’s Beethoven Piano Concerto Cycle, the pairing of 20-year-old Korean pianist Yunchan Lim with his mentor Minsoo Sohn was an astute programming decision.

Well-established names on the concert circuit — Orion Weiss, Sir Stephen Hough, and Garrick Ohlsson — had already filled the empty solo spots for the composer’s Triple Concerto and solo concertos 2, 3, and 4. But the choice of the youngest pianist ever to win the Van Cliburn Competition to close out the Cleveland series packed Mandel Concert Hall at Severance Music Center on Friday evening, November 15, with a near-capacity audience teeming with enthusiastic young people.

[Read on…]

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