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Music by J.S. Bach’s the choice for the second live stream performance by Vieaux & Davin

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by Daniel Hathaway

Early in June, the Cleveland International Classical Guitar Festival stepped into the in-person performance void with a live-streamed concert by Jason Vieaux and Colin Davin. Building on the success of that performance, festival director Armin Kelly has invited the two artists to broadcast another live concert on Saturday, November 14 at 2:00 pm. This time they will adapt solo violin and cello music by Johann Sebastian Bach for the classical guitar.

Davin will play the Cello Suite No. 6 in D, BWV 1012, and the Violin Partita No. 2 in d, BWV 1004. Vieaux has chosen the Violin Sonata No. 1 in g, BWV 1001, and the Cello Suite No. 1 in G, BWV 1007. You can join the event here for a donation of $10.

I caught up with Vieaux and Davin for a Zoom conversation on Monday afternoon and started by asking them how they had decided on an all-Bach program for next Saturday.

Davin: It was sort of our idea, but Armin Kelly was readily enthusiastic about it. We had talked about another program right after we finished the one in June, and I think I might have suggested all-Bach.

Vieaux: You did.

Davin: We thought that two suites each would make a nice program.

Vieaux: By June 6 we were already three months into this quasi-isolation, pandemic thing, and preparing a half hour of music and sharing a program with a great guitarist seemed like getting a whole concert together. I’ve been practicing three different Bach suites over the last two months trying to decide what to play, and that was just wonderful. It felt like being a musician again. [Read more…]

Sun Valley Music Festival: Conversations with Marc Damoulakis and Si-Yan Darren Li 

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by Mike Telin

With the absence of Northeast Ohio’s annual feast of live summertime classical music offerings, I’m thankful that we live in a time when technology can help fill the void in the artistic soul. That technology can also take you to far-off festivals that you’ve always wished you could attend, but never have had the opportunity.

From Monday, July 27, to Wednesday, August 19, you can attend the 36th annual Sun Valley Music Festival Summer Season for free from the comfort of your own home, or backyard. The free, one-time-only webcasts were developed by Festival Music Director Alasdair Neale in collaboration with Creative Director James Darrah, who served as stage director for The Cleveland Orchestra’s 2015 production of Richard Strauss’ Daphne.

The performances, recorded in Chicago, Cleveland, Denver, Houston, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, New York, Rochester, San Francisco, St. Louis, and Toronto, feature single-location, socially distanced performances and multi-location, video-synced performances which will also include commentary by Alasdair Neale and conversations with guest artists and Orchestra musicians. The free, one-time-only concerts will be broadcast at 8:30 pm Eastern time on the Idaho-based Festival’s website. [Read more…]

Kent Blossom Music Festival goes virtual beginning July 1

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by Daniel Hathaway

As goes the Blossom Festival, so goes the Kent Blossom Music Festival, the parallel educational program that each summer brings young musicians to the Kent State University campus for several weeks of intensive chamber music coaching by members of The Cleveland Orchestra and other musicians.

In a normal season, multiple student concerts would be on the docket as well as faculty recitals, and a student chamber orchestra would be sharing an al fresco program with The Cleveland Orchestra. But in this thoroughly abnormal summer, nothing will be happening in person either at Blossom or Kent State. Instead, KBMF will be offering five streamed broadcasts of concerts from its archives on Wednesdays beginning July 1.

The performances can be accessed on the Kent Blossom website. Here’s the schedule.

Wednesday, July 1 at 7:30 pm – Concert 1 with the Miami String Quartet & Spencer Myer, piano. Haydn’s Quartet No. 64 in D (“Largo”), Op. 76, No. 5, Beethoven’s Piano Quartet in E-flat, Op. 16 & Max Bruch’s Quartet No. 1 in c, Op. 9. [Read more…]

Mark Kosower begins Trinity livestream series with Bach cello suites (June 5)

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by Jarrett Hoffman

Cellist Mark Kosower has long believed that the music of J.S. Bach can bring people together. His live-streamed performance from Trinity Cathedral on Friday, June 5, revealed how deeply he feels about that: perhaps what was most healing was his passion itself. This was the first in a pair of concerts that Kosower will give at Trinity this summer with no audience present, covering all six of the composer’s solo cello suites under the banner of his project “Bach for Humanity.” On Saturday, he brought the odd-numbered works, playing from memory and starting with No. 5. Full of agony and desperation, its Prelude was a fitting way to begin. The Allemande stood out for its poetic flexibility, while the second Gavotte ran smooth, Kosower’s technique flowing easily.

[Read more…]

Best of ChamberFest Cleveland broadcasts begin June 24 on WCLV

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by Daniel Hathaway

ChamberFest Cleveland patrons will be thrilled to learn that the popular early summer concert series founded in 2012 by Diana and Franklin Cohen won’t be completely missing in action this year due to the pandemic.

In lieu of its ninth season of live performances, ChamberFest is collaborating with WCLV to broadcast nine programs from its high-quality concert archives. The performances, which draw on material from all eight festival seasons, will be broadcast on the station’s Wednesday evening “Ovations” Series on June 24, August 5, and August 12 from 8:00 to 10:00 pm, and in a series of six, one-hour Sunday evening broadcasts from June 28 through August 2, all at 8:00 pm.

WCLV co-founder Robert Conrad will host and produce the series, which will include performances that have never gone out over the airwaves before.

We’ll share more information about the broadcasts next week. Meanwhile, here’s the schedule as it stands now, subject to change. [Read more…]

Julian Wachner & Apollo’s Fire: Bach’s Christmas Oratorio at CMA (Dec. 13)

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by Daniel Hathaway

In 1735, Johann Sebastian Bach’s congregations in the two principal churches of Leipzig were treated to six new cantatas between Christmas Day and Epiphany, at a rate of one per feast day. In 2019, Apollo’s Fire’s audiences got to hear two-thirds of those pieces in one sitting, as guest conductor Julian Wachner led Cantatas Nos. 1, 2, 5, and 6 of Bach’s Christmas Oratorio in five venues around the city. I heard the performance on Friday, December 13 in Gartner Auditorium at the Cleveland Museum of Art. [Read more…]

Julian Wachner to lead Apollo’s Fire
in J.S. Bach’s Christmas Oratorio

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by Daniel Hathaway

Christmas was a major inspiration for church music in Leipzig in J.S. Bach’s time, as evidenced by the six festive cantatas he wrote for the celebrations of 1735 — one each for December 25, 26, and 27, New Year’s Day, the first Sunday of the new year, and the feast of the Epiphany. This week, Apollo’s Fire will perform four of the cantatas that comprise Bach’s Christmas Oratorio in five venues around the city under guest conductor Julian Wachner, with soprano Molly Netter, countertenor Daniel Moody, tenor Stephen Soph, baritone Jesse Blumberg, and Apollo’s Singers.

Julian Wachner has spent his distinguished career with one foot in church music and the other in the concert world. A native of California, he began as a boy chorister at New York’s St. Thomas Choir School and currently serves as Director of Music and the Arts at Trinity Church, Wall Street. An acclaimed conductor of early music, contemporary music, and opera, he also finds time to compose. I spoke with him by telephone last week in Missouri, where he was leading performances of Handel’s Messiah with the Kansas City Symphony.

The Christmas Oratorio holds a special place in Wachner’s career — it’s the first work he recorded 20 years ago, and that recording has recently been re-engineered and re-released. “Jeannette Sorrell told me to pick four of the six cantatas for Cleveland,” Wachner said, “so I thought I’d choose five and six, the ones that aren’t often done, in addition to one and two. There’s such glorious music in the last pair that I thought it would be wonderful to spring those on the audience.” [Read more…]

Kent Blossom Music Festival: Kosower & Oh launch faculty series (July 3)

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by Daniel Hathaway

Masterclasses and coachings are valuable, but hearing your mentors perform is one of the most inspiring features summer music festivals can offer their young artists. In his ambitious program that opened the 2019 Kent Blossom faculty series on Wednesday, July 3 in Ludwig Recital Hall, Cleveland Orchestra principal cello Mark Kosower gave a variety of object lessons to an audience largely populated by festival participants. [Read more…]

ChamberFest Cleveland: “Sei Solo” at Mixon (June 22)

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by Timothy Robson

There was a full house at CIM’s Mixon Hall on Saturday evening June 22, despite numerous travails of parking due to construction and the Art Museum’s Summer Solstice event. But the hassle was worth it for Sei Solo (You Are Alone), a program of music by composers under the influence of loss. The selection of familiar and unfamiliar works is a hallmark of Chamberfest Cleveland and Saturday’s performance included works by J.S. Bach, John Cage, Mendelssohn and Brahms. [Read more…]

Petra Poláčková gains steam at the CICG Festival (June 9)

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by Rory O’Donoghue

Czech guitarist Petra Poláčková returned to the Cleveland International Classical Guitar Festival with a performance that gained in confidence and character as it went along on Sunday, June 9 in CIM’s Mixon Hall. She began with several works by the wildly successful lutenist Sylvius Leopold Weiss, which she performed on her beautiful nine-string Romantic guitar crafted by Jan Tulacek. Visually striking with its additional strings, the instrument had a pure, sweet sound of remarkable depth. [Read more…]

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