by Robert Rollin
Kent Blossom presented its fifth and final faculty series program in Ludwig Recital Hall last Wednesday, August 1. The evening’s highlight was the gorgeous performance of Charles-Marie Widor’s Sonata for Cello and Piano in A by Richard Weiss, Cleveland Orchestra first assistant principal cello, and Joela Jones, Cleveland Orchestra keyboardist.
by Timothy Robson
In the penultimate concert of their 2018 season, ChamberFest Cleveland offered the program “Behind Bars” on Friday, June 29 in Reinberger Chamber Music Hall at Severance Hall. The title was a reference to twentieth-century composer, organist and teacher Olivier Messiaen, who was being held in a German POW camp in 1940 when he composed his Quartet for the End of Time. That work received a searingly intense performance on the second half of the program, rendering the music that preceded it almost trivial by comparison. [Read more…]
by Delaney Meyers
The Lute Society of America’s annual LuteFest draws people from all over the world, and is the largest early plucked instrument festival of its kind. From Sunday, June 24 through Friday, June 29 on the campus of Case Western Reserve University, LuteFest-2018! will present concerts by world-class faculty, and festival participants will take part in all kinds of workshops — they’ll learn about lute technique as well as the instrument’s history and repertoire
“One of the great things about this festival is that every participant gets private lessons with the faculty members,” Assistant Director Chris Wilke said during a recent telephone conversation. “It’s like going to a cello conference and getting a private lesson with Yo-Yo Ma.” Lessons are open to anyone who registers, regardless of their level or background with the instrument.
by Mike Telin & Daniel Hathaway
For the past seventeen years, the Cleveland International Classical Guitar Festival has brought some of the world’s finest classical guitarists, lutenists, lecturers, composers, teachers, and guitar makers to the Cleveland Institute of Music. The eighteenth season, which ran from June 8 through 10, featured thirteen artists and ensembles, five concerts, nine master classes, and three lectures. Here are our impressions of the artists who provided enthusiastic audiences with top-notch performances of a range of diverse and entertaining repertoire. [Read more…]
by Mike Telin
It’s a privilege to be asked to perform the closing concert of any festival. It also requires the artists to create a program that both celebrates the past and looks to the future. At this year’s Cleveland International Classical Guitar Festival, the honor of presenting the final concert has been bestowed upon guitarist Colin Davin and soprano Estelí Gomez. The Festival runs from Friday June 8 through Sunday June 10 at the Cleveland Institute of Music. Tickets can be purchased online.
On Sunday, June 10 at 7:30 pm in Mixon Hall, Davin and Gomez will present Nomads by Nature. The evening will include repertoire standards — some with a new twist — as well as two World Premieres which are grounded in 21st century cultural esthetics.
In a joint telephone conversation, Davin and Gomez said the program’s title is taken from a line in the text of Henri Duparc’s L’Invitation au voyage which opens the concert. Davin first encountered Duparc’s setting of Charles Baudelaire’s poem when he was asked to play at the 90th birthday party for French painter, critic, and author, Françoise Gilot. “They requested some French music and we settled on this piece,” Davin said. [Read more…]
by Mike Telin
For the past seventeen years, the Cleveland International Classical Guitar Festival has brought some of the world’s finest classical guitarists, lutenists, lecturers, composers, teachers, and guitar makers to the Cleveland Institute of Music for three days of concerts, masterclasses, lectures, and demonstrations.
“It’s got to be one of the very best festivals in the world for our instrument,” guitarist Jason Vieaux said during a telephone interview. Vieaux, who heads the guitar department at CIM, credits CICGF founder and artistic director Armin Kelly for the Festival’s success. “For Armin it’s all about quality. Year in and year out, the players that he brings in are incredible, and the Festival is a tremendous gift to the City of Cleveland.”
Beginning on Friday, June 8 and continuing through Sunday, June 10, the 2018 edition of CICGF will feature thirteen artists and ensembles, five concerts, nine master classes, and three lectures. Click here to view the full schedule. Tickets are available online.
On Friday, June 8 at 7:30 pm in Mixon Hall, the Grammy-winning Vieaux will team up with his duo partner, accordionist Julien Labro, for this year’s opening concert. [Read more…]
by Nicholas Stevens
Christoph Prégardien has traced the path of Schubert’s song cycle Die schöne Müllerin many times, yet he always seems to find it fresh beneath his feet. In two recordings and dozens of recitals, the German lyric tenor has made the cycle his own, sounding the hope, heartbreak, and resentment of its wandering miller with such assurance that his interpretation of the story feels genuinely true. [Read more…]
by Mike Telin
Since ChamberFest Cleveland’s inaugural season in 2012, Festival co-artist directors Diana and Franklin Cohen have taken the concept of thematic programming to new heights. (It’s) About Time (2013) explored elements of time as related to the musical experience. Last season’s theme, Cycles: Phases! reflected on the complexity of the human experience at each stage of life.
This season ChamberFest will consider the concept of freedom — an essential ingredient to the creative process. Beginning of June 14 and continuing through June 30, In Search of Freedom will explore the range of freedom in music, with nine concerts in a variety of venues.
In addition to violinist Diana Cohen and clarinetist Franklin Cohen, this year’s roster of returning artists will include violinists Noah Bendix-Balgley, Alexi Kenney, and Amy Schwartz-Moretti, violinist/violist Yura Lee, cellists Julie Albers, Clive Greensmith, and Oliver Herbert, bassist Nathan Farrington, and pianists Zoltán Fejérvári, Roman Rabinovich, and Orion Weiss. Making their ChamberFest debuts are violinist Noah Geller, violists Matthew Lipman and Tanner Menees, cellist Nicholas Canellakis, flutist Lorna McGhee, and singer Amanda Powell.
by Daniel Hathaway
The first of two festivals capping off The Cleveland Orchestra’s centennial season was based around Richard Wagner’s groundbreaking version of the Tristan and Isolde legend. Culminating on April 29 with the third performance of his four-hour-long opera (Wagner called it “eine Handlung”), the festival also included a performance of Messiaen’s transcendent Turangalîla- Symphonie, and a concert titled “Divine Ecstasy,” a gathering of works that translate the notion of love-intoxication into the spiritual realm. [Read more…]
by Nicholas Stevens
Éliane Radigue creates works that often suit the gallery better than the concert hall. Best known for drone compositions of almost cosmic proportions — OMNHT, her current installation at MOCA Cleveland, runs for several decades before looping — her works tend to defy conventional notions of performance. But last week, Northeast Ohio concertgoers took in a rare experience: hearing some of Radigue’s recent acoustic works for live performers, while seated inside the installation.