by Daniel Hathaway
April’s showers may not inspire Northeast Ohioans to go on pilgrimages, as Chaucer famously noted, but especially this year, concert planners’ thoughts have turned to another Spring rite: Stravinsky’s ballet Le sacre du printemps, which received its infamous debut on May 29, 1913 by Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballet Russes at the Champs-Élysées Theatre in Paris.
On April 13 at E.J. Thomas Hall, the Akron Symphony will team up with David Shimotakahara’s GroundWorks Dance Theater for a fully-choreographed performance of Rite involving 100 musicians, eight professional dancers and fifteen members of a student ensemble. Later, on April 20, Gerhardt Zimmermann will lead the Canton Symphony in Stravinsky’s famous work in Umstadt Hall. In between, on April 16, you can hear the work in its pre-orchestration version for two pianos played by Gerald Evans and Margarita Denenberg on the Lorain County Community College Signature Series.
Another extravagant celebration of Spring — perhaps not so self-consciously primitive but lusty enough in its own right — is Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana, based on songs by medieval wandering scholars collected at the Bavarian abbey of Benediktbeuern (a page pictured above). James Feddeck (replacing Franz Welser-Möst), The Cleveland Orchestra, Chorus and Children’s Chorus are offering four performances between April 11 and 14 (Sunday afternoon) prefaced by Bach’s concerto in A for oboe d’amore played by Robert Walters. (ClevelandClassical will be hosting information tables in the lobbies that weekend; please stop by and say hello.)
Spring also figures prominently later in the month when Les Délices offers its baroque take on the four seasons suggested by Vivaldi (April 20 and 21) and featuring hurdy-gurdy virtuoso Tobie Miller and soprano Clara Rotsolk, and again at Severance Hall (April 25 and 27) when Franz Welser-Möst leads The Cleveland Orchestra and Chorus in Haydn’s full-length oratorio, The Seasons, with soloists Malin Hartelius, Maximilian Schmitt and Luca Pisaroni.
Mahler’s great “Resurrection” Symphony goes well with the season of the earth’s renewal, and the Dana School of Music at Youngstown University will marshal a lot of musical resources to perform it at Stambaugh Auditorium on April 26.
The sounds of nature also figure in an unusual concert to be given by composer-singer-naturalist Lisa Rainsong on April 7 at The Bath Church titled “Musical Lessons from Earth’s First Musicians.
If it’s Spring, it’s time for the Baldwin Wallace Bach Festival, which takes place on April 19 and 20 and celebrates the music of Bach and his circle in four concerts including the lovely Christmas Oratorio (which cycles around every fourth year, Spring or not).
Not especially season-specific but notable in their own right are a long list of visiting artists who will touch down in the area for April concerts. Here are some of them:
BRASS: Western Brass Quintet at Oberlin (April 5); Canadian Brass at E.J. Thomas Hall (Tuesday Musical, April 16).
CHAMBER MUSIC: The Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio with the Miami Quartet at Kent State (April 13) and with the CIM Orchestra at Severance Hall (April 17); Imani Winds in Wooster (April 14); cellist Robert deMaine with pianist Peter Takács at Oberlin (April 14); and on the Cleveland Chamber Music Society Series, Quatuor ébène (April 16) and the Berlin Philharmonic Woodwind Quintet (April 30).
CLASSICAL GUITAR: Marcin Dylla, Poland (Cleveland Classical Guitar Society, April 5); the Minneapolis Guitar Quartet (Sandusky Concert Association, April 7).
EARLY MUSIC: Schola Antiqua of Chicago at St. John’s Cathedral (music by Chaucer’s contemporary Guillaume de Machaut, April 26).
ORGANISTS: Ken Cowan (April 7) and Peter Richard Conte (April 28) at Stambaugh Auditorium, Youngstown; Christopher Houlihan at Fairmount Presbyterian, Cleveland Hts. (April 19); Bálint Karosi (BW Bach Festival, April 19); Dorothy Papadakos (Holy Trinity Lutheran, Akron, April 19).
PIANISTS: Stanislaw Ioudenitch at Oberlin (April 13); Nathan Carterette at Trinity Cathedral, Cleveland (April 17).
VIOLINISTS: Matteo Fedeli plays the 1726 Stradavarius “ex Adams Collection” at Severance Hall under the auspices of the Consulate of Italy in Detroit (April 28).
YOUNG VIOLINISTS & PIANISTS: Laureates of the Oberlin Cooper Competition return for a marathon performance in Finney Chapel (April 11).
There are many more events — 110 we know about so far during the month of April, including multiple concerts by CityMusic Cleveland (April 10 on) and Apollo’s Fire April 25-28, the Cleveland Philharmonic with competition winner John Mietus, double bass (April 14) and the Cleveland Women’s Orchestra at Severance Hall with violinist Jinjoo Cho and cellist Cicely Parnas (April 28). Check the ClevelandClassical concert listings for details.
Published on ClevelandClassical.com April 2, 2013
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