by Daniel Hathaway
Classical music begins stirring from its long holiday nap during the first two weeks of January, revving up from adagio to allegro by mid-month.
The Westminster Choir — the flagship ensemble of Westminster Choir College, now part of New Jersey’s Rider University, will make a stop at the Church of the Covenant in University Circle on Saturday, January 6 at 7:30 pm during its winter tour. Joe Miller will conduct the ensemble in Frank Martin’s Mass for Double Choir (1926), György Ligeti’s Lux Aeterna (1966), and music by Joel Phillips, Tim Brent, Edward C. Bairstow, Ailo Alcala and Randall Thompson.
Franz Welser-Möst and The Cleveland Orchestra will make a big splash the weekend of January 11 with Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 9 and a new work by Austrian composer Johannes Maria Staud. Stromab (“Downstream”) is inspired by what Staud calls “one of the finest horror stories of all time,” Algernon Blackwood’s The Willows, a tale of two young people who canoe down the Danube and discover a lonely island where weird things swirl around them. Mahler 9, the composer’s last symphony, has been described by Herbert von Karajan as “music coming from another world, from eternity.” There are performances on Thursday the 11th at 7:30 pm and on Friday and Saturday the 12th and 13th at 8:00 pm.
Another major work will be featured the following week when soprano Golda Schultz, tenor Maximilian Schmidt, and baritone Thomas Hampson join Welser-Möst, The Cleveland Orchestra, and the Cleveland Orchestra Chorus in Haydn’s The Seasons. Performances are scheduled for Thursday, January 18 at 7:30 and Saturday, January 20 at 8:00 pm. In between, Welser-Möst and the Orchestra will play all-Beethoven on Friday, January 19 at 8:00 pm — Symphonies 1 and 3 and the Overture to The Creatures of Prometheus.
Cleveland’s French Baroque ensemble Les Délices will visit an earlier era the weekend of January 13 and 14 for “Intoxicating,” a program of medieval music by Machaut, Solage and others featuring Elena Mullins, soprano, Jason McStoots, tenor, Charlie Weaver, lute, Scott Metcalfe, harp and vielle, and director Debra Nagy. in music by Machaut, Solage and others. There are performances on Saturday evening, January 13 at 8:00 pm at Lakewood Congregational Church, and on Sunday afternoon, January 14 at 4:00 pm at Herr Chapel at Plymouth Church in Shaker Heights. The ensemble is also sponsoring a Medieval Dance Party — a 45-minute performance for children and their grownups — on Saturday, January 13 at 3:00 pm at Bop Stop.
Cleveland’s No Exit New Music welcomes its Twin Cities colleagues of Zeitgeist for a joint concert of intimate new solo and trio works at Heights Arts on Saturday, January 13 at 8:00 pm. The free concert will feature works by Morton Feldman, Andrew Rindfleisch, William Anderson, and a No Exit improvisation. The two ensembles come together for a second event on Sunday, January 14 at Noon at Spaces gallery.
A rare performance on the Cleveland Museum of Art’s Holtkamp organ will feature Davide Mariano in a free recital of works by Bach, Mozart, Schumann, Widor, and Guilmant on Sunday afternoon, January 14 at 2:00 pm.
Three events will honor the memory of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on his birthday weekend. Victor Liva will lead the Cleveland Philharmonic in a free concert on Sunday, January 14 at 3:00 pm in Tri-C’s Metro Auditorium (but tickets are required: call 216.987.4805).
Franz Welser-Möst will preside over the annual MLK Celebration Concert in Severance Hall on Sunday, January 14 at 7:00 pm, a program featuring Ryan Speedo Green, bass-baritone, James Pickens Jr., actor & the Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration Chorus, William Henry Caldwell, director. Free tickets are available through the Severance Hall Box Office (if any are left by the time you read this — but the event will be broadcast live over WCLV, 104.9 FM & WCPN, 90.3 FM).
And on Monday, January 15, Severance Hall opens its doors from 12:30 pm to 5:00 pm for its annual MLK Community Open House. Free scheduled events include the Cleveland Orchestra Youth Chorus at 12:30 pm; Cleveland School of the Arts R. Nathaniel Dett Choir at 1:15 pm; El Sistema@Rainey at 2:00 pm; Cleveland Classical d,Guitar Society Students at 2:45 pm; Lafayette Carthon & Faith at 3:30 pm; and Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra at 4:15 pm.
There are tough chamber music choices to be made on Sunday, January 21. Clarinetist Franklin Cohen and pianist Zsolt Bognár have rescheduled their concert on the Arts Renaissance Tremont series for 3:00 pm, that day, putting them head-to-head with the next Heights Arts “Close Encounters” performance at the Bop Stop featuring English hornist Robert Walters, bassoonist Drew Pattison, and pianist Edward “Teddy” Niedermaier in “Rhythms, Rhymes, and the Kitchen Sink,” and in close proximity to a 4:00 pm CIM faculty recital when tenor Corey Shotwell and pianist Gerardo Tessonnière will present Schubert’s Winterreise and the premiere of Evan Fein’s Letzte Brief, a setting of Schubert’s last letter.
Also embracing the season on January 21, Good Company, A Vocal Ensemble, will sing a 4:00 pm program titled “Winter’s Fire” at Lakewood Presbyterian Church including Morten Lauridsen’s Mid-Winter Songs and topical music by Ruth Draper, Joan Szymko, and Eriks Esenvalds.
The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center will send pianists Wu Han and Michael Brown, violinists Paul Huang and Chad Hoopes, violist Matthew Lipman, and cellist Dmitri Atapine to Akron’s E.J. Thomas Hall on Tuesday, January 23 for Tuesday Musical’s January event, featuring four-hand Slavonic and Hungarian dances and chamber music by Dvořák and Brahms.
And to round out the month, Cleveland Opera Theater will turn its attention to new opera scenes by Marti Griebling-Haigh, Lorenzo Salvagni, and Ryan Charles Ramer, and the Cleveland premiere of Dawn Sonntag’s Verlorene Heimat (“Lost Homeland”) the weekend of January 27 and 28. Performances take place at the Maltz Performing Arts Center.
Consult our calendar listings for details and ticket information.
Published on ClevelandClassical.com January 2, 2018.
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