Alexandre Kantorow Archives - Cleveland Classical

Pianist Alexander Kantorow’s thoughtful artistry defines his Cleveland debut (Apr. 16)

April 23, 2026 by Stephanie Manning

by Stephanie Manning

This article was originally published on Cleveland.com

CLEVELAND, Ohio — On the cover of the Severance Music Center’s April 16 program book, Alexandre Kantorow stares at the viewer from one end of the piano keyboard, his face mirrored in the glossy fallboard. That stylistic presentation felt quite fitting for the French pianist, a musician who brings out the contrasting sides in every piece and whose playing often produces a reflective, translucent quality.

Currently on a multi-week tour of the U.S., Kantorow made his Cleveland debut on Thursday night at Severance Music Center. Dressed in all black, he initially cut an unassuming figure, an impression that quickly dissolved with the intense opening chords of Franz Liszt’s Variations on Weinen, Klagen, Sorgen, Zagen after J.S. Bach.

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Pianist Alexandre Kantorow to make Cleveland debut

April 14, 2026 by Mike Telin

by Mike Telin

In 2019 at the age of 22, Alexandre Kantorow became the first French pianist to be awarded the Gold Medal at Tchaikovsky Competition, along with the Grand Prix, something that has happened only three times in the competition’s history. In 2024, he received the Gilmore Artist Award.

On Thursday, April 16 at 7:30 pm, Alexandre Kantorow will make his Severance Music Center debut as part of The Cleveland Orchestra Recital series. His program will feature works by Liszt, Chopin, Medtner, Alkan, Scriabin, and Beethoven. Tickets are available online.

Answering his phone in Paris, he told me he was taking care of real-life things like renewing his passport before heading back into the music world. His American tour begins on Tuesday, April 14 and continues until May 2.

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Klaus Mäkelä leads powerful Britten’s ‘War Requiem’ at Severance (Apr. 23)

by Daniel Hathaway

This article was originally published on Cleveland.com

CLEVELAND, Ohio — Do the arts have the wherewithal to take up great subjects like war? Four hundred years ago, Shakespeare sent his Prologue onstage at the top of his play Henry V to apologize in advance to the audience for its shortcomings:

Pardon, gentles all,
The flat unraisèd spirits that hath dared
On this unworthy scaffold to bring forth
So great an object. Can this cockpit hold
The vasty fields of France? Or may we cram
Within this wooden O the very casques
That did affright the air at Agincourt?

In 1961, British pacifist composer Benjamin Britten addressed that question by writing his “War Requiem” on commission for the consecration of the new Coventry Cathedral, which rose next to the ruins from an 11-hour long Luftwaffe bombing raid on the night of November 14, 1940.

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Cleveland Pops plays Williams & Spielberg (Apr. 24)

by Kevin McLaughlin

On Friday, April 24 at Severance Music Center, the Cleveland Pops Orchestra played to a packed house with a program devoted to John Williams and Steven Spielberg — a partnership that reliably fills seats. Williams writes themes you can recognize in seconds, sometimes in two notes.

Carl Topilow made that point before the first downbeat. “Ladies and gentlemen — the two notes that changed the course of music history,” he said, letting Jaws swim in with low strings, and a steady pulse, the interval repeating then tightening like a screw.

From there, the program moved among Williams’ familiar modes. The “March from 1941” had a buoyant snap. Close Encounters offered short, bright phrases, almost conversational. And in Jurassic Park, the orchestra leaned into the composer’s gift for breadth.

Not all of Williams’ music trades in spectacle. As the New York Times has noted, it often works by taking older materials and presenting them in technicolor. The themes of Schindler’s List are spare and direct, the emotion carried by contour and tone rather than overt passion.

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