by David Kulma
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is an unlikely folk hero. Her law career has spanned six decades, with more than 25 years on the Supreme Court. Now 86, she has written a notable series of blistering dissents. This has endeared her to a younger generation on her side of the political fence, and earned her an unexpected nickname: Notorious RBG.
by Mike Telin
“Fight for the things that you care about, but do it in a way that will lead others to join you.”
— Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, aka Notorious RBG
On Thursday, April 18 at 7:00 pm in Cleveland State University’s Drinko Recital Hall, pianist Angelin Chang, soprano Patrice Michaels, and classical music producer James Ginsburg will present Michaels’ THE LONG VIEW: A Portrait of Ruth Bader Ginsburg in Nine Songs. The cycle serves as the centerpiece of this one-act, 75-minute dramatic concert which also includes works by Vivian Fung, Stacy Garrop, Lee Hoiby, Lori Laitman, and John Musto as well as projection designs by Yee Eun Nam. A Question & Answer session will follow the performance. Admission is free and open to the public.
This nine-song cycle by Michaels (daughter-in-law of RBG) brings to light many aspects of Justice Ginsburg’s personal and professional life through letters, remembrances, conversations, and court opinions. The cycle has been recorded by Michaels for Cedille Records, the Chicago-based label of James Ginsburg (son of RBG). The album Notorious RBG in Song is available from Cedille.
by Daniel Hathaway
Twenty-two young pianists from eleven countries will flock to the Cleveland Institute of Music next week to compete in both junior and senior divisions of the Cleveland International Piano Competition for Young Artists. (Meet the contestants here.)
The competition — verging on a festival with the inclusion of several extra events — will be set in motion on Wednesday evening, May 30 with a 7:30 pm opening ceremony in Kulas Hall featuring Canadian pianist Leonid Nediak. Only 12 when he took home second prize in CIPC’s junior division in 2015, Nediak will play solo works before joining Liza Grossman and the Contemporary Youth Orchestra in the first movement of Rachmaninoff’s Second Concerto. WCLV’s Robert Conrad will introduce all of the contestants from the stage, and a reception will follow.
Competition rounds begin on Thursday afternoon, May 31 in Kulas Hall and continue daily through the semifinal rounds on June 6, when three pianists in each of the junior (ages 12-14) and senior divisions (ages 15-17) will advance to the final round. That event, on Friday, June 8 at 7:30 pm at the Maltz Performing Arts Center, will feature concerto performances with Gerhardt Zimmermann and the Canton Symphony Orchestra. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
In 2011, pianist Angelin Chang was featured in Mozart’s D-minor Piano Concerto with the Cleveland Women’s Orchestra at Severance Hall. This Sunday, April 22 at 3:30 pm, the Cleveland State University professor will return to solo with that ensemble in a very different work, Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Second Concerto.
“It’s one of the most popular concertos of all time,” the pianist said in a telephone conversation, “but sometimes after hearing those beautiful, lush, transporting themes we forget that the piece came from a grim place in his life. Rachmaninoff had deep depression and writer’s block until his hypnotist got him out of it. It’s important to know so that the beauty and passion can come through in this technically difficult piece.”
(Speaking of going from one mood to the other, Chang told me about her niece who wanted to visit Cleveland in February to get away from the sun and heat of California. “Though the weather didn’t cooperate and they didn’t get to experience ice and snow, they were so excited to have gloomy weather so they could appreciate the other kind later.”) [Read more…]
by Robert Rollin
Last Sunday afternoon the Suburban Symphony presented an interesting “All Russian Program” at the University School Shaker Campus’s Conway Hall, an acoustically effective six hundred seat auditorium. The highlight was an excellent performance of the rarely heard Shostakovich Concerto for Piano, Trumpet, and String Orchestra, Opus 35 with Angelin Chang as piano soloist. Chang chairs the Keyboard Department at Cleveland State University. The unusual instrumentation made for a transparent orchestral texture that combined well with Chang’s wonderful musical exuberance and skill.
Shostakovich wrote this humorous and witty piece at age twenty-seven, premiering the piano part himself, accompanied by the Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra. The Concerto precipitated the composer’s first difficulties with Stalin that were to trouble him for many years, though the piece’s tongue-in-cheek character, similar to that of his Tahiti Trot, composed four years earlier, makes Stalin’s distaste all the more incomprehensible.
Chang’s alert and intense performance of the opening Allegretto fairly sparkled and seemed to sweep up the orchestra in her wake. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Angelin Chang brought a lot of technology to her recital at Gartner Auditorium of the Cleveland Museum of Art on Sunday afternoon, March 24. A Yamaha concert grand piano wired for midi held conversations with three laptop computers and projected the results onto a large screen for some of the works on the program, and Chang used an iPad instead of sheet music during one selection. The recital was the third and final concert of the Tri-C Classical Piano Series for this season and attracted a good-sized audience.
The images, generated first during Chang’s performance of Liszt’s transcription of J.S. Bach’s organ prelude and fugue in a minor, were the work of Cleveland State University faculty artist Qian Li — a set of slides ordered and superimposed at the behest of Chang’s fingers as channeled into the laptops and translated by computer software. [Read more…]