ClevelandClassical.com Header
Ad
Ad
Ad

ChamberFest Cleveland: a four-course meal during “Innocence and Experience” (June 26)

by

by Stephanie Manning

ChamberFest Cleveland’s June 26 concert had stiffer competition than usual, with The Cleveland Orchestra simultaneously performing for Wade Oval Wednesdays right down the street. But you wouldn’t have known it from the packed house that filled Mixon Hall that evening at the Cleveland Institute of Music.

The program, titled “Innocence and Experience,” marked the long-awaited festival debut of guitarist Jason Vieaux. (Although the venue was no doubt familiar to him — he’s taught at CIM since 1997.) Vieaux and his fellow musicians kicked off the program with Luigi Boccherini’s Guitar Quintet No. 4 in D, a lively piece with the subtitle “Fandango.”

[Read more…]

National Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine to play at Tri-C Metro on February 23

by

by Daniel Hathaway

On Thursday, February 23 at 7pm, the Tri-C Classical Piano Series will deviate from its usual pattern of presenting solo pianists to welcome the National Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine to the stage of its Metropolitan Campus.

The orchestra will be led by Theodore Kuchar and Carl Topilow. Kuchar, a violist and 1982 graduate of the Cleveland Institute of Music, became the Principal Guest Conductor of the Ukrainian State Symphony Orchestra in 1992, and was appointed Artistic Director and Principal Conductor of the ensemble in 1994, when it changed its name to the National Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine. In 2000, he became Conductor Laureate for Life.

The National Symphony, based in Lviv,  is currently on an extended 40-concert tour aimed at promoting Ukrainian culture that included a stop at Carnegie Hall (read the New York Times article here). Its first-ever concert in Cleveland, which will feature duo-pianists Emanuela Friscioni and Antonio Pompa-Baldi, marks the one-year anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine — almost down to the minute.

In a Zoom conversation earlier this week, Kuchar said he had met for coffee with the American Ambassador to Ukraine last February in Lviv following a performance of the Dvořák Requiem. “I went home late on the 23rd and at about 4:20 the next morning, I heard sounds I had never heard before.” Those turned out to be World War II-era Soviet sirens screaming from atop telephone poles, announcing the Russian invasion. [Read more…]

Cleveland Women’s Orchestra celebrates 87 years in style (Apr. 24)

by

by Stephanie Manning

After observing so many concerts from The Cleveland Orchestra — an ensemble that has long been lagging in its representation of women — it was refreshing to see their usual stage occupied by a group that reverses that gender discrepancy.

On April 24 at Severance Music Center, The Cleveland Women’s Orchestra and conductor John Thomas Dodson presented a program that gave a healthy challenge for its players without getting too far out of their comfort zone.

[Read more…]

Music From The Western Reserve: pianists Antonio Pompa-Baldi and Emanuela Friscioni (Nov. 14)

by

by Peter Feher

Even the best pianists only share a keyboard in performance with someone they trust. Fortunately for Cleveland audiences, the bond between two players doesn’t get much deeper than the duo of Antonio Pompa-Baldi and Emanuela Friscioni.

The husband-and-wife piano team gave a spectacular four-hands recital at Christ Church Episcopal in Hudson on November 14, part of Music From The Western Reserve’s 2021–2022 concert series.

You could see the relationship at work on a practical level. Repertoire for two players at the same piano requires a certain choreography. There’s just one of each pedal to share, and the hand crossings left and right — which can be so fun to watch a soloist pull off — get more complicated when another person’s involved. At times, Pompa-Baldi drew a hand away from the keyboard and into his body, making room for Friscioni, and at the close of a few delicate phrases, the two were crouched together over the same final notes at one end of the instrument. [Read more…]

Pompa-Baldi & Friscioni open Tri-C Classical Piano Series

by

by Daniel Hathaway

The annual quartet of free concerts presented on the Tri-C Classical Piano Series usually happens at the Cleveland Museum of Art, taking profit of the crowds that show up early on Sunday afternoons to entice museumgoers to make a detour into Gartner Auditorium during their visit.

Although the Museum had just opened again earlier in the week, in-person concerts were not on the agenda. Instead, Classical Piano Series director Emanuela Friscioni and her husband Antonio Pompa-Baldi invited a virtual audience into their handsome, sun-dappled music room for an intimate, exquisitely-played program of four-hand piano works by Schubert and Debussy topped off with the premiere of a new work by their fellow Italian, Luca Moscardi. [Read more…]

CD Review — Solomiya Ivakhiv & Antonio Pompa-Baldi: Mendelssohn early violin concertos

by

by Hannah Schoepe

While Felix Mendelssohn’s Concerto in e is played by every violinist at a certain stage in their development, not many listeners are aware of the first violin concerto Mendelssohn composed — in d minor.

His double concerto for violin and piano might be even lesser known. Ukrainian violinist Solomiya Ivakhiv has dedicated her new album Mendelssohn, released by Brilliant Classics, to rediscovering these lost gems. By her side is Italian-born pianist and Cleveland Institute of Music faculty member Antonio Pompa-Baldi. Theodore Kuchar conducts the Slovak National Symphony Orchestra.

[Read more…]

A guide to staying home and streaming videos of concerts

by

by Jarrett Hoffman

Live streams, re-broadcasts, digital archives, and YouTube channels — here are some videos of performances to keep you occupied during social distancing.

Beginning locally, some performances are still taking place via live stream, without an audience. On Thursday, March 19 at 4:30 pm, Oberlin Conservatory will stream a faculty and guest concert from Stull Recital Hall. Flutist Alexa Still, cellist Mihai Tetel, and pianist Evan Hines come together in Heitor Villa-Lobos’ Assobio a Játo (“Jet Whistle”) and Valerie Coleman’s 2019 Amazonia.

Piano Cleveland, the presenting organization of the Cleveland International Piano Competition, has announced a new weekly series called The Quarantine Concerts, to be streamed every Thursday at 7:30 pm from Steinway Piano Gallery Cleveland. The first concert, on March 19, will feature pianist Yaron Kohlberg as well as the piano duo of Natsumi Shibagaki and Irwin Shung. Online audience members have the opportunity to offer their support directly to these artists by donating to Piano Cleveland’s Musicians’ Fund.

[Read more…]

Contemporary Youth Orchestra with Pompa-Baldi & a Steinway Spirio (Nov. 16)

by

by Peter Feher

It’s tempting to think that learning only goes one way in a youth orchestra concert. Young musicians see months of rehearsal realized, often on a classic piece, maybe one they’ve never performed before. The Contemporary Youth Orchestra concert on November 16 at Tri-C East’s Mandel Theater satisfied that equation, and then offered something new. Gustav Holst’s titan-sized The Planets occupied the second half of the program, but the real energy and inventiveness came in the first, with the world premiere of a piano concerto that took a far-from-standard approach to the genre. [Read more…]

Contemporary Youth Orchestra: a new piano concerto, without the pianist

by

by Jarrett Hoffman

When the Contemporary Youth Orchestra opens its 25th season this weekend, those in the audience will see players playing, conductor conducting, and a piano whose pedals and keys depress and release, letting out the most artful of sounds, but without anyone laying a finger on it.

A talented ghost? Not exactly. Steinway & Sons has developed a high-resolution player piano known as the Spirio. By measuring hammer velocity and pedaling, it can reproduce a performance that, according to the company, is “utterly indistinguishable” from the original.

Using a Spirio, Antonio Pompa-Baldi has already recorded the solo part to Roberto Piana’s new Concerto Fantastique. That instrument will be onstage in front of the Contemporary Youth Orchestra and music director Liza Grossman, playing back Pompa-Baldi’s performance during the work’s premiere on Saturday, November 16 at 7:00 pm at Mandel Theatre on the Eastern Campus of Cuyahoga Community College. The program also includes Gustav Holst’s The Planets. [Read more…]

Tri-C Classical Piano Series: Pompa-Baldi & Friscioni (Mar. 24)

by

by David Kulma

Pianists occupy a central place in the classical music world. They are ubiquitous in solo recital, out front in concertos, and they collaborate with vocalists and instrumentalists in chamber music of all kinds. But what is surprisingly rare is pianists playing together, even though two people sitting together at one or two pianos was a major form of at-home entertainment in the 19th century. [Read more…]

Follow ClevelandClassical.com

Contact us