by Jarrett Hoffman
From a brooding opening, through a turbulent depiction of reality, to a rousing journey for freedom that surely lodged itself into the audience’s collective memory for a long time to come, the orchestral and choral forces of Oberlin College and Conservatory traced a compelling emotional arc with their program at Carnegie Hall’s Stern Auditorium on January 20.
by Stephanie Manning
“Colors,” the theme for CityMusic Cleveland’s current season, seemed a particularly apt descriptor for their concert on December 9. While Lakewood Congregational Church was decorated in holiday greenery, the musicians inside forewent traditional black attire for shades of festive red. But those two colors weren’t the only ones in play. Led by principal guest conductor Stefan Willich, the Chamber Orchestra provided all kinds of vivid imagery in the second program of their 19th season.
With its policy of free admission, CityMusic is a prime example of how the price of the ticket doesn’t always correlate to the quality of the performance. The centerpiece of the program, Mozart’s Symphony No. 4 in g, proved the group particularly apt in the style of the Classical composer. Aided by clean and precise phrasing, the group gave off the rich sound of a larger ensemble. [Read more…]
by Nicholas Stevens
Strange things happen to art amid mass violence. During World War II, Beethoven’s Ninth resounded at festivals in honor of mass murderers, who were proud to count the composer as a compatriot. Yet elsewhere, Allied soldiers were using the opening motif of Beethoven’s Fifth — three short notes, one long: Morse code for the letter V — to signify victory. So it was that, in 1943, the Nazis forced the musicians of the Theresienstadt concentration camp to perform Verdi’s Requiem for an audience of human rights inspectors, before shipping them off to gas chambers at Auschwitz. So it is that last week, CityMusic Cleveland honored the memory of those musicians and all of those lost in the Holocaust, with a performance of that very piece. [Read more…]
by Nicholas Stevens
At performances by CityMusic Cleveland last week, principal guest conductor Stefan Willich began his comments with a terse observation: “Love is a complicated thing.” It served as a wry introduction to Richard Wagner’s Wesendonck Lieder, five settings of poems by the married Mathilde Wesendonck, written as Wagner (also married) pursued an affair with her. However, the statement could have served as a motto for each of the pieces on the program. [Read more…]
by Robert Rollin
On Sunday, May 19 at Anshe Chesed Fairmount Temple, CityMusic Cleveland, under the direction of Avner Dorman, performed an excellent concert that brought insight into pop icon David Bowie’s many inspirations. Bowie’s own songs, juxtaposed with Richard Strauss’s “Im Abendrot” (In the Twilight) from his Four Last Songs, were the highlight of the concert. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Joel Smirnoff, CIM president, makes his Ohio conducting debut with CityMusic Cleveland
On a dark and windy night, with dire predictions of a major winter storm on its way (didn’t quite happen), what better refuge than a warm, brightly lit church and a free concert of some of Mozart’s most charming small orchestra music? Several hundred people thought so, packing Fairmount Presbyterian Church from narthex to chancel for Joel Smirnoff’s Ohio conducting debut with CityMusic Cleveland.
After a greeting from Fairmount pastor Louise Westfall, who led a charming, color coded tour through the deciduous program booklet’s coupons, surveys, concert handbills and donation forms, soloists Nathan Olson and Jessica Oudin came on with Maestro Smirnoff to give us the Sinfonia Concertante for violin, viola and orchestra, K.364.