by Daniel Hathaway

Since 2009, Levkovich has been busy performing in Europe, competing in competitions, and winning a prestigious German piano award (details of his activities can be seen on his website). We caught up with the 35-year-old pianist at the Cleveland Institute of Music, where he was busy practicing for his appearance this weekend.
DH: This will be your fourth appearance with Steve Eva and the Chagrin Studio Orchestra.
DL: The first time was right after the piano competition. Steve wanted me to play Rachmaninoff 2, the same concerto I did with The Cleveland Orchestra. The second time was the Paganini Rhapsody, and then we did a set of concertos: Rachmaninoff 4, and Prokofiev 1. Now it’s Rach 3. We just rehearsed for the first time yesterday, and everything looks good. [Read more…]




When Gilbert & Sullivan’s Pirates of Penzance premiered in New York on December 31, 1879, the two-act comic opera was immediately popular with audiences and critics alike. Today Pirates remains one of Gilbert & Sullivan’s most-performed operas. This weekend,
Warning to all witches: you’re courting danger if you try to turn children into gingerbread in Northeast Ohio. You’ve been punished for that many times recently — at the Cleveland Institute of Music (March 2012), at Youngstown State University (April 2013), at the Oberlin Conservatory (November 2013) and at Baldwin Wallace University (February 2014). The children rebelled once again last weekend at the Barlow Center in Hudson, as Nightingale Opera Theatre staged three performances of Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel. And once again, the witch didn’t survive the trip through her own oven. I saw the show, which was sung in English, on Sunday, June 29.