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Save the dates: January events to log in your classical music calendar

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by Daniel Hathaway

gaffigan-jamesFormer assistant conductor James Gaffigan will return to the podium at Severance Hall from Thursday, January 5 through Saturday, January 7 to lead The Cleveland Orchestra and pianist Kirill Gerstein in Bernard Hermann’s Suite from Psycho, Arnold Schoenberg’s Piano Concerto, the original, jazz band version of George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, and Béla Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra. Performances include Thursday and Saturday evenings, a Friday matinee and a Fridays@7 event.

From January 6-8, the Philadelphia-based vocal ensemble, The Crossing, will give sixeen performances of David Lang’s Lifespan in Gallery 218 — the glass house that rises above the Cleveland Museum of Art’s East Boulevard façade. Surrounding a 4-billion-year-old rock suspended from the ceiling, three vocalists will whistle and breathe, moving the rock like a pendulum, “a poetic form of wind erosion” (read a preview here). Performances are scheduled for Friday at 4:00, 5:00, 6:00, 7:00, 7:45 and 8:30 pm, and on Saturday and Sunday on the hour from noon to 4:00 pm. Weigh in on your experience by sharing your own comments on the ClevelandClassical.com Facebook page. [Read more…]

Cleveland Chamber Music Society brings some favorites back for its 2016-2017 season at Plymouth Church

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by Daniel Hathaway

juilliard-quartet-2016-2For its 67th season, the Cleveland Chamber Music Society will present its customary lineup of seven world-class chamber music groups — plus a young artists showcase and a young artists competition. You won’t see the names of any new ensembles on the roster for 2016-2017, but there’s a major personnel change and an interesting realignment of musicians that will be of primary interest to chamber music lovers.

“I’m looking forward to the new configuration of the Juilliard String Quartet (pictured left),” said CCMS president Barbara Green in a telephone conversation last weekend. “It’s the first time the Juilliard have included a woman [cellist Astrid Schween, who replaces Joel Krosnick], and I’ve heard every permutation since the very beginning. And then there’s the Cleveland debut of the Montrose Piano Trio, which includes violinist Martin Beaver and cellist Clive Greensmith — the two remaining members of the Tokyo Quartet — plus pianist Jon Kimura Parker, who played for CCMS some years ago with the Berlin Philharmonic Woodwind Quintet.” [Read more…]

Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center: string sextets on CCMS series at Plymouth (April 19)

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by Daniel Hathaway

SextetChamber music societies are big on presenting string quartets — they’re portable, capable of a wide range of musical expression, and they control most of the repertory. But every now and again, programming differently-sized ensembles provides a welcome change. The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center gave the Cleveland Chamber Music Society that opportunity on Tuesday, April 19, when it served up a program of string sextets by Richard Strauss, Antonín Dvořák, and Johannes Brahms to a large audience at Plymouth Church in Shaker Heights. [Read more…]

Cleveland Chamber Music Society to present Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center sextet

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by Mike Telin

Sextet“It doesn’t get much better than this,” cellist Nicholas Canellakis said during a recent telephone interview. “There’s something about the sonority that you can get from a string sextet that is so satisfying. Obviously the composers who wrote for that combination felt the same way, because they seem to luxuriate in every possible sound.”

On Tuesday, April 19 at 7:30 pm, Canellakis will join violinists Ani Kavafian and Erin Keef, violists Yura Lee and Matthew Lipman, and fellow cellist David Finckel, in a program of string sextets by Richard Strauss, Antonín Dvořák, and Johannes Brahms on the next Cleveland Chamber Music Society concert at Plymouth Church in Shaker Heights. [Read more…]

ChamberFest Cleveland: a conversation with bassoonist Fernando Traba

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by Mike Telin

TRABA-FernandoOn Wednesday, July 1 at 7:00 pm, ChamberFest will pull out all the stops when it caps off its season with a concert at the Blackstone Pipe Organ Residence in Bratenahl. The concert, titled “Stars and Stripes,” will feature Todd Wilson on the home’s custom-built organ in a performance of Ives’s Variations on a National Hymn, “America.” The prize-winning Echo Saxophone Quartet will play Terry Riley’s Tread on the Trail, and the concert will conclude with Dvořák’s String Quintet No. 3, Op. 97. At 6:15 pm, festival speaker Joel Smirnoff will present a prelude talk, and a picnic on the lawn will follow the performance.

At the suggestion of bassoonist Fernando Traba, the concert will also include Ned Rorem’s rarely-performed Winter Pages for clarinet, bassoon, violin, cello, and piano. “Frank Cohen asked me to let him know if I hear any great piece that hasn’t been played at the Festival,” Traba recalled during a recent telephone conversation. “I often visit YouTube and Spotify to try to find pieces that I don’t know. I came across a performance of this one, and it immediately struck me that it should be played at ChamberFest. I sent Frank the link, and he got back to me saying that he had actually played the piece shortly after it was premiered. I’m ashamed to say that I didn’t know a lot about Ned Rorem. He is 91 years old now, and he’s mainly known as a composer of art songs.”

[Read more…]

CCMS: Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center (Jan. 13)

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by Daniel Hathaway

CMSThe last Cleveland performance by the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center in 2010 brought two pianists and two percussionists to town for music by Shostakovich, Crumb and Bartók and shifted the Cleveland Chamber Music Society’s center of gravity westward to Waetjen Auditorium at CSU. On Tuesday evening, the Societies colluded once again, but this time the agenda was all strings and the venue was Plymouth Church in Shaker Heights. [Read more…]

Akron Symphony, Cleveland Chamber Music Society & Cleveland Orchestra to feature young musicians

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by Daniel Hathaway

Ellsworth-Zander-May-2014Among the more appealing attractions of the classical music genre is its ability to wrap the talents of multiple generations into a single performance. In the next two weeks, young musicians will be showcased alongside their more seasoned colleagues in concerts by the Akron Symphony, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and The Cleveland Orchestra.

On Saturday, January 10 at 8:00 pm in E.J. Thomas Hall, Akron Symphony music director Christopher Wilkins will yield his baton to one of his mentors, the distinguished British-born conductor Benjamin Zander (Wilkins played oboe with the Boston Philharmonic under Zander after graduating from Harvard). Zander, in turn, has invited one of his young mentorees, cellist Jonah Ellsworth, to play the Dvorak concerto with the orchestra (above, Ellsworth with Zander after their performance of Strauss’s Don Quixote in May, 2014). [Read more…]

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