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CityMusic chamber music at Praxis Workshop (Jan. 24)

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by David Kulma

CityMusic Cleveland is best known for the free orchestra concerts it gives all over the Cleveland area, often in large churches and synagogues. But another feature of this group’s programming is its chamber music series at Praxis Fiber Workshop in Collinwood. This cosy art space was perfect for the concert I heard on Friday, January 24. People filled the room, and the music enveloped the space for an immersive experience. I highly recommend trying to get a seat in the quasi-alcove off to the side.

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CityMusic Cleveland at Lakewood Congregational (Dec. 13)

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by Nicholas Stevens

Mass media can make it feel as though the true color of the holiday season is a uniform Federal Reserve-issue sage, barely veiled by the colors of different proud traditions. The same ten songs blare in every grocery aisle. Yet on the ground, people find ways to wring something vital and unique out of a month when every icon of cheer feels somehow recycled. CityMusic Cleveland, prone to giving end-of-year concerts packed with music that knows no season, has found a way to reconcile seasonality with a respite. [Read more…]

Stefan Willich returns to CityMusic
for December cycle of concerts

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by Daniel Hathaway

German conductor Stefan Willich, founder of the World Doctors Orchestra, got to know Ronald and Eugenia Strauss, founders of CityMusic Cleveland, in 2011 and they immediately hit it off. “They told me about their orchestra in Cleveland, and after lots of mutual admiration, we decided to do something together.” As a result, Willich was invited to Cleveland to lead a set of concerts. “It’s been great,” Willich said in a telephone conversation from Berlin. “I love the musicians and I love the audiences, so ever since, I’ve been back regularly to Cleveland for the December concerts.”

This time around, Willich’s program is called “Fire and Ice,” and will be presented in four different venues around town between December 12 and 15. “It’s a nice blend of pieces. Some are fiery, like Haydn’s Symphony No. 49 and de Falla’s Ritual Fire Dance, and some have a wintry atmosphere, like Suk’s Meditation on St. Wenceslas, Corelli’s Christmas Concerto, and Mozart’s Sleigh Ride.”

Willich likes CityMusic’s peripatetic habit of repeating programs several times around the region. “The venues are so different, and there’s always something new to tease out in the music. There’s a lot of attraction in repeating repertoire — George Szell was famous for doing that with The Cleveland Orchestra — and different audiences react differently. I like that.” [Read more…]

CityMusic Cleveland in Lakewood (Oct. 20)

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by Peter Feher

Max Bruch’s Kol Nidre is a piece that’s both oversold and undersold. It’s a favorite of cello superstars, student concerto competitions, and classical compilation CDs. Conductor and cellist Amit Peled made the intriguing decision to place the work on his debut program as CityMusic Cleveland’s new music director. In a memorable performance, he made a redemptive case for the music itself. [Read more…]

CityMusic Cleveland:
a conversation with the
new music director, Amit Peled

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by Jarrett Hoffman 

All it took was one visit.

“Last time I was in Cleveland, what was really special for me was the deep connection I had with the orchestra right away,” cellist and conductor Amit Peled said during a telephone interview.

On that trip this past May, he joined CityMusic Cleveland as soloist in Saint-Saëns’ Cello Concerto No. 1, and the relationship he felt wasn’t that of soloist and accompanists. “It was really music-making in an equal way,” he said. “That’s what I liked about the orchestra from the time we spent together, and that’s what I want to preserve. I think we both felt a connection, and that’s why it resulted in this relationship.”

In July, it was announced that Peled would be the next music director of CityMusic, while his predecessor Avner Dorman has stepped into the role of music director emeritus. Peled will begin his first season — the ensemble’s 16th — by leading the orchestra in free performances October 17-20 in Beachwood, Willoughby Hills, Slavic Village, and Lakewood (details below).

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CityMusic Cleveland with Amit Peled & Mélisse Brunet in Lakewood (May 17)

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by David Kulma

CityMusic Cleveland closed out its 15th season with five concerts in worship spaces across the Cleveland area the third week in May. The enjoyable and excellently curated program, “Hidden Gems,” was led by Mélisse Brunet and featured cellist Amit Peled. I heard the Friday, May 17 performance at Lakewood Congregational Church.

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CityMusic Cleveland: Verdi Requiem at Maltz Performing Arts Center (May 2)

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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…]

CityMusic: cellist Amit Peled, Saint-Saëns, and basketball

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by Jarrett Hoffman

Israeli cellist Amit Peled is a warm person, a deep thinker, and a big Cavaliers fan — all equally important aspects of any great artist’s personality.

Next week, from May 15-19, Peled and guest conductor Mélisse Brunet will make their debuts with CityMusic Cleveland in five free concerts around the area to conclude the ensemble’s 15th season.

The title “Hidden Gems” certainly describes three of the four works on the program: Fanny Mendelssohn’s Overture in C, Saint-Saëns’s Symphony No. 2, and Kodály’s Dances of Galánta.

Not so for Saint-Saëns’s First Cello Concerto. “It’s a piece that we all play as teenagers — one of the first we encounter as quote-unquote serious cellists,” Peled told me during a trip to Europe, where he was to perform in Romania and Austria. For him, the Saint-Saëns was also one of the first concertos he performed with orchestra. “I will never forget the feeling of that first chord, and after that the explosion of emotion and the mastery of cello writing,” he said.

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CityMusic plays Dorman premiere at St. Stanislaus (Mar. 16)

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by David Kulma

CityMusic Cleveland celebrated its 15th season with a powerful new piece by its music director Avner Dorman. His Third Violin Concerto was debuted in free concerts with soloist Sayaka Shoji in five different venues across the Cleveland area. I attended the fourth performance on Saturday, March 16 at the Shrine Church of St. Stanislaus in Slavic Village. [Read more…]

CityMusic: violinist Sayaka Shoji to premiere concerto by Avner Dorman

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by Jarrett Hoffman

Local listeners might know that CityMusic Cleveland’s music director, Avner Dorman, is also a composer. His separate but related talents of the baton and of the pen will be on display when he leads the orchestra in the world premiere of Still, his third violin concerto, in five free concerts from March 13-17.

The soloist is a familiar face. Sayaka Shoji — first prize winner at the 1999 Paganini Competition — has in recent years joined CityMusic for the Brahms and Tchaikovsky concertos.

We last spoke to her in 2015 in a wide-ranging conversation that touched on her Japanese, Italian, and German upbringing (she now lives in Paris), her interest in jazz, the beginning of her solo career, her early dream of singing opera, and her previous work with Dorman — including commissioning a violin sonata from him.

I caught up with Shoji over email, and began by asking about the first time she heard Dorman’s music — in Verbier, Switzerland, where they met.

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