by Mike Telin
Performing a concerto with the Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra is an honor and a moment to cherish. “I have fun playing Sibelius,” violinist Marina Ziegler said, “I’m just happy to play it with COYO because I get to do it with all of my friends. And it will be a nice way to end the year. My first piece with COYO was the Sibelius Second Symphony, so I feel like I’ve come full circle.”
On May 5 at 8:00 pm at Severance Music Center, the Copley High School senior will play the Sibelius concerto with COYO under the direction of Daniel Reith. The program also includes Schwerrtsik’s Herr K. entdeckt Amerika and Rachmaninoff’s Symphony No. 3. Tickets are available online.
Ziegler began her violin studies at the age of five at the Sato Center for Suzuki Studies at the Cleveland Institute of Music. Her teachers have included Stephen Sims, Isabel Trautwein, and Eugenia Poustyreva. She currently studies violin with David Bowlin at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music. [Read more…]
What are the duties of an assistant conductor of a major orchestra? “Every day is an experience,” Daniel Reith said during a recent telephone conversation. Since assuming that position with The Cleveland Orchestra this season, Reith has had a lot on his plate. In addition to his involvement with numerous educational activities, he has led the Orchestra’s family concerts and the annual Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration Concert. Earlier this month he stepped in on very short notice for an ailing Klaus Mäkelä to lead three subscription concert performances.
An immigrant mother, struggling with her sense of identity, makes a plea to her new homeland in the hopes that her newborn daughter will have an easier time navigating it. This sentiment, presented in musical form, was especially fitting for a concert on Mother’s Day — not to mention one with a high percentage of mothers in the audience.
When Moonhee Kim’s violin teacher said he wanted her to learn the Prokofiev Violin Concerto, she was hoping he would say the second one. Of the composer’s two concerti for the instrument, No. 2 is more commonly performed, and it was the one Kim was most familiar with. But Concerto No. 1 was what he had in mind — and as it turns out, that was the perfect choice.
Over the years, audiences have had the privilege of hearing many outstanding performances by winners of the Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra’s annual concerto competition. But on Sunday, February 20, the sizable crowd at Severance Music Center witnessed nothing short of musical magic during Dasara Beta’s brilliant performance of Alexander Arutiunian’s Trumpet Concerto.
Think of works for trumpet and orchestra, and two pieces immediately come to mind. “When I tell someone that I’m playing a concerto, they always say — are you playing Haydn or Hummel?” Dasara Beta said during a recent telephone conversation. “This is a pretty popular piece for trumpet players, but if you don’t play the trumpet, you might not know it.”
After a long hiatus, the Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra is back in full swing. “I’m so excited,” COYO music director Vinay Parameswaran said during a recent telephone conversation. “I couldn’t wait to be back in our beautiful hall with the young musicians — we’ve all been waiting for this for way too long.”
It came as no surprise that the March 1 Severance Hall concert by the Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra Youth Chorus was an excellent affair. Leading fine performances of music mostly off the beaten track, conductor Vinay Parameswaran helped prove that gloomy predictions of classical music performance fading into oblivion are misplaced. The audience was large and enthusiastic — I suspect with many rightfully proud family members.