by Daniel Hathaway

Pre-concert lectures are fixtures of many concert series, offering talks by well-known musicians or musical scholars to put audiences closer in touch with the music they’re about to hear.

The Cleveland Chamber Music Society takes a slightly broader approach to its roster of speakers, which this season includes, to be sure, two certified musicologists (CWRU’s David Rothenberg and Bard’s Peter Laki) but also a well-known program annotator (Richard Rodda), a Rabbi (Roger Klein of The Temple-Tifereth Israel), an audiophile and WCLV program host (Eric Kisch), the editor of an online journal (me) and, next Tuesday, the Curator of African Art at the Cleveland Museum of Art (Constantine Petridis).

“This is my very first talk on music ever,” Costa Petridis told us by phone from St. Louis, where he was attending a conference, “so I’m a little bit nervous, but very excited about it too.” [Read more…]