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Summit Choral Society: Handel & Haydn at Greystone Hall (Ap. 12)

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by Daniel Hathaway

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Guest conductor Marie Bucoy-Calavan led the well-prepared Summit Choral Society, four superb soloists, and an accomplished chamber orchestra drawn from the Akron Symphony in a spirited concert of works by Handel and Haydn on Sunday afternoon, April 12 at Greystone Hall in Akron. The venue, the performances and the weather combined to provide near-perfect conditions for the sold-out 60-minute concert — an entirely rewarding way to spend part of a weekend afternoon. [Read more…]

A contemplative and sardonic War Remembrance from Canton Symphony Orchestra (November 23)

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by Tom Wachunas

WADDELL-RachelIf America’s entry into World War II was seen by its citizens as not only necessary but also heroic and noble, then perhaps no orchestral work better embraced such lofty resolve than Aaron Copland’s Fanfare for the Common Man. Thus began the program called “Remembrance” by the Canton Symphony Orchestra, with CSO assistant conductor Rachel L. Waddell on the podium, on November 23 at Umstattd Performing Arts Hall. [Read more…]

Akron Symphony features its associate conductor and chorus in works by Ravel and Mozart (November 22)

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by Daniel Hathaway

Hammer-at-PianoThe Akron Symphony appropriately celebrated Saint Cecilia’s Day 2014 with a concert of music by the divine Mozart and the sainted Fauré, but also took the opportunity to elevate the jazzy music of Ravel to the Empyrean. To a neglected symphony and an infrequently performed mass by Mozart, music director Christopher Wilkins added a lovely Fauré bonbon and a wonderfully cheeky Ravel piano concerto, creating a program that showed the patron saint of music to be a woman with wide aesthetic tastes. [Read more…]

Review: Akron Symphony — “Akron Virtuosos” (February 22)

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by Daniel Hathaway

Akron-VirtuososSymphony orchestras sometimes showcase internal talent rather than laying on touring soloists. On February 22, the Akron Symphony turned the spotlight on several of its own “virtuosos”: its estimable horn section, its principal cellist and its assistant conductor all got their moment to shine before the ASO widened the beam to illuminate the whole ensemble in a brilliant concerto for orchestra.

Music director Christopher Wilkins began the evening with a brief prolegomena, then introduced his assistant, Levi Hammer, who led a stirring performance of Zoltán Kodály’s Dances of Galanta from memory. Based on gypsy melodies collected in the Hungarian village of Galanta, the piece gave a few virtuosi in the orchestra their own cameo appearances: clarinetist Kristina Belisle Jones was splendid in two spiraling cadenzas and flute, piccolo and oboe contributed handsome lyrical passages. The ASO musicians gave Hammer a fraternal solo bow when he was called back to stage. [Read more…]

Preview: Sound Gallery to debut at Akron Civic Theatre

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by Mike Telin

Sound-Gallery-(Gary-Adams)“Yes, there is chamber music, but it’s not a chamber music concert in the traditional sense,” bassoonist Renee Anthony Dee told us by telephone. “It is cabaret.” On Friday, November 8, beginning at 8:00 pm in the Akron Civic Theatre, the Akron-based mixed ensemble Sound Gallery presents their debut concert as part of the Civics Cabaret series. (The audience is seated on the stage and is invited to treat the evening like a club concert.)

Dee says the ensemble developed out of the members’ shared experience of feeling a closer connection to the public during their Knight Foundation-sponsored Random Acts of Culture performances. “We hope to expand the traditional concert format by combining many styles of music and to include the audience in the making of art.” Friday’s program is billed as an intimate evening of Homecomings and includes music that celebrates family and friends.

In addition to some old favorites like Dvorak’s “Going Home” from his New World Symphony and a sampler of Stephen Foster’s songs, audience members will also have the opportunity to become part of the performance through poetry, an idea that coalesced out of National Public Radio’s StoryCorps. “We’ll invite the audience to write something about what homecoming — or at this time of year, coming home for Thanksgiving — means to them. During intermission we’ll turn whatever we get into a narration that will be read during Jean-Michel Damase’s Seventeen Variations.” [Read more…]

Review: Akron Symphony in Finnish & Russian music with Cynthia Warren & Martina Filjak (October 26)

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by Daniel Hathaway

FILJAK-Martina-GreenThough the Finns and the Russians have often had a complicated relationship in recent times, their musical icons — Sibelius and Tchaikovsky — made agreeable partners on Saturday evening’s Akron Symphony program in E.J. Thomas Hall when Christopher Wilkins led Sibelius’s Finlandia, The Swan of Tuonela and Symphony No. 7 and Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1. Two extraordinary soloists, the ASO’s English hornist Cynthia Warren and Croatian pianist Martina Filjak (left), were out in front for the occasion.

The first half of the program belonged to Jan Sibelius, beginning with a robust performance of his patriotic tone poem, Finlandia, composed for an 1899 tableau, Suomi, that advocated the overthrow of Russian rule. As in the previous ASO concert, winds and brass were elevated on risers, which gave those sections more prominence. But with a smaller orchestra this time, sections didn’t blend with each other quite as well. Percussion and brass stood out, sometimes engulfing the strings.

Sibelius set to music four legends of Lemminkainen from the Finnish national epic, the Kalevala. In the composer’s words, “Tuonela, the land of death, the hell of Finnish mythology, is surrounded by a broad river with black waters and rapid currents, on which the Swan of Tuonela floats majestically, singing.” There’s more to the legend, but The Swan of Tuonela contents itself with painting the scene of the river and the swan in a gorgeously mournful melody for English horn and orchestra. [Read more…]

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