by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING TODAY:

Tonight at 7:30, Santtu-Matias Rouvali conducts The Cleveland Orchestra, with violin soloist Stefan Jackiw (pictured). The program includes Carl Nielsen’s Overture to Maskarade, Pyotr Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto & Jean Sibelius’ Symphony No. 1.

For details of these and other upcoming events, visit our Concert Listings.

R.I.P. BURTON FINE, 94

Longtime Boston Symphony principal viola Burton Fine, who trained as a violinist as well as a chemist and whose first job was with the government agency in Cleveland that became NASA, passed away on November 15 at the age of 94 at his home in Newton, Massachusetts.

The Violin Channel writes, “…when a position opened up in the second violin section of the Boston Symphony in 1963, he took the day off to practice and auditioned the very next day — and was ultimately offered the role. [Read more…]

by Stephanie Manning

HAPPENING TODAY:

At 12:00 noon, both of the usual Wednesday series: Music Near the Market features organist Linda Kempke in music of “Thanksgiving and praise,” while Trinity Cathedral’s Brownbag Concert Series presents the Cleveland State University Chorale and Chorus.

And at 7:30 pm: Ross Karre directs the Oberlin Percussion Group featuring Oberlin College Taiko in Warner Concert Hall, and Todd Phillis leads the CIM Orchestra in works by Caroline Shaw, Benjamin Britten, and Mozart at the Mentor High School Fine Arts Center.

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

If you’re already dreaming of warmer weather, you can start planning — The Cleveland Orchestra has announced three of its concerts for the 2025 Blossom season. Multi-hyphenate singer and actress Cynthia Erivo (pictured) joins the Orchestra on July 27, and the group will play live-to-film scores for two movies: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone on July 5 & 6, and The Lion King on August 29, 30, & 31.

Tickets go on sale today at 10:00 am for donors and subscribers — click here — and the general public can get tickets starting tomorrow, November 21, at 10:00 am. Read the full press release here.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

by Daniel Hathaway

On November 20, pianist Ruth Laredo made her life debut in Detroit in 1937 as Ruth Meckler, and American composer Orianna Webb was born in Akron in 1974. [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING TODAY:

At 12 Noon, organist Kingsley Wood plays music by Marcel Dupré, Vincent Lübeck & J.S. Bach at the Church of the Covenant, and at 7:30, pianist Simone Dinnerstein, plays works by Jean-Phillipe Rameau, Philip Lasser, J.S. Bach, (his 15 Three-Part Inventions) & Keith Jarrett (Encore from Tokyo). on the Tuesday Musical series at Akron’s E.J. Thomas Hall.

For details of these and other upcoming events, visit our Concert Listings.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

Two eminent composers left this life on November 19, due in both cases to microbes: German Johann Hermann Schein (of the plague) in 1630 in Leipzig, and Franz Peter Schubert (of typhus) in 1828 in Vienna.

Schein, a friend of Heinrich Schütz who was likewise influenced by early Italian Baroque music, preceded J.S. Bach at Leipzig’s Thomaskirche, and wrote equal quantities of vocal and instrumental music. His instrumental suites, collected in the 1617 publication Banchetto musicale, were meant to be played during dinner, as the title suggests. [Read more…]

by Stephanie Manning

LOOKING AHEAD:

Coming up, groups are packing in their concerts before next week’s Thanksgiving holiday.

Tomorrow, pianist Simone Dinnerstein visits Tuesday Musical; and from Thursday through Saturday, conductor Santtu-Matias Rouvali (pictured) and violinist Stefan Jackiw visit The Cleveland Orchestra.

Other ensembles presenting this week include Les Délices, BlueWater Chamber Orchestra, CUSP, Heights Chamber Orchestra, and more. For more information, visit our Concert Listings.

INTERESTING READ:

Ahead of Santtu-Matias Rouvali’s debut with The Cleveland Orchestra this week, learn more about the Finnish conductor by revisiting this 2022 New York Times profile. Joshua Barone discusses not only Rouvali’s career at the podium, but also his history as a rock percussionist and his dedication to taking care of his farm in rural Finland.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

by Mike Telin

Today we celebrate the births of Carl Maria von Weber (1786), conductor Eugene Ormandy (1899), and violist/composer Lillian Fuchs (1901). As I scrolled through the list of other musical figures who were born on this day, I was curious to know who many of them were, or are. So today we celebrate the births of three people who were randomly selected from the list. [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING THIS WEEKEND:

On Saturday the Oberlin Conservatory continues a weekend of festivities to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Flentrop organ in Warner Concert Hall. Today at 11, current students give a recital, followed by alumni at 4:30. Both events will be live streamed.

Oberlin viola professor Kirsten Docter and pianist Tatiana Lokhina perform at 4:30 in Kulas Recital Hall, Singers Companye celebrates its 25th anniversary (5 pm in Cuyahoga Falls), CIM Opera Theater opens Emmanuel Chabrier’s L’étoile (pictured, 7 pm in Playhouse Square), Apollo’s Fire continues its run of “Hope and Solitude” (7:30 at St. Paul’s, Cleveland Hts.), and the Lorain County Civic Orchestra plays at the same hour at the Stocker Center in Elyria.

And on Saturday at 8 pm, The Cleveland Orchestra continues its Beethoven Piano Cycle with Concertos Nos. 1 & 5 featuring Minsoo Sohn (First Concerto)  and Yunchan Lim (Mandel Concert Hall at Severance Music Center).

On Sunday, cellists will be interested in a Cleveland Cello Society lecture recital by Liam Battle (2 pm at Judson Park Auditorium), and pianists in a Tri-C Classical Piano recital by Chelsea Guo (2 pm at Tri-C Metro Auditorium) as  well as in the final Cleveland Orchestra Beethoven Piano Cycle performance (3 pm at Severance Music Center). CIM Opera Theater performs Charbrier’s L’Étoile (2 pm in Playhouse Square), Apollo’s Fire ends its run of “Hope and Solitude” (4 pm at Rocky River Presbyterian), Erie Waters flute choir plays at 4 pm (St. Noel in Willoughby Hills), Music from the Western Reserve hosts violinist Haig Hovsepian and pianist Matias Nestor Cuevas (5 pm, Christ Church, Hudson), Singers Companye celebrates its 25th anniversary at 5 pm at Bath Church, and The Now Chorale sings premieres (7:30 at Sacred Heart Church in Oberlin).

For details of these and other upcoming events, visit our Concert Listings. [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING TODAY:

At 7 pm, Brendan Caldwell leads the Baldwin Wallace Symphonic Band & Chamber Winds in Gamble Auditorium.

The final trio of concerts in The Cleveland Orchestra’s Beethoven Piano Cycle continues on Friday at 7:30, when Yunchan Lim, winner of the 2023 Van Cliburn Competition, will solo in the Fifth Concerto, preceded by his New England Conservatory mentor, Minsoo Sohn, who will do the honors in Beethoven’s Concerto No. 1.

Apollo’s Fire continues its run of  “Hope and Solitude,” with countertenor Reginald Mobley, oboist Debra Nagy, and violinist Alan Choo performing music by Henry Purcell and J.S. Bach at 7:30 at St. Paul’s, Cleveland Hts.

And the Oberin Conservatory has planned a weekend of festivities to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Flentrop organ (pictured) in Warner Concert Hall. It begins with a faculty recital by Jonathan Moyer and Christa Rakich on Friday at 7:30 (J.S. Bach’s German Organ Mass, free and live streamed.)

For details of these and other upcoming events, visit our Concert Listings. [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING TODAY:

Apollo’s Fire begins its run of  “Hope and Solitude,” with countertenor Reginald Mobley (pictured), oboist Debra Nagy, and violinist Alan Choo performing music by Henry Purcell and J.S. Bach at 7:30 in Akron’s First United Methodist Church

And at 8 at Cleveland’s Calicchia Gallery, Cleveland Uncommon Sound Project hosts Dani Dobkin & Matt Sargent, who are traveling in support of their new album, Bend.

For details of these and other upcoming events, visit our Concert Listings.

DEPARTURES:

“Born in 1925 in Warren, Ohio, Walfrid Kujala served as flute and piccolo of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra from 1954 until 2001 and was a professor of flute at the Northwestern University Bienen School of Music from 1962 to 2012.” He passed away at the age of 99. Read a Bienen School obituary here.

REINVENTIONS:

In today’s print edition of The New York Times, Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim writes, “When the soprano Lucy Shelton opened a recital at Merkin Hall in 2019 with Adieu à la vie, a song by Rossini, she was about to turn 75. And though she was not bidding farewell to life as the song’s title suggests, she felt she was done with performing. [Read more…]

by Stephanie Manning

HAPPENING TODAY:

Two options from local conservatories round out this evening at 7:30.

For the CIM Insiders Series, violinist Ilya Kaler and pianist Michelle Bushkova perform works by Szymanowski, Ravel, and Enescu in Mixon Hall. And the Oberlin Historical Performance Department presents a faculty concert from violinist Edwin Huizinga, cellist Rebecca Landell, and fortepianist David Breitman (pictured).

Plus, at 12:00 noon, organist Florence Mustric performs the music of Charles-Marie Widor for Music Near the Market.

For more information, visit our Concert Listings.

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

Changes continue for The Cleveland Orchestra’s concerts at Severance. Stepping in for Franz Welser-Möst, conductor Santtu-Matias Rouvali will make his Orchestra debut next week for the performances on November 21, 22, and 23.

He’ll lead a completely new program: Carl Nielsen’s Overture to Maskarade, Jean Sibelius’s Symphony No. 1, and Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto with violinist Stefan Jackiw. Learn more here.

Mahler’s “Das Lied von der Erde,” featuring tenor Limmie Pulliam and baritone Iurii Samoilov, will now be performed in the 2025-26 season.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

by Daniel Hathaway

French organist and composer Louis-Lefébure-Wély was born on this date in Paris in 1817. [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING TODAY: 

Three interesting concerts all begin tonight at 7:30.

• Cuarteto Casals joins the Cleveland Chamber Music Society’s 75th anniversary celebration tonight at The Cultural Arts Center at Disciples Church,
• Garrick Ohlsson continues The Cleveland Orchestra’s Beethoven Piano Cycle with the Second & Fourth Concertos,
• Percussion professor Ross Karre and guest violinist Emily Cornelius play Stravinsky’s Histoire du soldat on a program that includes works by Kevin Day, Sophie Dupuis and Arvo Pärt in Stull Recital Hall at the Oberlin Conservatory.

For details of these and other upcoming events, visit our Concert Listings.

INTERESTING READ:

In a Guardian article, Jim Farber asks “was Nicky Hopkins, who played on over 250 albums, the greatest unsung pianist ever? “He helped shape classic songs by the Rolling Stones, the Who and the Beatles but his influence on music has been largely ignored. [Read more…]