By Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING THIS WEEKEND:

On Saturday, a 3pm Baldwin Wallace Faculty Recital features J.R. Fralick, tenor, Christine Fuoco, piano, and Khari Joyner, cello, a 4pm Stars in the Classics classical cabaret at Praxis Fiber Gallery includes dance and the first performance of a work inspired by memories of Euclid Beach Park, and a 7:30 performance by Les Délices and Kaleidoscope Vocal Ensemble in Kulas Hall at CIM repeats Friday’s program, “The Pow’r of Music.”

On Sunday, The Cleveland Orchestra repeats its season opener at 3pm with Franz Welser-Möst on the podium and Daniil Trifonov at the Steinway (pictured — read our review on Cleveland.com here), new music director Kevin Jones plays a 4pm organ recital at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Cleveland Heights, and at 6pm, CIM celebrates the life and compositions of its celebrated alumna Dolores White.

Check our Concert Listings for details of these and forthcoming events.

WEEKEND ALMANAC:

SEPTEMBER 30

Today marks the anniversaries of the birth of Irish composer and organist Charles Villiers Stanford (1852) and Russian violinist David Oistrakh (1908), and the death of American composer and music critic Virgil Thomson (1989). [Read more…]

By Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING TODAY:

On Friday at Noon, the Cleveland Museum of Art presents Soh-Hyun Park Alrino (pictured), in a lunchtime lecture and concert featuring traditional Korean Sanjo on the Violin.

Friday evening sees the opening of the Akron Symphony season with music director Christopher Wilkins & guest conductor Jerod Impichchaachaaha’ Tate leading a narrated orchestral work drawing on the culture and history of Tate’s Chickasaw heritage, plus Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9.

Also on Friday: the B-W Symphonic Wind Ensemble, Les Délices, Oberlin Orchestra (with pianist Stanislav Ioudenitch) and Hub New Music all perform at 7:30. [Read more…]

By Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING TODAY:

Pianist Daniil Trifonov joins Franz Welser-Möst and The Cleveland Orchestra in the first Severance Music Center concert of the season at 7:30 pm. On the docket: Brahms’ First Piano Concerto & Prokofiev’s Sixth Symphony (repeated on Sunday at 3, and live streamed on the Orchestra’s Adella and Deutsche Grammophon’s Stage+ platforms).

At 6:30, Welser-Möst and Cleveland Orchestra President and CEO André Gremillet will join in a season preview conversation in Reinberger Chamber Hall.

And tonight at 8, Canton Symphony hornists Ben Reidhead and Micah Northam will perform during Canton Symphony Uncorked in the center of The Pavilion at Gervasi Vineyard.

Check our Concert Listings for forthcoming events.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

Two American musical scholars and a pair of contemporary composers share birthdates on September 28, and a British musical humorist bade adieu to the world of classical music, leaving it a bit less serious about itself than before. [Read more…]

By Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING THIS WEEKEND:

On Friday at 7:30, the Oberlin Artist Recital Series will present The Emerson String Quartet (pictured), who are retiring after 47 years on the road, in a Finney Chapel concert topped off by Beethoven’s outrageous Große Fuge. Read a preview here and buy tickets  online.

At the same hour, The Cleveland Orchestra continues its four-day run of Amadeus (repeated Saturday at 8 and Sunday at 2). Read our review on Cleveland.com here.

Also on Friday at 7:30, Cleveland State University will throw a 60th Birthday Concert for composer Andrew Rindfleisch on Friday at 7:30, when Zeitgeist New Music Ensemble, Meridian Arts Ensemble, & pianists Geoffrey Burleson and Shuai Wang play a free program of his music in Drinko Hall.

Two interesting events are on for Saturday. At 3 at Heights Theater, Les Délices presents Salonera Sessions: Songs for Social Justice in which Renaissance lute songs, African American Spirituals, and traditional Lebanese melodies become vehicles for storytelling by countertenor Michael Walker & tenor Haitham Haidar. And at 7:30 at Praxis Fiber Workshop, violinist Edwin Huizinga, violist Aniela Eddy & and cellist Cullen O’Neil, present Bach’s Goldberg Variations in “Goldberg with Guts” (playing on gut strings — get it?)

Arts Renaissance Tremont begins its new season on Sunday at 4 at St. Wendelin Church with the Cavani String Quartet, plus violist Ayane Kozasa & poet Mwatabu Okantah. [Read more…]

By Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING TODAY:

Unusual concerts by two orchestras:

At 7:30 The Cleveland Orchestra presents the first of four screenings of Miloš Forman’s 1984 Mozart biopic Amadeus, adapted from Peter Shaffer’s 1979 stage play, with three more to come on Friday at 7:30, Saturday at 8:00, and Sunday at 2. Richard Kaufman conducts the live score.

At the same hour, the Youngstown Symphony presents NYC-based drag performance artist and professional strings musician Thorgy Thor in “From Brahms to Bruno Mars,” with Lawrence Loh on the podium.

City Music Cleveland has less outrageous Mozart in mind for its 7:30 concert at Fairmount Presbyterian: his Concerto in C for 2 Violins featuring Jung Min Amy Lee & Kyung Sun Lee, along with music by George Walker, Tōru Takemitsu, and Joseph Bologne.

And the 7:30 Warner Concert Hall performance by Oberlin Sinfonietta. includes Gabriella Smith’s Brandenburg Interstices, Shuying Li’s Eight Immortals and the Sea, and Pierre Jalbert’s All Is Now. Timothy Weiss conducts, and Alexa Still is the featured faculty flutist. (The concert is free and will be streamed). [Read more…]

By Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING TODAY:

At Noon, organist Jonathan W. Moyer (pictured) plays a free recital on both organs at the Church of the Covenant. On the menu: music by Vincent Lübeck, Petr Eben & Max Reger.

Check our Concert Listings for more details and future performances.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

On September 19, 1972, French pianist Robert Casadesus died in Paris. Known especially for his interpretations of Mozart’s concertos, he recorded a number of them with George Szell and The Cleveland Orchestra (sometimes credited as “The Columbia Symphony” for contractual reasons). Listen here to nos. 21 and 24 in recordings remastered in 2018. Beginning in 1975 and for its first ten seasons, the Cleveland International Piano Competition was known as the Casadesus Competition.

On this date in 1829, German music publisher Gustav Schirmer was born in Saxony. After moving to New York, in 1866 he founded the music publishing house that bears his name. (Another Schirmer, Gustav’s nephew Ernest C., founded E.C. Schirmer Music Company in Boston in 1921). [Read more…]

By Daniel Hathaway

BREAKING NEWS:

On Friday afternoon, Quire Cleveland released the following statement:

We regret to announce that Quire Cleveland has canceled its final concert series, Churches of the Same God: Mass Settings of Byrd and Tallis, scheduled for September 29, 30, and October 1, 2023, in the aftermath of the release of “Parish & School Policy on Issues of Sexuality and Gender Identity” by the Catholic Diocese of Cleveland. While Quire Cleveland does not agree with or support this policy, the decision to cancel the concert series was made solely to protect the safety and well-being of Quire’s singers, concert attendees, and hosting churches in the context of ongoing social media activity encouraging disruption of the concerts as a means of protesting the policy. All contracted singers will be compensated for the full concert series according to the terms of their singer agreement.

HAPPENING THIS WEEKEND:

On Friday at 12:15, University Circle carillonneur George Leggiero plays a 30-minute concert on the 47-bell McGaffin Carillon. Listen live outdoors or click here for a live stream.

Up for a road trip? On Saturday at 7:30, Carl Topilow leads the Sinta Sax Quartet and the Firelands Symphony in William Bolcom’s Concerto Grosso for Saxophone Quartet, Gershwin’s An American in Paris, and works by Copland, Williams, and Glass at Sawmill Creek Convention Center in Huron.

Saturday at 8 at Convivium 33 Gallery, Cleveland Uncommon Sound Project hosts Dragonchild x Sunken Cages//Lemon Quartet, with Steve Clements, piano, Corey Farrow, electric piano, Keith Freud, saxophone, and Gabe Schray, bass in a pay-what-you can concert.

The Cleveland Classical Guitar Society begins its Classical Series on Sunday at 3 at the Maltz PAC with a recital by Australian artist Stephanie Jones (pictured), including works by J.S. Bach, Richard Charlton, Ross Edwards, Jakob Schmidt, Quique Sinesi, Rostislav Golubov, Astor Piazzolla & Antônio Carlos Jobim. Read a preview here. [Read more…]

By Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING TODAY:

There are no concerts in Northeast Ohio to note, but keep an eye on our Concert Listings as the new season begins to gather momentum.

NEWS BRIEFS:

The New York Philharmonic announced on Tuesday that it had secured a $40 million donation from the financier Oscar L. Tang, a co-chairman of its board, and his wife, Agnes Hsu‐Tang, an archaeologist and art historian, the largest contribution to the endowment in the ensemble’s 181-year history.

The donation will be used to endow the Philharmonic’s music and artistic director chair starting in the 2025-26 season, when Gustavo Dudamel, the 42-year-old leader of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, becomes music director designate. Read the article in the New York Times.

Also in the Times, architectural critic Michael Kimmelman writes that “The Perelman Performing Arts Center, a glamorous $500 million project, may yet turn the World Trade Center into a neighborhood. Read “A Spectacular Marble Cube Rises at Ground Zero” here. [Read more…]

By Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING TODAY:

Tonight at 7:30 pm, the Cleveland Institute of Music’s Perspectives presents Mike Block, cello (CIM alum and member of the Silk Road Ensemble), and Balla Kouyaté, balafon (West African xylophone) in a program to be announced from the stage of Mixon Hall. The show is sold out, but you can watch the webcast here.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

On this date in 1764, French composer Jean Philippe Rameau died at the age of 80 in Paris. After filling a number of organist positions in the provinces, he finally moved to the capital and took up writing opera at the advanced age of 50. He premiered Hippolyte et Aricie in 1733, immediately igniting a stylistic controversy with the followers of Jean-Baptiste Lully, who had been the reigning composer in France to that point. Described as tall and exceptionally thin, Rameau’s personal appearance was captured by Louis Carrogis Carmontelle in a famous watercolor (above). [Read more…]