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The Escher Quartet returns to Tuesday Musical on March 28

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by Mike Telin

When the Escher Quartet began planning their 2018-19 season, they knew it would include a new piano quintet by Anthony Cheung. Soon another commissioning opportunity from the Arizona Friends of Chamber Music came their way. Earlier this month the Escher gave the premiere of Chris Rogerson’s String Quartet No. 4 (2019) as part of the Tucson Winter Chamber Music Festival.

On Thursday, March 28 at 7:30 pm in Akron’s E.J. Thomas Hall, the Escher — Adam Barnett-Hart and Danbi Um, violins, Pierre LaPointe, viola, and Brook Speltz, cello — will give the second performance of Rogerson’s new work. Presented by Tuesday Musical, the program will also include Mozart’s Quartet in F, K. 590 and Beethoven’s monumental Quartet in C-sharp, Op. 131. A conversation with the musicians led by composer James Wilding will begin at 6:30 pm. Tickets are available online.

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Tuesday Musical: Chamber Music from Lincoln Center (Mar. 12)

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by Nicholas Stevens

Depending on how presenters and performers discuss it in concerts, music history can be a portal to deeper understanding or a padlock. Especially hazardous is the tracing of artistic lineage. If you talk engagingly about teacher-to-student “family trees,” the concert may gain in vitality and direction. If you list them dryly, you risk making textbook fodder of vibrant art.

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Akron Symphony: Jinjoo Cho, kitchen magnets & the Korngold Concerto

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by Jarrett Hoffman

Sometimes it feels appropriate to get right down to business. Last week, when I got in touch with Jinjoo Cho, that would have meant delving immediately into Korngold’s Concerto, which she played in the final round at the 2014 International Violin Competition of Indianapolis enroute to winning the Gold Medal. She’ll revisit the piece with Christopher Wilkins and the Akron Symphony this Saturday, March 16 at 8:00 pm at E.J. Thomas Hall.

But there was something I’d read at the bottom of her bio that I needed to clear up first. So when she picked up the phone, I quickly put on my reporter’s hat and began to investigate.

“In the beginning they were more like souvenirs,” Cho said of her collection of kitchen magnets. “I would get one that reminded me of someplace. Now I feel like it’s become a full-on obsession. Whenever I see a cute one, I just can’t not buy it.”

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Akron Symphony: diving into Stella Sung’s Oceana

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by Jarrett Hoffman

Asked to name a piece that uses sounds recorded from nature, many would think of Respighi’s Pines of Rome and the nightingales that end its third movement. Locals especially might remember the calls of the shore lark and whooper swan in Einojuhani Rautavaara’s Cantus arcticus, which the Akron Symphony paired with Pines in a Planet Earth-themed concert last March.

Here’s another one that’s even more technologically ambitious. Stella Sung’s Oceana was premiered by Christopher Wilkins and the Boston Landmarks Orchestra last summer, and will receive its Northeast Ohio premiere in the hands of Wilkins and the ASO on Saturday, February 9 at 8:00 pm at E.J. Thomas Hall.

Oceana was inspired by the issue of ocean noise pollution — like from seismic testing and large ships — which disrupts the ability of many animals to communicate, navigate, and find food. Meshing orchestral sounds with those of whales, dolphins, seals, and other animals, Sung penned an ode to oceanic ecosystems and their importance to all forms of life.

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Akron Symphony: a conversation with Alexander Korsantia

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by Mike Telin

Note: this concert has been cancelled due to the severe weather forecast. There are certain pieces of music that, no matter when they were written, always sound new. And in the eyes and ears of Alexander Korsantia, Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 3 is one that holds that distinction. “It is an eternally fun concerto,” the pianist said during a recent interview. “It was written almost one hundred years ago but it still feels like it is aiming to the future.”

On Saturday, January 19 at 8:00 pm in E.J. Thomas Hall, the Georgian-born pianist will perform that concerto with the Akron Symphony under the direction of guest conductor Benjamin Zander. The all-Russian program will also include Glinka’s Overture to Ruslan and Lyudmila and Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 4. Tickets are available online.

When asked what he finds so attractive about the Prokofiev Concerto, the 1995 Gold Medal winner at the Rubinstein Competition quickly answered, “Its diversity. This concerto, probably more than any other by Prokofiev or any great composer, just covers a colossal amount of space in history. He is using an array of techniques from earlier music, like the polyphonic music of the Baroque, and the minuets and gavottes of the Classical era. Haydn is the champion of those dances in the 18th century, but in the 20th century that is Prokofiev.”  

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Tuesday Musical: pianist Inon Barnatan and the Calidore String Quartet

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by Jarrett Hoffman

“This was fun, let’s do it again sometime” — what we all say after any gathering. And sometimes, we really do mean it.

That was the case after pianist Inon Barnatan and the Calidore String Quartet collaborated for the first time a few years ago, exploring Bach’s keyboard concerti. As Barnatan told me during a recent phone call, “It was such a joy to make this music together that we decided we have to do it again. So here we are.”

On January 22 at 7:30 pm at E.J. Thomas Hall, Barnatan and the Calidore will revisit Bach during a concert on Akron’s Tuesday Musical series. The program begins with selections from The Art of Fugue, then turns to the keyboard concertos No. 1 in d, No. 7 in g, No. 4 in A, and No. 5 in f. A pre-concert conversation with the musicians takes place at 6:30 pm, and tickets are available online.

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Gregg Kallor’s setting of The Tell-Tale Heart to open Tuesday Musical Fuze Series

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by Jarrett Hoffman

When Halloween is on a Wednesday, it’s only right to celebrate it all week, and on the two weekends that fall on either side. That applies to arts organizations as well: the schedule of the musically spooky continues on Saturday, November 3 at 7:30 pm at E.J. Thomas Hall in Akron, when this year’s Tuesday Musical Fuze Series gets under way.

At the heart of the program is Gregg Kallor’s setting of a classic story which recently turned 175 years old: Edgar Allan Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart. (Quick refresher for those with only vague memories of high school: the narrator hears the sound of a beating heart coming from under the floorboards…and it’s the heart of the person they’ve murdered under mysterious, grisly circumstances.)

Kallor will take the keyboard part in the Poe setting, joined by cellist Joshua Roman and mezzo-soprano Jennifer Johnson Cano. They’ll mix and match each other throughout the program, which also includes music by Brahms, Schumann, Hugo Wolf, and John Jacob Niles, in addition to further works by Kallor. Tickets are available online.

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ASO to feature pianist Angela Cheng in “Elvira Madigan” Concerto

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by Jarrett Hoffman

“Ghost”
“Moonlight”
“Resurrection”
“Trout”

What looks like a dramatic poem about fish is actually a list of four famous nicknames of classical works. And everyone loves a nickname: they’re not always important to think about, but they’re always fun.

Oberlin Conservatory piano professor Angela Cheng and I recently talked about Mozart’s “Elvira Madigan” Concerto (No. 21 in C), which she’ll perform with the Akron Symphony and conductor Christopher Wilkins on Saturday, September 29 at 8:00 pm at E.J. Thomas Hall. The program will also include Tchaikovsky’s Capriccio italien and Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade.

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Akron Symphony closes season with Verdi’s Requiem on May 5

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by Mike Telin

Wilkins-Christopher“It’s been nineteen years since the Verdi Requiem has been performed in Akron, and we’re pulling out all of the stops, which is the only way to do it,” Akron Symphony music director Christopher Wilkins said during a telephone interview. On Saturday, May 5 at 8:00 pm in E.J. Thomas Hall, Wilkins will lead the ASO, the Akron Symphony Chorus, and the Summit Choral Society Masterworks Chorale along with soprano Dina Kuznetsova, mezzo-soprano Nancy Maultsby, tenor John Pickle, and bass Adam Cioffari in Verdi’s masterpiece. Tickets are available online.

Saturday’s performance will mark the sixth time that the ASO has performed the work since its inaugural season in 1953 — the first was in 1961 under the direction of Evan Whallon. Subsequent performances were led by John MacDonald (1968), Robert Shaw (1978), Alan Balter (1987), and Paul Polivnick (1999).

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Tuesday Musical: Orpheus with Augustin Hadelich (Mar. 28)

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by Daniel Hathaway

TMA HadelichOrpheus Chamber Orchestra, the New York-based conductorless ensemble, joined violinist Augustin Hadelich in an impressive program of string music by Irving Fine, Haydn, Schubert, and Tchaikovsky at Akron’s E.J. Thomas Hall on Wednesday evening, March 28. Their assured playing on the Tuesday Musical series proved that you don’t always need a baton-wielding leader out in front to inspire an excellent sense of ensemble — though sometimes it can be a good idea from an interpretational point of view.

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