by Daniel Hathaway
CIM/CWRU: Rameau’s Hippolyte et Aricie
If you were able to shut down your peripheral vision in Kulas Hall at the Cleveland Institute of Music on March 1 and focus only on the stage, you could imagine yourself sitting in the stalls at the Paris Opéra in 1757, watching the revival of Jean-Philippe Rameau’s Hippolyte et Aricie. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
As part of the 50th Anniversary of the Case/CIM Joint Music Program, the two schools will collaborate on a production of Jean-Philippe Rameau’s Hippolyte et Aricie from Wednesday through Saturday, February 27-March 2 in Kulas Hall at the Cleveland Institute of Music. Harry Davidson leads the joint CIM/CWRU orchestra.
I sat down with CIM Opera Head Dean Southern, stage director Ellen Hargis, and choreographer Julie Andrijeski (both from the CWRU Historical Performance faculty) last week just before the Sitzprobe for Rameau’s 1733 opera. I began by asking how this Baroque opera project came about. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Understanding the tradition of Courtly Love (the solely poetic, unconsummated passion between a knight and a married noblewoman) as expressed in French music of the 15th century (sparse, ornate, and replete with artifice) is a reach for 21st-century audiences. But Cleveland’s Les Délices and Chicago’s Newberry Consort brought some of the repertoire preserved in the recently-discovered Leuven Chansonnier to vibrant life on Sunday afternoon at Plymouth Church in Shaker Heights. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Note: the Saturday evening concert in Lakewood has been cancelled due to the severe weather forecast. It’s always fun when musical scores suddenly emerge from wherever they’ve been hiding for decades or centuries. In 2014, a physically tiny collection of 15th-century songs came into the hands of an art dealer in Brussels and caused quite a stir in the early music world. It brought the total of such books that survive to 6, and its beautifully notated pages contain 50 pieces, 12 of which were previously unknown.
“Unbelievable. It’s like suddenly finding a dozen new drawings by Rubens!” said a researcher at the Alamire Foundation of the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium, which owns what is now known as the Leuven Chansonnier. “We hope that we’ll be able to find out who created the songs. The 38 known works are very interesting as well, because they’re often different versions from the ones we already know.”
When Les Délices and its Chicago counterpart, The Newberry Consort, were casting about for a collaborative project, the Leuven Songbook came immediately to mind for both directors, Debra Nagy and Ellen Hargis. “I told Debra we’d love to do something with that,” Hargis said in a telephone conversation, “and she said, ‘So would we. It doesn’t make any sense to do two programs, so why not do it together?’” [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Summer is the time when musical birds of a feather decide to flock together. During the month of June, critical masses of violists, trombonists, and lutenists will convene for festivals and seminars at the Oberlin Conservatory, Cleveland State University, and Case Western Reserve University.
It all starts with the American Viola Society, who will offer four public concerts in conjunction with their convention this week in Oberlin. On Wednesday, June 8 at 7:30 pm, the Jasper String Quartet (left) will open the series in Warner Concert Hall with guest violist Liz Freivogel and music by Beethoven, Missy Mazzoli, Donnacha Dennehy, and Brahms.
A Warner Concert Hall event on the following evening, June 9 at 7:30 pm, will celebrate the career achievement of Robert Vernon, principal viola of The Cleveland Orchestra, with a program of music by Max Bruch, Robert Schumann, and Gabriel Fauré performed by Vernon, violinist Elmar Oliveira, cellist Ralph Curry, and pianist Carolyn Warner. [Read more…]
by Nicholas Jones
The overlapping musical talents and resources of Cleveland’s early music community were in full multi-tasking mode at the Church of the Covenant last week — with some help from Chicago and Tennessee.
The occasion was one event in celebration of the church’s magnificent new tracker organ, modeled on north German 17th-century organs. The organ was built by the Tennessee firm of Richards, Fowkes and Company and installed only this January. It replaces a small gallery organ in the back of the church. A stop-action video documenting the organ’s installation is online at YouTube.
The organ is still being adjusted, but from what I heard, it has a lively delicacy that suits both early solo music and the accompaniment of singers. Boston-based organist Frances Fitch played it to great effect. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Chicago’s Newberry Consort will mark the arrival of the new 17th-century-style gallery organ at the Church of the Covenant in Cleveland’s University Circle with a concert entitled “Celestial Sirens” on Wednesday, March 20 at 7:30 pm. “It all came about with a handshake in the parking lot”, Ellen Hargis said in a phone conversation from her home in Chicago. Hargis is also on the faculty at Case, whose music department shares parking with the church. “One day I ran into Jonathan Moyer who told me about the new organ and I said ‘you need my Celestial Sirens concert.’”
That program, which features choral and instrumental music from 17th century Italian and Mexican convents, was itself the result of a chance encounter. Hargis was already thinking of constructing an Italian program drawing on the vast collections of unpublished music in convent libraries — partly suggested by Craig Monson’s book, Nuns Behaving Badly: Tales of Music, Magic, Art, and Arson in the Convents of Italy. [Read more…]