by David Kulma
On the night of Good Friday, as the Brentano Quartet filled Oberlin’s Finney Chapel with shimmering sound, a question came to mind: what is the essence of a madrigal? Put simply, a madrigal is an Italian Renaissance form for voices full of musical effects that paint clear tonal pictures of the words being sung. More complexly, a madrigal is so shaped by its text that it constantly molds itself into new forms like Descartes’ philosophical ball of wax.
by Jarrett Hoffman
The Brentano String Quartet has an affinity for both the standard repertoire and music very old and very new. Their program on the Oberlin Artist Recital Series at Finney Chapel on Friday, March 30 at 8:00 pm covers all those bases. Beginning with arrangements of madrigals by Monteverdi and Gesualdo, they’ll jump 400 years to the music of Oberlin Conservatory composition chair Stephen Hartke, then close with Shostakovich’s Quartet No. 12 in D-flat.
Among the Brentano’s many honors, violinists Serena Canin and Mark Steinberg, violist Misha Amory, and cellist Nina Lee celebrated the Quartet’s “silver anniversary” — 25 years — in 2017.
“Our friendship has been the real sine qua non for continuing as a long-term quartet,” Amory wrote in an email while the Quartet was in Spain. “It is possible that we spend as much time with each other as we do with our own families, which without our love and esteem for one another would be a tough proposition. We are not a group that would thrive well on a business-based type of arrangement, where we would meet for rehearsals and concerts but otherwise have nothing to do with each other.”
by Jarrett Hoffman
A return to a concerto that brought with it a solo debut. The celebration of a long chamber music partnership and friendship. And one final concerto in a 22-year orchestral tenure.
Those landmarks in the careers of three clarinetists — Randy Klein, Richard Hawkins, and Allan Ware — can be heard across two days, March 3 and 5, in Canton, Oberlin, and Rocky River. On the docket are concertos by John Corigliano and Aaron Copland, and clarinet quintets by Carl Maria von Weber and Johannes Brahms.
The clarinet show begins on Saturday, March 3 at 7:30 pm in Umstattd Hall. Randy Klein will join his Canton Symphony colleagues and music director Gerhardt Zimmermann for the Copland Concerto, in between performances of Stephen Montague’s Snakebite and Mozart’s Symphony No. 40.
“This is my last season in Canton,” Klein said in a recent conversation. “I’m retiring from the orchestra.”
by Mike Telin
Bass-baritone Dashon Burton is no stranger to Northeast Ohio audiences — he has appeared with Franz Welser-Möst and The Cleveland Orchestra on three occasions over the last two seasons. This past fall Burton reprised his role as the Parson and Badger in Janáček’s Cunning Little Vixen and will return in May for Beethoven’s Ninth as part of the Orchestra’s Prometheus Project.
You can hear another side of the Oberlin alum’s vocal skills this week when he and his Roomful of Teeth colleagues perform on the Oberlin Artist Recital Series on Friday, February 16 at 8:00 pm in Finney Chapel. Tickets are available online.
“I’m so excited to be going back to Oberlin. It played a huge part in feeding my vast curiosity about what music can be,” Burton said during a telephone conversation. “Without the people in the TIMARA program and the composition and vocal departments, I wouldn’t be the professional that I am today. And I want everyone to come to the show and see what Roomful of Teeth is all about.”
by Mike Telin
“It’s amazing how professional choral singing has changed in the past 10 to 15 years,” Gregory Ristow, director of vocal ensembles at the Oberlin Conservatory, said during a recent conversation. “And the singers in Roomful of Teeth are the perfect model for our students because their careers are multi-faceted.”
On Friday, February 16 at 8:00 pm in Finney Chapel, the Oberlin Artist Recital Series will present Roomful of Teeth under the direction of Brad Wells. The program will include Caroline Shaw’s Partita for 8 Voices, Missy Mazzoli’s Vesper Sparrow, Judd Greenstein’s Run Away, and Toby Twining’s Dumas’ Riposte. The Grammy Award-winning ensemble will be joined by the Oberlin College Choir for William Brittelle’s Psychedelics and Merrill Garbus’ Quizassa. Tickets are available online.
by Mike Telin
Like many musicians, British pianist Benjamin Grosvenor’s career received a jump start after winning a competition. “I won the keyboard section of the BBC Young Musician in 2004, and this began my performing career,” Grosvenor said in an email. “Obviously I was very young at that point and did not play very much, but the attention from the competition brought me concerts.” The pianist later became part of BBC’s Radio 3 New Generation Artist Scheme, which he said was “particularly important for my career, leading to opportunities such as performing at the BBC Proms as well as giving vital recording experience and the possibility to develop relationships with the BBC orchestras.”
On Sunday, November 12 at 4:00 pm, in Finney Chapel, Benjamin Grosvenor will make his debut performance on the Oberlin Artist Recital Series.
by Daniel Hathaway
Philippe Lefebvre, one of three tenured organists (titulaires) at the Cathedral of Notre-Dame in Paris, made his impressive Oberlin debut on Wednesday, September 16 in a 70-minute, straight-through recital in Finney Chapel at Oberlin College. His program paid homage to the great bloodline of French organist-composers established by the Belgian-born master César Franck, as well as to the long and distinguished tradition of improvisation that continues to live and prosper in the organ galleries of France. [Read more…]
by Mike Telin
With
all of the exceptional repertoire to choose from, why is it that an all-Beethoven string quartet recital still excites audiences and players? “The quartet has performed a lot of complete cycles of composers such as Mendelssohn and Brahms or Mozart, and if you compare the possibilities, you have to realize that Beethoven is the top of the top,” says Leipzig String Quartet cellist Matthias Moosdorf. The quartet, who are currently touring seventeen Beethoven quartets, will perform a concert on Sunday, March 3 at 4:00 pm in Finney Chapel at Oberlin as part of the Oberlin Artist Recital Series.
“You can combine any piece with another and it works perfectly, especially when taken from the early, from the middle and from the late periods’” Moosdorf said in a phone conversation from Leipzig. “But it doesn’t matter which quartets you choose because in the end, the result will be a fantastic evening.” Moosdorf will be joined by his Leipzig colleagues Stefan Arzberger & Tilman Büning, violins, and violist Ivo Bauer, in performances of the Quartet in B-flat, op. 18, no. 6, “La Maliconia”,Quartet in f, op. 95,“Serioso” and the Quartet in E-flat, op. 127. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
The
Cleveland Orchestra’s 211th visit to the Oberlin Artist Recital Series in Finney Chapel last Friday evening featured two debuts: Gianandrea Noseda’s as guest conductor, and principal trombonist Massimo La Rosa’s as concerto soloist. Nino Rota’s sunny Trombone Concerto shared the program with two more emotionally complicated Russian works by Rachmaninoff and Prokofiev.
One of the pieces featured during Sergei Rachmaninoff’s visit to Severance Hall in 1942 was his 1907 tone poem, The Isle of the Dead, based on a symbolist painting by Arnold Böcklin so famous that the Swiss artist made five versions of it and reproductions, said Vladimir Nabokov, could be found hanging in every Berlin home. Rachmaninoff saw only a black and white photograph of the strange Toteninsel with its mysterious pair of figures in a boat, its rocky mausoleum and tall yew trees, before writing his work, but it took hold of his imagination strongly enough to inspire a 20-minute piece. [Read more…]
by Mike Telin
Note: this performance was eventually cancelled due to illness.
Performance
agreements between artists and presenters usually contain a cancellation clause that addresses “acts of God.” And the rescheduling is usually contingent on finding a date that is agreeable to both the artist and presenter. Luckily for Northeast Ohio audiences, when hurricane Sandy forced the cancellation of pianist Garrick Ohlsson’s Oberlin Artist Recital Series debut, his performance was quickly rescheduled.
On Tuesday, February 12 at 8:00 pm in Finney Chapel, Garrick Ohlsson will make his debut on the Oberlin Artist Recital Series. Ohlsson’s program includes Brahms’s Rhapsodies, op. 79, Liszt’s Fantasia on Ad Nos, Ad salutarem undam, S. 259, Scriabin’s Two Pieces, op. 57, Étrangeté, op. 63, no. 2 & Vers la Flamme, op. 72 and Chopin’s Fantasy, op. 49 and Scherzo, op. 31 (all original tickets will be honored). [Read more…]