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Cleveland Orchestra: All-Haydn (mostly) with Matthew Halls (April 30)

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by Daniel Hathaway

HALLS-Matthew-NewA full evening devoted to the music of Joseph Haydn is sure to be filled with sophisticated musical rhetoric, and at least a good handful of surprises. Last Thursday evening at Severance Hall, visiting British conductor Matthew Halls and The Cleveland Orchestra dug deeply into the fabric of an overture and a symphony, and with the help of the fastidiously exciting pianist Marc-André Hamelin, into one of the Austrian master’s piano concertos. Though the fourth work was obviously not by Haydn, its performance by duo hornists Richard King and Jesse McCormick would have deeply impressed whoever actually wrote it. [Read more…]

Oberlin Winter Chamber Music Festival: Faculty and Guest Recital (January 14)

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by Daniel Hautzinger

Kulas-OberlinNortheastern Ohio has some fantastic musicians. Case in point: the chamber concert in Oberlin’s Kulas Recital Hall on January 14, part of the conservatory’s Winter Chamber Music Festival. Featuring the abundant talents of members of The Cleveland Orchestra, Oberlin faculty, and one student, it offered a cornucopia of musicality, passion, and delight. [Read more…]

The Cleveland Orchestra & Chorus: Mozart & Ravel (January 8)

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by Daniel Hathaway

TCO010815Mastroianni

Pierre Boulez first treated Cleveland Orchestra audiences to Maurice Ravel’s complete ballet music for Daphnis et Chloé in 1970. As part of the orchestra’s 90th birthday tribute to the French composer and conductor who has maintained a long-term relationship with the ensemble, Franz Welser-Möst revisited Ravel’s wonderful score on Thursday evening for the first of three concerts in Severance Hall. Though — as the song goes — the weather outside was frightful, The Cleveland Orchestra and Chorus lit a delightful indoor fire full of sensual warmth and ecstasy. [Read more…]

Cleveland Orchestra with James Gaffigan and Yulia Van Doren (October 23)

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by Daniel Hathaway

VANDOREN-YuliaPietism and fatalism inspired the disquieting poetic images that soprano Yulia Van Doren and the Cleveland Orchestra and Chorus presented in works by Johann Sebastian Bach and Johannes Brahms last Thursday night in Severance Hall. Those depressing thoughts might have put a damper on the proceedings, had not the music in both cases been so appealing. [Read more…]

Review: Cleveland Orchestra Season Finale with Vladimir Jurowski and Simone Lamsma (May 29))

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by Daniel Hathaway

LAMSMA-SImoneThe Cleveland Orchestra’s production of Janácek’s Cunning Little Vixen was a tough act to follow, but the last concert of the Severance Hall season under guest conductor Vladimir Jurowski proved to be anything but anti-climactic. A sumptuous performance of an hour-long suite from Prokofiev’s ballet, Cinderella, a spellbinding reading of Britten’s Violin Concerto by Simone Lamsma and the opportunity to hear a very early Stravinsky work, the Scherzo fantastique, op. 3, added up to a surprisingly brilliant season finale. I heard the first of three concerts on Thursday, May 29.

Simone Lamsma’s appearance with the orchestra was remarkable on several counts. The Dutch violinist stepped in on short notice to replace her ailing countrywoman, Janine Jansen. She agreed to play the same concerto — a piece not all violinists keep under their fingers. And she played the Britten with consummate skill and complete authority, obviously winning many converts to a piece that can be difficult to wrap your ears around. [Read more…]

Preview: NEOSonicFest — Ensemble HD to be featured in second concert in Harkness Chapel on March 30

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by Mike Telin

Ensemble-HD-Happy-Dog“What I think is great about NEOSonicFest is that the groups that are performing are a good balance and represent what is going on in the music scene here in Cleveland,” Ensemble HD and Cleveland Orchestra principal flutist Joshua Smith said recently by telephone. “I think people will find there is a broad spectrum of musical examples of what the term New Music means.” On Sunday, March 30 beginning at 7:30 pm in Harkness Chapel at Case Western Reserve University, Ensemble HD with special guests Verb Ballets, will feature music that represents a variety of musical styles and combinations of instruments.

Ensemble HD first gained national attention by bringing classical music to new audiences with their performances at the Happy Dog Bar on Cleveland’s near West Side (above). Led by Joshua Smith, the ensemble includes pianist Christina Dahl, associate professor of music at SUNY Stony Brook, and four of Smith’s fellow Cleveland Orchestra members: violinist Amy Lee, oboist Frank Rosenwein, cellist Charles Bernard, and violist Joanna Patterson-Zakany.

[Read more…]

Review: Cleveland Orchestra — All Brahms concert with Julia Fischer and Franz Welser-Möst (January 9)

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by Daniel Hathaway

Julia Fischer

Circled by video cameras — including a giraffe-like “jib” that hovered ominously over the front seats on stage right — Franz Welser-Möst and The Cleveland Orchestra played the first in a split set of four all-Brahms concerts with the outstanding violin soloist Julia Fischer on Thursday evening at Severance Hall.

The first pair of performances were being recorded for eventual release on DVD and television and over the course of four days, the concerts would include two different overtures and symphonies and four iterations of the violin concerto. Thursday’s concert featured works written in the seven-year period between 1878 and 1885: the Academic Festival Overture, the Violin Concerto, and the Symphony No. 4 in e minor.

Sometimes concert programs are designed to challenge the audience or to juxtapose works in interesting and revelatory ways. Sometimes — as in a retrospective art exhibition — programs are curated for the sheer pleasure of enjoying a body of work brought together in one place. [Read more…]

Preview: Cleveland Classical Guitar Society — Dan Lippel at MOCA Cleveland December 12

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by Mike Telin

LIPPEL-DanCalled a “modern guitar polymath” (Guitar Review), guitarist Daniel Lippel feels fortunate to have carved out such a diverse career for himself. “You need to do a lot of things in this business to make a living,” Lippel told us by telephone from his home in Brooklyn, New York. “I’ve always been interested in a lot of different things and I feel pretty lucky that it’s worked out for me to be able to have a lot of variety in my career. I’m definitely not getting bored.”

On Thursday, December 12 beginning at 8:00 pm at the Cleveland Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), Cleveland Classical Guitar Society presents guitarist Daniel Lippel in a concert that features contemporary solo and chamber music. Lippel will be joined by percussionist Luke Rinderknecht, Cleveland Orchestra principal oboist Frank Rosenwein and the Cleveland Institute of Music Guitar Quartet.

In addition to an active career as a solo performer, Lippel has commissioned or premiered more than fifty new solo and chamber works, many of which he has recorded for New Focus Recordings, the independent label he co-founded and directs. [Read more…]

Recording review: Ensemble HD — Live at The Happy Dog

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by Mike Telin

Ensemble-HD-GroupToday, May 15, 2013 is here and so marks the official release of the highly anticipated recording Ensemble HD – Live at The Happy Dog. So much has happened since June 23, 2010 when Cleveland Orchestra principal flutist Joshua Smith and Happy Dog proprietor Sean Watterson decided to take the plunge by bringing live “classical” music to a venue more known for presenting local rock and polka bands. But what this album celebrates most is the shared vision and philosophy of creating something that would put a new face on classical music which Smith and Watterson brought to a reality.

In the album’s informative liner notes, Charles Michener insightfully writes

“Yet, perhaps what ails classical music has less to do with the audience, the nature of the music or the people who play it, then it does with the places and the manner in which it is usually played.” Michener suggests, “What if one could experience Beethoven and Bartok in a setting other then a shrine-like auditorium…? What if the players arrived not in formal evening dress but as people who look and act just like the rest of us? What if you could enjoy Beethoven and Bartok in a casual public watering hole on an ordinary urban street while chatting with your companion, ordering food and drink, and even glancing occasionally at a TV monitor where an NBA or NFL game is in progress.” [Read more…]

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