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Oberlin Artist Recital Series: Orchestra & Choir of the Age of Enlightenment (Nov. 22)

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by Daniel Hathaway

Britain’s Orchestra and Choir of the Age of Enlightenment brought smashing performances of well-known Baroque works to Oberlin’s Finney Chapel on Friday, November 22 as part of the college’s Artist Recital Series. Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater, Albinoni’s Oboe Concerto in d, and Vivaldi’s Gloria are titles you can routinely encounter on programs by avocational ensembles — they’re well within the capabilities of amateur musicians — but hearing them burnished to such a high gloss by 32 professional period instrumentalists and singers was revelatory. [Read more…]

Oberlin Artist Recital Series: Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment (first of two articles)

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by Mike Telin

Central to Enlightenment thought were the use and celebration of reason, the power by which humans understand the universe and improve their own condition. The goals of rational humanity were considered to be knowledge, freedom, and happiness. (Encyclopedia Britannica)

On Friday, November 22 at 7:30 pm in Finney Chapel, the Oberlin Artist Recital Series will present the Orchestra and Choir of the Age of Enlightenment. Under the direction of Jonathan Cohen, the program will include Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater, Albinoni’s Oboe Concerto No. 2 in d, Op. 9, and Vivaldi’s Gloria. The concert will feature sopranos Katherine Watson and Rowan Pierce, countertenor Iestyn Davies, and oboist Katharina Spreckelsen. Tickets are available online.

Following the performance, you can unwind with members of the OAE during The Night Shift. The free hangout and performance will take place at the Birenbaum club, on the lower level of the Hotel at Oberlin. Capacity is limited, and guests will be admitted on a first-come, first-served basis.

[Read more…]

Anthony Roth Costanzo & Les Violons du Roy at Tuesday Musical (Oct. 16)

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by Timothy Robson

American countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo and the Quebec-based Baroque orchestra Les Violons du Roy, with their new music director Jonathan Cohen, made a stop at E.J. Thomas Hall at the University of Akron on Tuesday, October 16, in a presentation by Tuesday Musical. The concert included music from their recent album ARC – Glass / Handel, plus a Handel concerto grosso and an excerpt from a Philip Glass symphony. [Read more…]

Tuesday Musical to present Les Violons du Roy: A conversation with countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo

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by Mike Telin

When countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo was thinking about what to include on his debut recording for Decca Gold, he wanted more than just an anthology of arias from one composer. “As a countertenor my repertoire is split between the contemporary and the Baroque, so I started thinking about how to bridge that gap,” Costanzo said during a telephone conversation. “I have sung Handel all my life. My technique has been defined by that and my soul lies there. And when I sang the music of Philip Glass for the first time it changed me. It influenced my thinking about making art and about being a dramatic singer.”

On Tuesday, October 16 at 7:30 pm in Akron’s E.J. Thomas Hall, Tuesday Musical will present Anthony Roth Costanzo and the Montreal-based Baroque orchestra, Les Violons du Roy, under the direction of Jonathan Cohen. The program will feature works from that debut album: ARC Glass/Handel. Tickets are available online.

Costanzo said that the music of Handel and Glass have similar qualities when it comes to harmonic language and emotional impact, as well as repetition. “Handel has the da capo aria — A and B sections then the A section repeated. He’ll also take lines of text and he’ll chunk them up by repeating a couple of words in that line several times, then he’ll go onto the next set of words and he’ll repeat them a few times. That’s almost exactly what Glass does, except he repeats the music itself.”

[Read more…]

Summers@Severance: Cleveland Orchestra with Cohen & Bezuidenhout (August 24)

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by Nicholas Stevens

Any concert that features a first-rate ensemble, with a respected and rising conductor at the helm and a renowned soloist as a guest, will make for a great evening’s worth of music-making. However, some events seem to invite the audience to levitate in their seats, absorbed and enchanted. Jonathan Cohen drew extraordinary sounds from The Cleveland Orchestra in one such concert last week. When pianist Kristian Bezuidenhout joined in, the assembled musicians achieved something like transcendence.

[Read more…]

Summers@Severance: 10 minutes with conductor Jonathan Cohen

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by Jarrett Hoffman

Québec’s chamber orchestra Les Violons du Roy got its name from France’s royal court orchestra of yore. But the group’s new leader, Jonathan Cohen, is not a Gallic king — neither in reality nor in ego.

“I come from a chamber music perspective and a chamber music world,” the Manchester-born conductor said during a recent telephone conversation from rainy London. For him, music-making should be a shared endeavor with shared responsibility. “It’s not like I’m ordering people to play and they just interpret it. We do that together, and I guide the process — that’s how I like to work.”

Cohen and pianist Kristian Bezuidenhout will make their Cleveland Orchestra debuts on Friday, August 24 at 7:00 pm in the last of the season’s Summers@Severance outings — “@” Severance Hall, with air conditioning, and without crickets. The program of Handel, Haydn, and Mozart represents Cohen’s specialty: music before late Beethoven. “That kind of music is my great passion and love. And in my opinion, most of it is chamber music.”

[Read more…]

Got summer plans, Cleveland Orchestra? Blossom + Summers@Severance + a few extra notables

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by Jarrett Hoffman

Absence makes the heart grow fonder, and Clevelanders haven’t heard their orchestra live since mid-May. In the interim, The Cleveland Orchestra has been on the road, finishing off their centennial-capping Prometheus Project with performances at Vienna’s Musikverein and Tokyo’s Suntory Hall. Oh, how we miss them.

We’ll get reacquainted with TCO soon, thanks to their schedule at this year’s 50th anniversary season of Blossom Music Festival, plus their fourth Summers@Severance series.

The Cleveland Orchestra marks the unofficial beginning of summer when they open their Blossom season on Saturday, July 7 at 8:00 pm. At the helm will be music director Franz Welser-Möst, leading the Orchestra in Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition in its orchestration by Ravel, Reznicek’s Overture to Donna Diana, and Beethoven’s Triple Concerto, featuring TCO’s own soloists –– pianist Joela Jones, violinist Stephen Rose, and cellist Mark Kosower. At this concert and two others, check out the Image Magnification system, which displays live video of the performers on LED screens in the Blossom Pavilion. Fingers crossed for the weather — a firework show is planned for afterwards.

[Read more…]

Cleveland Orchestra announces 2018 Summers@Severance events

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by Daniel Hathaway

Summers@SeveranceThe Cleveland Orchestra will welcome three guest conductors to lead its early Friday evening Summers@Severance Concerts in July and August.

Herbert Blomstedt, who will turn 91 shortly before his July 27 appearance with the Orchestra, will lead the ensemble in Brahms’ Fourth Symphony.

Vasily Petrenko, who leads the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic and the Oslo Philharmonic, will conduct Elgar’s In the South and Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra on August 10.

And two artists will make their Severance Hall debuts on August 24 when conductor Jonathan Cohen joins pianist Kristian Bezuidenhout in Haydn’s Piano Concerto No. 11 in D. Also on the program are Handel’s Occasional Oratorio Overture and Mozart’s Symphony No. 25 in g. [Read more…]

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