Jonathan William Moyer Archives - Cleveland Classical

Review: Jonathan William Moyer on the Newberry Organ at the Church of the Covenant (June 10)

June 11, 2013 by Special to ClevelandClassical.com

by Daniel Hathaway

Church of the Covenant music director Jonathan William Moyer capped off the dedication festivities for the Covenant’s new Richards, Fowkes & Co. North German-style organ on Sunday, June 10, with magisterial performances of music that neatly outlined the Liturgical Year in the space of an hour.

After an overture-like piece by George Muffat, Moyer’s program began in Advent and concluded with Pentecost, visiting the festivals of Christmas, Epiphany and Easter and the penitential season of Lent (and Holy Week) along the way, featuring settings of seasonal hymns by Nicolaus Bruhns, Dieterich Buxtehude, Heinrich Scheidemann and Johann Sebastian Bach, as well as a bucolic Noël by Jean-François Dandrieu and plainchant elaborations by three generations of Spanish composers — Juan Bermudo, Sebastian Aguilera de Heredia and Juan Cabanilles. Bach’s “Great” d-minor toccata and fugue finished the year with a postlude-like flourish. [Read more…]

Cleveland Repertory Orchestra’s season opener contemplates circles of life (Nov. 2)

by Stephanie Manning

“This moment is full of wonders.” Composer Anna Clyne meditated on those words — written by Buddhist monk and peace activist Thich Nhat Hanh — as she wrote her orchestral work This Moment. That theme, of learning to cherish life more by reflecting on death, underscored most of the music chosen for the Cleveland Repertory Orchestra’s program on November 2.

The Cultural Arts Center at Disciples Christian Church hosted the season-opening concert, titled “Reflection and Revelations.” The venue’s dry acoustic helped the textures remain clear in Clyne’s piece, a somber and meditative seven minutes. [Read on…]

Pianist Garrick Ohlsson, conductor Daniel Reith lead Cleveland Orchestra in Beethoven concert (Nov. 9)

by Kevin McLaughlin

This article was originally published on Cleveland.com.

CLEVELAND, Ohio — A relaxed understanding born of a long career helped pianist Garrick Ohlsson bring easy grace and Proto-Romantic sensibility to Beethoven’s Second and Fourth Piano Concertos with the Cleveland Orchestra.

The program on Saturday at Severance Music Center featured early and middle works, the second set of concerts in the Orchestra’s cycle of Beethoven piano concertos.

Despite its number, the Second Concerto is actually the composer’s first, begun in 1790. Ohlsson treated this early Beethoven work expressively, with sinuous rubato, keeping his rhythms precise, his touch light, and his rhetoric clear. Nothing, not even Beethoven’s many technical snares, seemed to faze him.

[Read on…]

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