Jordi Savall Archives - Cleveland Classical

Review: Jordi Savall and Hespèrion XXI: CMA “Masters of the Violin” (November 1)

November 5, 2013 by Special to ClevelandClassical.com

by Nicholas Jones

Hespèrion XXI has long broadened from its original musical base (the viol music of the Renaissance in western Europe) to encompass the music of areas usually considered the margins of Europe. The program they presented last week at the Cleveland Museum of Art was a witness to the diverse musical cultures of one of those margins, the rich and dangerous mosaic of the Balkan countries.

In a beautifully crafted program led by the Catalonian gambist Jordi Savall with scrupulous attention to detail as well as overall coherence and impact, this ensemble of seven instrumentalists and five singers took the audience through a moving geographical and emotional journey.

The program was the best tour one could imagine of this troubled and fascinating region. The songs moved through whole worlds of language — Serbian, Greek, Hebrew, Bulgarian, Bosnian, and more. The program’s mobility itself reflected the area’s many diasporas — of Jews, Ottomans, Roma, and Christians alike, who through the centuries have migrated through the region. The singers and instrumentalists themselves were a United Nations of the Balkan peninsula, each a master of their regional style and instrument. [Read more…]

Preview: CMA Performing Arts Series — Jordi Savall and Hesperion XXI in “Honey and Blood”

October 30, 2013 by Special to ClevelandClassical.com

by Daniel Hathaway

For the third November in a row, Jordi Savall will visit the Cleveland Museum of Art to play on the museum’s Performing Arts Series. In 2011, Savall appeared with his son, Ferran, in a program called “Music Dialogues from Orient and Occident,” when Jordi played lira da gamba and seven-string bass viol and Ferran played theorbo and sang. In 2012, Jordi Savall brought his ensemble, Hespèrion XXI, to Cleveland to chronicle two centuries of European Renaissance and early Baroque consort music — an occasion on which he played the treble viol.

This year, Savall and Hespèrion XXI will return to Gartner Auditorium on Friday evening, November 1, when the resourceful Catalan musician will play vielle and rebec as part of the Museum’s “Masters of the Violin” series-within-a-series in a program entitled “Honey and Blood: The Cycles of Life in the Mosaic of Christians, Sephardic Jews & Muslims of the Balkans.” The ensemble includes five singers and half a dozen other instrumentalists playing exotic regional instruments. We reached Jordi Savall via Skype in his studio near Barcelona to ask how this program came about. [Read more…]

Oberlin Opera stages a Cendrillon of professional quality (Nov. 10)

by Daniel Hathaway

Any regional opera company would be popping its buttons with pride to have produced such an impressive performance of Jules Massenet’s Cendrillion (Cinderella) as Oberlin Opera did in Hall Auditorium on Sunday afternoon, November 10.

Imaginative staging by Stephanie Havey, skillful pacing by conductor James Feddeck, beautiful set design and costuming by Laura Carlson-Tarantowski and Chris Flaharty, respectively, plus dramatic and — for the fairies — enchanting lighting by Jeremy K. Benjamin provided a supportive environment for splendid singing by the cast and brilliant playing by the Oberlin Chamber Orchestra.

Literally thousands of versions of the Cinderella tale exist in cultures around the globe, but many of the details of Massenet’s opera date back to Charles Perrault’s 1697 Cendrillon ou la petite pantoufle de verre, which adds what have now become essential elements to the tale: a young girl mistreated by her stepmother and stepsisters, who temporarily attracts the attention of a handsome prince at a royal ball and is eventually reunited with him to become a princess herself. [Read on…]

Seraph Brass dances through musical travels in Rocky River (Nov. 11)

by Stephanie Manning

Before Seraph Brass arrived in Ohio on November 11, the group’s fall touring season had taken them on the road to Missouri, Florida, New York, and even Peru. And at the Rocky River Chamber Music Society, they gave the audience a taste of the traveling life right from the first piece.

The “Prelude” from Edvard Greig’s Holberg Suite whisked listeners away to Norway, with a melody surely familiar to many. It was extra familiar to the brass quintet themselves, who launched into their opening number without sheet music. Playing memorized is part of the group’s trademark, and they smoothly alternated using music and no music throughout the evening. Either way, the wide-ranging program had those at West Shore Unitarian Universalist Church spellbound.

Trumpet players Mary Elizabeth Bowden and Raquel Samayoa, horn player Layan Atieh, trombonist Lauren Casey-Clyde, and tuba player Robyn Black sounded equally comfortable in Romantic and contemporary repertoire, flipping between both with practiced ease. [Read on…]

Cleveland Orchestra’s Beethoven Concerto Cycle performance featured pairing of rising star and mentor (Nov. 15)

This article was originally published on Cleveland.com

By Daniel Hathaway

CLEVELAND, Ohio — For the third program in The Cleveland Orchestra’s Beethoven Piano Concerto Cycle, the pairing of 20-year-old Korean pianist Yunchan Lim with his mentor Minsoo Sohn was an astute programming decision.

Well-established names on the concert circuit — Orion Weiss, Sir Stephen Hough, and Garrick Ohlsson — had already filled the empty solo spots for the composer’s Triple Concerto and solo concertos 2, 3, and 4. But the choice of the youngest pianist ever to win the Van Cliburn Competition to close out the Cleveland series packed Mandel Concert Hall at Severance Music Center on Friday evening, November 15, with a near-capacity audience teeming with enthusiastic young people.

[Read on…]

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