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Oberlin Artist Recital Series features bassist Linda May Han Oh (Mar. 19)

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by Max Newman

Upon first thought, you would think that conveying complex themes like “the fragility of time and life” through mostly wordless music would seem futile. Bassist Linda May Han Oh and her band would beg to differ.

On March 19 in Oberlin’s Finney Chapel, the group achieved exactly that with their performance of The Glass Hours. It was an uncategorizable concert, heavy with feeling and chock-full of technical prowess.

Some concerts in Finney Chapel are swallowed up by the venue’s cavernous qualities. This was not one of them. Oh and her band sent notes swimming to every corner of the space, building walls of sound that were dotted by well-defined lead lines and solos — the ensemble was able to simultaneously convey cacophony and sonic exactitude with exquisite dynamic control.

[Read more…]

Kent/Blossom Festival to perform Rossini’s first opera (July 18)

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by Mike Telin

Culver-Johnson-ElixirWhat do you do if you’re running a summer music festival and you discover that for one week, the majority of your teachers will be unavailable to coach ensembles and give private lessons? The obvious answer is to present an opera! On Saturday, July 18 at 3:00 pm in Ludwig Recital Hall, vocal music returns to the Kent/Blossom Music Festival when festival director Charles Latshaw will lead the Kent/Blossom Chamber Orchestra and soloists in a concert version of Giaochino Rossini’s first opera, La Cambiale di Matrimonio.

“It is an exciting undertaking, but there were a lot of things that came together in order for it to happen,” Charles Latshaw said during a telephone conversation. “This year we had a unique challenge and opportunity in that The Cleveland Orchestra is in New York this week as part of the Lincoln Center Festival, which left us with fewer coaches for that period of time. We talked about different options, and in the end we decided to bring opera back to the festival, and I think the audience is going to be receptive to the idea.” [Read more…]

Bohemian Pen Pals: The Emil Hess, Jr. Collection of Dvořák Memorabilia in The Cleveland Orchestra Archives

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by Mike Telin

DVORAK1On Thursday, May 14, at 7:30 pm, Franz Welser-Möst returns to Severance Hall to lead The Cleveland Orchestra in three programs that will feature Hindemith’s Concert Music for Strings and Brass, Jörg Widmann’s Violin Concerto with Christian Tetzlaff as soloist, and Dvořák’s Symphony No. 9 (“From the New World”). The program will be repeated on Saturday at 8:00 pm.

On May 15, the final Fridays@7 of the season will include the Widmann and Dvořák. At 6:00 pm the pre-concert performance will feature three-time Latin Grammy nominee Jovino Santos Neto performing improvisations on Dvořák’s “New World” Symphony and on music from emigration movements across the world. For the post-concert party in the Grand Foyer, Santos Neto and friends will perform contemporary Brazilian bossa novas in a blend of European harmonies, African rhythms, Middle Eastern modes, and American jazz. And jazz vocalist Vanessa Rubin and pianist Sullivan Fortner will perform in the Severance Restaurant.

In March of 2011 we visited The Cleveland Orchestra Archives and discovered that Antonín Dvořák had a special relationship with the orchestra. [Read more…]

Digging Deeply into Dvorak: ‘Musically Speaking’ at Severance Hall

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Photograph by Roger Mastroianni

by Mike Telin

On Sunday, November 29, the Cleveland Orchestra presented the first of three events in its new ‘Musically Speaking’ series, an initiative designed to bring Severance Hall audiences closer to the music and the musicians.

The afternoons begin with a 40-minute chamber music concert in Reinberger Hall, followed by a 3:00 multimedia exploration of the orchestral work of the day (this afternoon, Dvorak’s ‘New World’ Symphony) using a narrator, actors, projected visuals and live excerpts played by the orchestra. After intermission, the work is played in its entirety, followed by a question and answer period.

The central format of the first two ‘Musically Speaking’ events  derives from the Chicago Symphony’s ‘Beyond the Score’ series, which, as in this case, is franchised to other orchestral organizations. I experienced the CSO’s version of the Dvorak afternoon at the League of American Orchestras conference in Chicago last summer, so it was interesting to be able to compare the two throughout the afternoon.

[Read more…]

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