by Peter Feher
There was an unspoken tension between the composers on the Akron Symphony’s January 18 concert. Gustav Mahler’s hour-plus Fifth Symphony dominated the one-night-only program at E.J. Thomas Hall, which also featured an uncharacteristically short work by Richard Wagner — no slouch when it comes to profundity and grand gestures in his own music. Yet Wagner’s somewhat humble place on the program provided a conceptual key to Mahler’s self-contained, sometimes overwhelming symphony.
by Nicholas Stevens
Shakespeare is everywhere these days: not just at the roots of today’s literature, poetry, philosophy, pop culture, and theatre, but as the ultimate canonic figure in the arts. His fame helps keep him famous. Titles of novels riff on the fact that his work remains required reading; Supreme Court justices make headlines for doubting his authorship; tempests in teapots brew when people move his portrait. Classical music, with its piano-adorning composer busts, boasts figures of comparable monumentality. In presenting music on Shakespearean themes and scenarios in a recent concert, however, the Akron Symphony seized a chance to savor works of rarer vintages. [Read more…]
by Tom Wachunas
“Music of the People” was the theme of the November 18 Canton Symphony Orchestra program with works by George Gershwin and Pyotr Tchaikovsky. As stated in the press release for the concert, “the two composers…wrote music to touch the souls of the people of their respective countries.” What could be more “of the people” these days than national politics? Commenting on the evening’s opening selection — Gershwin’s overture to his 1931 satirical Broadway musical, Of Thee I Sing — a mischievously grinning Gerhardt Zimmermann explained that he intentionally scheduled the work to be performed on the heels of this country’s recent, highly contentious midterm elections. [Read more…]