by Daniel Hathaway
Conductor Scott MacPherson had two things in mind when choosing repertoire for Cleveland Chamber Choir’s first pair of concerts this season. The program had to reflect this season’s concentration on music by women composers, and the works needed to flourish in the lively acoustic of venues in Cleveland and Akron. The first performance, on Friday, November 8 at the Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist, scored high on both counts. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
To begin its fifth season, the professional singers of Scott MacPherson’s Cleveland Chamber Choir will present identical programs at St. John’s Cathedral in downtown Cleveland on Friday, November 8 at 7:30 pm, and at St. Sebastian Church in Akron on Sunday, November 10 at 5:00 pm.
“Our overall theme this season is ‘Women’s Voices Resounding,’” MacPherson said in a telephone conversation. “A good chunk of the repertoire is by women composers and poets. And the first pair of concerts will be given in memory of my dear friend Helen Tremaine Gregory, who passed away last winter. She was a businesswoman and philanthropist who sang in my town-gown Kent Chorale.”
When MacPherson puts a concert program together, he often begins with a central piece out of which companion works spring. “The centerpiece of these programs is Timothy Kramer’s Lux Caelestis, a piece he wrote for me when I was at Trinity University in San Antonio,” the conductor said. “I asked him for a piece we could sing on tour in Cologne Cathedral — one that was appropriate for a watery acoustic.” [Read more…]
by Nicholas Stevens
Most musicians and music history buffs recount Beethoven’s life as a three-part story of artistic progress, from early indebtedness to precedent, through the heroic rupturing of tradition, then on to strange yet sublime experiments. However, smart concert programming can remind us that this central figure of the classical pantheon, like most artists, tended to zigzag. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
A critical mass of nearly 200 singers joined Christopher Wilkins, the Akron Symphony, and a first-rate quartet of soloists for a resounding performance of Felix Mendelssohn’s Elijah on Saturday evening, May 5 in E.J. Thomas Hall. Commissioned for the 1846 Birmingham Festival following the success of his earlier oratorio St. Paul, Mendelssohn’s concert-length work presents the life of the Hebrew prophet in several dramatic scenes.
by Daniel Hathaway
At least one scholar has pointed out that the British entered the 19th century as a nation of folk singers, but emerged as a nation of oratorio singers. The Birmingham Triennial Festival, founded in 1787, became one of the principal commissioners of new works for large choruses and orchestras, and one of that festival’s favorite composers was Felix Mendelssohn.
Also a favorite of Queen Victoria and her Prince Consort Albert, Mendelssohn wrote and conducted St. Paul and his Second Piano Concerto for the 1837 Festival, and composed Elijah for the 1846 event, the year before he died. Elijah became so popular that it was performed at every successive festival until the series ended in 1912.
On Saturday, May 6 at 8:00 pm, Christopher Wilkins will conduct the Akron Symphony and the combined voices of the Akron Symphony Chorus, the Summit Choral Society’s Masterworks Chorale, and the University of Akron choruses, prepared by Marie Bucoy-Calavan, in Mendelssohn’s famous oratorio. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
After a week of intense master classes, a lecture, and a pair of recitals by soprano Joan Rodgers with pianist Roger Vignoles, and baritone Andrew Garland with pianist Warren Jones, the ten singer-pianist teams for whom the twenty-second Baldwin Wallace Art Song Festival was designed got the opportunity to show off their vocal and pianistic wares — and presumably some newly-acquired skills — in a free recital in Gamble Auditorium on Saturday evening, May 24.
Even with each team allotted only three songs, it could have turned into a long evening, but executive director Joanne Uniatowski and her team kept things moving along at a brisk clip and held the intermission to the announced ten minutes. Though the thirty songs sped by in a mere 90 minutes or so, the proceedings never felt rushed, just efficient.
If Saturday’s performers are any indication, the tradition of the Art Song is alive and in good voices and hands. Any of the ten pairs of singer/pianists would have been capable of sustaining the interest of an audience for an entire evening, though of course there were some standouts. [Read more…]