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Review: La Cambiale di Matrimonio at Kent/Blossom Festival (July 18)

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by Mike Telin

Rossini-CambialeAfter a nearly thirty-year absence, vocal music returned to the Kent/Blossom Festival on Saturday, July 18 in Ludwig Recital Hall, and what an enjoyable afternoon it was. In fact, there are so many good things to say it’s difficult to know where to begin. Let’s start with the delightful musical selection — Rossini’s first professional opera, La Cambiale di Matrimonio or The Marriage Contract, performed in a costumed concert version sung in Italian with English supertitles (Sarah Harvey). [Read more…]

Akron Symphony features its associate conductor and chorus in works by Ravel and Mozart (November 22)

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by Daniel Hathaway

Hammer-at-PianoThe Akron Symphony appropriately celebrated Saint Cecilia’s Day 2014 with a concert of music by the divine Mozart and the sainted Fauré, but also took the opportunity to elevate the jazzy music of Ravel to the Empyrean. To a neglected symphony and an infrequently performed mass by Mozart, music director Christopher Wilkins added a lovely Fauré bonbon and a wonderfully cheeky Ravel piano concerto, creating a program that showed the patron saint of music to be a woman with wide aesthetic tastes. [Read more…]

Akron Symphony Orchestra: Levi Hammer to perform Ravel concerto

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by Mike Telin

Hammer-at-Piano“I love this concerto so much, I almost don’t know what to say,” pianist and Akron Symphony Associate Conductor Levi Hammer told us during a recent conversation. “It’s one of those pieces that’s been with me for most of my life, and I’m so happy to be able to play it again.”

On Saturday, November 22 at 8:00 pm, in the University of Akron’s E.J. Thomas Hall, Levi Hammer will perform Ravel’s jazz-inspired Piano Concerto in G major with the ASO under the direction of Christopher Wilkins. The concert will also include Fauré’s Pavane, Mozart’s Symphony No. 34 in C and his “Coronation” Mass in C, featuring the Akron Symphony Chorus.

Ravel composed the G-major concerto between 1929 and 1931 following a 1928 concert tour of the United States during which he met George Gershwin, who introduced him to Harlem jazz clubs. During the same tour, Ravel visited New Orleans, where he also took in that city’s vibrant jazz culture. [Read more…]

Review: Akron Symphony — “Akron Virtuosos” (February 22)

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by Daniel Hathaway

Akron-VirtuososSymphony orchestras sometimes showcase internal talent rather than laying on touring soloists. On February 22, the Akron Symphony turned the spotlight on several of its own “virtuosos”: its estimable horn section, its principal cellist and its assistant conductor all got their moment to shine before the ASO widened the beam to illuminate the whole ensemble in a brilliant concerto for orchestra.

Music director Christopher Wilkins began the evening with a brief prolegomena, then introduced his assistant, Levi Hammer, who led a stirring performance of Zoltán Kodály’s Dances of Galanta from memory. Based on gypsy melodies collected in the Hungarian village of Galanta, the piece gave a few virtuosi in the orchestra their own cameo appearances: clarinetist Kristina Belisle Jones was splendid in two spiraling cadenzas and flute, piccolo and oboe contributed handsome lyrical passages. The ASO musicians gave Hammer a fraternal solo bow when he was called back to stage. [Read more…]

Review: Akron Symphony opening concert with Levi Hammer (September 15)

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by Daniel Hathaway

ASO-WilkinsThe Akron Symphony opened its new season on Sunday evening at E.J. Thomas Hall under the expressive baton of music director Christopher Wilkins with assured performances of a Ron Nelson overture, a Mozart piano concerto with assistant conductor Levi Hammer at the “Three Graces” Steinway, and a Brahms Symphony. The High Holy Days bumped the performance a day later than the ASO’s normal Saturday evening slot and probably accounted for an opening night crowd a bit smaller than usual but no less effusive in its support for their local ensemble.

Brahms was famously nervous about producing his first symphony. The project languished for years as the composer’s original ideas were repurposed into a piano concerto and parts of his Requiem. What finally emerged in 1876 has become one of the standards of the repertoire, and the ASO did the piece proud. A rich, full, blended tone filled the hall in the tuttis and solo winds (notably oboist Terry Orcutt and clarinetist Kristina Belisle Jones) were splendidly lyrical. [Read more…]

Preview: Akron Symphony opens its season on September 15 — a conversation with assistant conductor/piano soloist Levi Hammer

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by Mike Telin

HAMMER-Levi“I love this concerto,” Levi Hammer says of Mozart’s 25th piano concerto. “I never played it and have always wanted to. It has the most gorgeous woodwind writing, especially in the second movement, and to me, it is like playing chamber music.”

On Sunday, September 15 beginning at 7:30 pm in E.J. Thomas Hall, the Akron Symphony Orchestra led by Maestro Christopher Wilkins, opens its 2013-2014 season with a concert featuring Brahms’s Symphony No. 1, American composer Ron Nelson’s Savannah River Holiday and Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 25.

Levi Hammer, who is also the Akron Symphony’s assistant conductor as well as music director of the Akron Youth Symphony, says that he sees his career following the long tradition of conductors who have ascended to the orchestral podium through the piano. “You think about Karajan, Bernstein, Levine, Barenboim, Muti and Eschenbach and even Szell and Reiner: they were all fantastic pianists and they all continued to play even though they were essentially conductors. Nowadays we have the likes of Asher Fisch, Antonio Pappano and Robert Spano, who are all conductors but still remain very active as pianists. It is important to me that I follow this tradition and I am following it quite consciously.” [Read more…]

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