by Robert Rollin
On Sunday, October 2, Arts Renaissance Tremont kicked off its 2016-17 classical music season with an outstanding matinee recital at the Art Nouveau Pilgrim Church. Pilgrim’s rose-colored, domed interior, with its two exquisite Tiffany stained glass windows, created a beautiful, atmospheric location for the concert. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
In a thrilling and revelatory recital on September 23, Cleveland Orchestra principal cello Mark Kosower and pianist Jee-Won Oh celebrated the centenary of Argentine composer Alberto Ginastera. Drawing a large audience to Mixon Hall at the Cleveland Institute of Music, Kosower visited all three of Ginastera’s style periods and offered his own tribute to Aurora Nátola, who inspired most of the composer’s works for the cello. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
“Alberto Ginastera’s career was made in America and his name became famous both here and in Europe,” said cellist Mark Kosower in a recent telephone conversation. “But his music just isn’t performed enough and he’s not taken with the same seriousness as European composers. He’s rooted in tradition, but in the second part of his career he became cutting-edge, writing in new ways all the time. I think that’s a model for any modern composer.” The Cleveland Orchestra’s principal cellist will join his wife, pianist Jee-Won Oh, in a celebration of the Argentine composer’s 100th birth anniversary on Friday, September 23 at 8:00 pm in Mixon Hall at the Cleveland Institute of Music. [Read more…]
by Mike Telin
“If I were to have a dinner party, whom would I invite from a list of composers?” conductor Nicholas McGegan asked himself during a recent telephone conversation. “You could pretty much count on Handel eating all your food, or on Mozart disgracing himself with the girls, but Haydn and Mendelssohn would be two of the most perfectly wonderful guests. Mendelssohn could talk to people in almost any language, and Haydn was just a charmer. And that comes through in their music.”
On Sunday, August 7 at 7:00 pm, Nicholas McGegan will return to Blossom Music Center to lead The Cleveland Orchestra in a concert that will feature music by his two preferred dinner guests: Joseph Haydn (Symphony No. 99) and Felix Mendelssohn (Symphony No. 3). The evening will also include George Benjamin’s Divertimento on Themes by Gluck with the Orchestra’s assistant principal oboe, Jeffrey Rathbun, as soloist.
McGegan, who admitted to be being a little bit of a foodie — he was putting vegetable soup on to simmer when I phoned — said that he looks forward to returning to Blossom. [Read more…]
by Timothy Robson
Poor Victor Herbert, the Irish-born, German-trained cellist, conductor, and composer, has gotten the short end of the music history stick. In the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century he was one of the most acclaimed American musical figures, both as a performer and as a composer of concert works — as well as a successful grand opera (Natoma, 1911) which starred soprano Mary Garden and a young Irish tenor making his operatic debut, John McCormick. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Love comes in infinite varieties, and three of them were represented on The Cleveland Orchestra’s program on Saturday, April 30. The program began with Richard Wagner’s “Prelude and Love-Death” from Tristan and Isolde (the romantic-tragic kind of love), continued with Ernest Chausson’s Poem of Love and the Sea (the poetic-tragic flavor), and ended with Richard Strauss’s Ein Heldenleben (the narcissistic sort). [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
While half of The Cleveland Orchestra was busy downtown providing incidental music for The Good Peaches at the Cleveland Play House on Thursday evening, April 14, the rest of the ensemble played a scintillating concert of music by Haydn and Mozart uptown at Severance Hall under guest conductor Jane Glover, featuring principal flute Joshua Smith and harpist Yolanda Kondonassis. [Read more…]
by Carlyn Kessler
On Sunday evening, February 28, the Cleveland Cello Society (CCS) welcomed audience members into Case Western Reserve University’s Harkness Chapel for the 18th iCellisti concert, an annual event organized by CCS and directed by cellist Ida Mercer. [Read more…]
by Robert Rollin
On Saturday evening August 22, the Blossom Music Festival played host to British early music specialist Nicholas McGegan, returning to conduct the Cleveland Orchestra in an interesting program of Baroque and Classical masterpieces. A 29-year veteran director of the San Francisco-based Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, conductor for many recordings, and frequent guest conductor, the British-born MeGegan, stocky and diminutive in stature, projected an infectious vitality and enthusiasm that moved the audience to break out in applause after nearly every individual movement on the concert. [Read more…]
by Nicholas Jones
The summer spirit prevailed at the last Cleveland Orchestra concert in the popular Friday evening Summers@Severance series. Outside, before and after the concert, a happy crowd enjoyed drinks on the terrace overlooking the lagoon and the art museum. Inside, the concert itself seemed to radiate the crisp, clear, and warm light of these late August Ohio days. [Read more…]