by Mike Telin
“The purpose of a cello society is to raise awareness of the instrument and what it brings to music,” Cleveland Orchestra Principal Cello Mark Kosower said during a recent conversation. “It’s also a place to share ideas about cello playing and music making. So the societies are important to cello communities, and communities at large.”
On Friday, March 10 at 7:00 pm at The Music Settlement, The Cleveland Cello Society will present Mark Kosower and pianist Jee-Won Oh in a recital that will feature works by Beethoven, Brahms, Khachaturian, Martinů, and Schubert.
Kosower said that the cello is one of the most versatile and expressive instruments around. “It’s a remarkable instrument. Few others can compare, in my humble but correct opinion,” he said, laughing. “Its range runs the entire spectrum of the human voice.” [Read more…]
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. 
