by Rebecca Shasberger
Special to ClevelandClassical.com
While November has only recently arrived, many people find themselves already planning for Thanksgiving. For some in our community, however, such planning isn’t as simple as deciding who will cook the turkey and who will bake the pies. Tens of thousands of people in Northeast Ohio will instead be wondering if they’ll have food at all for Thanksgiving, an uncertainty many of them face throughout the year.
Some of Cleveland’s brightest musical lights have decided to do something about this problem. On Sunday, November 19 at 2:00 pm, well-known performers including cellists Sharon Robinson and Keith Robinson, violinist Jinjoo Cho, harpist Yolanda Kondonassis, guitarist Jason Vieaux, and trumpeter Michael Sachs will present a benefit concert for food relief at the Maltz Museum of Jewish History.
Performing Handel’s most famous oratorio poses a challenge for modern conductors, choruses and orchestras. Even in 1742 when it was being created prior to its debut in Dublin, its composer found himself steering a perilous course between the values of puritans, who wanted it to be religious, and thespians, who saw it as a piece of theater. Nowadays, conductors, orchestras and choruses also find themselves navigating between the values of the historically informed performance movement and the desire to make this hugely popular work accessible to a wide public. Decisions, decisions! 
If The Cleveland Orchestra’s recent performance of Gustav Mahler’s third symphony were a restaurant, it would deserve the maximum three stars in the Michelin Guide (“exceptional…worth a special journey”). Franz Welser-Möst, the Orchestra, two of its choruses, and mezzo-soprano Kelley O’Connor took a captivated audience on a 95-minute journey into Mahler’s magic world on Thursday evening, October 5, the first of a pair of performances that weekend at Severance Hall, and an experience audiences in Paris and Vienna can look forward to during the Orchestra’s October tour.