Tenor Nicholas Phan and pianist Myra Huang will step in to replace bass-baritone John Relyea and pianist Warren Jones on the Oberlin Artist Recital Series in Finney Chapel on Wednesday, February 3 at 8:00 pm. Relea has withdrawn from his entire tour, citing family issues. Phan will sing works by Robert Schumann, Benjamin Britten, Ned Rorem, and Jake Heggie. Relyea tickets will be honored at the door.
After summer triumphs on the road, Apollo’s Fire plans eight programs at home
by Daniel Hathaway
Following a series of sold-out concerts at Tanglewood and in England (London and Aldeburgh) and Italy, Cleveland’s baroque orchestra Apollo’s Fire is busy putting the finishing touches on the eight programs they are planning around the area this season. We reached founder and artistic director Jeannette Sorrell to chat about last summer’s experiences and her plans for the season to come.
I began by asking about Apollo’s Fire’s debut at the Berkshire Music Center at Tanglewood in Lenox, Massachusetts. “It was really fun,” Sorrell said. “We had no idea that we were going to be sold out at Tanglewood. It was really a personal homecoming because I had studied in the conducting class there back in 1989 and I have such moving memories of that summer working with Leonard Bernstein and Roger Norrington. [Read more…]
Review: Cleveland Orchestra: Bach and Orff with Walters and Feddeck (April 11)
by Daniel Hathaway
Patrons who packed the four sold-out houses last weekend at Severance Hall came to hear Carl Orff’s spirited medieval cantata Carmina Burana, but they were also treated to the bonus of an elegant curtain-raiser in Johann Sebastian Bach’s Concerto in A for oboe d’amore and strings with Robert Walters on the solo line.
Bach — that great recycler — turned several wind concertos from his days as court composer at Köthen into harpsichord concertos for his coffee house concerts with the Leipzig University Collegium Musicum between 1729 and 1741. Though the originals have been lost, they can be reconstructed by clever musicologists, as an uncredited arranger did for BWV 1055.
James Feddeck, stepping in for Franz Welser-Möst last weekend, led a string section pared down to eight first violins, six seconds, five violas, four cellos and two double basses, creating an admirable balance between soloist and orchestra [Read more…]