by Daniel Hathaway
After BlueWater Chamber Orchestra founder Carlton Woods’ untimely death in February, the Orchestra decided to continue with his plans for 2017-2018, calling on guest conductors and its own concertmaster to lead the new season’s programs. On Sunday afternoon, September 17 at the Breen Center in Ohio City, Octavio Más-Arocas led the ensemble in “The Captivating Cello,” and the captivating cellist was Cleveland Orchestra principal Mark Kosower. [Read more…]
by Jarrett Hoffman
Once a year, tens of thousands of people from around the world come to conductor Octavio Más-Arocas’ hometown of Buñol, Spain, for a tomato fight.
“It’s like the famous phrase about Times Square,” Más-Arocas said in a recent conversation. “If you stand there for two or three minutes, you can hear all the languages of the world. That happens in my little town on the last Wednesday of every August.”
After answering that yes, it can hurt to get hit by a tomato — especially a frozen one — the conductor made a surprising comparison: the tomato fight known as La Tomatina is not unlike music. “It’s funny to connect these two things, but I believe something unique happens in that moment in the fight, when you’re in the middle of it and thousands of people are around you. It’s barbaric, but at the same time it’s very touching in a way — human beings from all different backgrounds coming together to have fun.”
Más-Arocas hopes to bring that spirit of human connection to his debut as guest conductor with BlueWater Chamber Orchestra this Sunday, September 17 at 3:00 pm for the ensemble’s season-opening concert. “I have some dear friends in this orchestra, and it’s always great to make music with them. But in the end, they’re all going to be my friends because when I work with an orchestra, I want to create a friendship — that’s the only way I can make good music.”
by Daniel Hathaway
After the gradual spinning down of the summer concert season, September can sneak up on you. Here’s a list of early season openers and one-off events that Northeast Ohio music lovers should be sure to jot down in their calendars.
Ars Organi at St. Paul’s, Cleveland Heights
Organist Karel Paukert has created a festival to celebrate the collection of organs (and a harpsichord) that grace the music program at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Cleveland Heights. The seven events in “Ars Organi” between September 15 and October 1 will feature the Walter Holtkamp Sr. instrument as well as the Vladimir Slajch chamber organ, the Gerhard Hradetzky Italian Baroque organ, and the Matthias Griewisch harpsichord — a fleet of keyboard instruments any church would be delighted to have at its disposal.
Performers include Prague organist Jaroslav Tuma (right) on Friday, September 15 at 7:30 
pm and Saturday, September 16 at 4:00 pm (featuring his paraphrase of Smetana’s My Country); Oberlin professor James David Christie with members of Oberlin’s Collegium Musicum on Tuesday, September 19 at 7:30 pm; and University of Kansas professor James Higdon in a lecture and masterclass on Jehan Alain on Saturday, September 23 at 2:00 pm and a recital of Alain’s works on Sunday, September 24 at 4:00 pm. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Among the more persistent bits of misinformation about Johann Sebastian Bach is the notion that the Cantor of Leipzig was completely forgotten soon after his death in 1750, his antiquated musical style disdained by a younger, cooler generation of composers — including his sons. In fact, Bach’s legacy never completely died out. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Francis Poulenc’s inspiring and disturbing story of the sixteen Carmelite nuns of Compiègne who perished at the guillotine in 1794 during Robespierre’s Reign of Terror during the French Revolution received a laudable performance by Baldwin Wallace Opera Theater on Friday, February 24. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
British director Peter Brook’s re-imagining of George Bizet’s ever-popular opera Carmen caused a stir when it debuted in New York in 1981. Pared down to 85 minutes in length and divested of choruses and much of its connective music, it rankled die-hard opera fans and critics. But as director Victoria Bussert and Baldwin Wallace Opera proved on opening night, Thursday, February 25, The Tragedy of Carmen can be a stunning piece of theater in its own right. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
George Bizet’s Carmen regularly appears in lists of the top ten operas performed across the globe, but like Handel’s Messiah, there’s no definitive version of the piece. The score of Carmen has been touched by many hands since its Paris premiere in 1875, as it has evolved from a comic opera with spoken dialogue to a grand opera with sung recitatives.
The most radical version of the work, Peter Brook’s La Tragédie de Carmen, which premiered at the Vivian Beaumont Theater in New York in 1981, reduces Bizet’s four acts lasting about 2-½ hours to one act lasting 85 minutes. Brook also stripped out the chorus, reduced the orchestra to 14 players, and cut many of the original elements from the score.
BW Opera Theater will present Brook’s The Tragedy of Carmen in the Robert Allman Theater on BW’s Berea campus from February 25 to 28, with evening performances running from Thursday through Sunday at 7:30 pm, and matinees on Saturday and Sunday at 2:00 pm. The production will be directed by Victoria Bussert, BW’s director of musical theater. We reached her by phone to get her take on the Peter Brooks version of the show. [Read more…]
by Timothy Robson
A new era began this weekend for the revered Baldwin Wallace Bach Festival, now in its 83rd season, with a new artistic director, Dirk Garner, and orchestral conductor Octavio Más-Arocas. In any such transition the new regime has the opportunity to assess tradition and determine the direction forward. If the first concert of the 2015 festival on Friday, April 17, in BW’s Gamble Auditorium, is any indication, the organization is in good hands, with a vivid sense of imagination and purpose, yet not losing track of the past. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
“Tradition and innovation in the same moment: it’s like Bach.” That’s just one line from an ode to Johann Sebastian Bach that introduces the 83rd Baldwin Wallace Bach Festival to visitors on its website, but it sums up the character of this weekend’s Festival under its new management.
“We’re moving on,” Dirk Garner said in a phone conversation from his studio in Berea, where he serves as Gigax Chair for Choral Studies at the Baldwin Wallace University Conservatory of Music, and now as artistic director of the BW Bach Festival, the oldest collegiate Bach festival in the country. “The fun part — and the hard part — of this position is maintaining the tradition of the beloved Bach Festival, and at the same time trying to do new things.” [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
There’ll be a festive fanfare when Spanish-born conductor Octavio Más-Arocas conducts his first concert with the Baldwin Wallace Symphony Orchestra on Friday, September 26, but that new piece by Kevin C. Thompson is only the first of several curtain-raisers BW’s new orchestral maestro has planned in a continuing series he calls “The Symphony Orchestra Fanfare Project.”