The gift of music is always a wonderful way to say happy holidays to friends and family. The week, the editors and correspondents of ClevelandClassical.com are pleased to suggest nineteen CDs released in 2016 by outstanding musicians, most of whom call Northeast Ohio home.
There’s certainly something on this list for every classical music lover. Click on the links at the end of each paragraph to read complete reviews of each album. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Name four chamber works scored for oboe, viola, and piano. Then name four chamber works for oboe, viola, and piano that are based on poetry. Most of us would give up before getting to the second question. But the Jackson Trio — oboist Roger Roe, violist Michael Isaac Strauss, and pianist R. Kent Cook — have turned up pieces by August Klughardt, Felix Harold White, Josef Holbrooke, and Charles Martin Loeffler that fit the criteria for their fascinating album, Wordless Verses, released on the Oberlin Music Label. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Newly
appointed Oberlin viola professor Michael Strauss, who was previously principal violist of the Indianapolis Symphony, has devised an intriguing chamber music program for the unusual combination of viola, oboe and piano which has recently been toured and will be recorded later this week in the conservatory’s Clonick Hall for release as a CD.
The program was presented on Thursday evening in Kulas Hall, when Strauss joined his long-time chamber music colleagues, oboist Roger Roe of the Indianapolis Symphony and pianist R. Kent Cook of Illinois Wesleyan University, in four works by one relatively well-known and three pretty obscure late nineteenth and early twentieth century Romantic composers. The concert, entitled “Poetic Music for Oboe, Viola and Piano”, was enhanced by poetry that inspired each work read by Oberlin English professor T.S. McMillin. I attended the performance virtually thanks to Oberlin’s new “Listen Live” streaming service. [Read more…]