Ruth Anderson Archives - Cleveland Classical

DIARY: Tuesday, March 21, 2023

March 21, 2023 by Jarrett Hoffman

by Jarrett Hoffman

IN THIS EDITION:

•Today: organist Ralph Holzhauser makes a noon-time visit to Church of the Covenant

•Announcement: applications open for Assembly for the Arts’ Creative Impact Fund

•In the news: Met ordered to pay $200K to Netrebko, and a look at the “Violin Capital of China”

•Almanac: electronic music composer Ruth Anderson and one brilliant, funny sound collage

HAPPENING TODAY:

Today’s Tuesday Noon Organ Plus Concert from Church of the Covenant features organist Ralph Holzhauser, who will play music by J.S. Bach (Prelude and Fugue in C, BWV 547), Florence Price (Elf on a Moonbeam), Charles-Marie Widor (Final from Symphony No. 8), George Shearing (I Love Thee, Lord and There is a Happy Land), and Marcel Dupré (Prelude and Fugue in B, Op. 7, No. 3). A freewill offering will be taken up.

[Read more…]

Virtual performances from Hudson, Cleveland, and Akron launch season

September 22, 2020 by Daniel Hathaway

by Daniel Hathaway

Music From the Western Reserve, Music and Art at Trinity Cathedral, and Arts at Holy Trinity Lutheran Church all streamed concerts online in September, all without audiences present.

As organizations gingerly take steps to open up for business, it’s refreshing to have new content to listen to and write about after a solid six months of archival footage. [Read more…]

“Honoring Black Composers” at Karamu House (May 21)

by Kevin McLaughlin

Sunday afternoon’s audience at Jelliffe Theatre at Karamu House was treated to a thoughtfully curated, well-performed program honoring several 20th- and 21st-century Black composers. Karamu House made for an especially congenial setting, and Allison Loggins-Hull, The Cleveland Orchestra’s 11th Daniel R. Lewis Composer Fellow, was a gracious and thought-provoking host. This was the last event in The Cleveland Orchestra’s Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Opera & Humanities Festival.

Loggins-Hull periodically provided notes about the program. She is an elegant and compelling presence onstage, and a passionate spokesperson on behalf of her music as well as that of her fellow composers — notably through the lens of social justice.

Transcribed by the composer from her 2014 violin work, Jessie Montgomery’s Rhapsody No. 1 for solo viola felt like a slice of American fiddle tradition, enhanced by Eliesha Nelson’s sympathetic and sonorous performance. A plaintive six-note melody begins its journey, first in double stopped dialogue with itself, then as isolated accents over furious arpeggiation, before ending largely as it began.

[Read on…]

All-Stravinsky in Rocky River: variety and charm (May 15)

by Kevin McLaughlin

Variety and charm abounded in an all-Stravinsky program at West Shore Unitarian Universalist Church Monday evening, May 15, presented by the Rocky River Chamber Music Society. How delightful to hear this repertoire — Stravinsky’s droll and cerebral inventions in small combinations — heard almost exclusively on conservatory or college programs these days. Top-flight musicianship on the part of Cleveland Orchestra members and fellow professionals helped make the case. Congratulations to trumpeter Amanda Bekeny and clarinetist Daniel McKelway for putting it all together.

The succinct duos that opened the program, Fanfare for a New Theatre for trumpets and Lied Ohne Name for bassoons, made a nice pairing for their length and affective dissimilarity. Where the trumpets skirmished, the bassoons chatted dispassionately — both in under a minute. Accurate and faithful playing of both works only left us wanting more.

[Read on…]

Puccini’s Gold Rush Opera centers American Dream Festival (May 13)

by Daniel Hathaway

During his visit to New York in 1907 to supervise the Metropolitan Opera’s first productions of Madama Butterfly and Manon Lescaut, Giacomo Puccini got the idea of writing an opera to be set during the 1849 California Gold Rush after seeing David Belasco’s 1905 play, The Girl of the Golden West. The opera received its world premiere by the MET in 1910.

This week, three concert performances of La Fanciulla del West serve as the centerpiece of The Cleveland Orchestra’s Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Opera & Humanities Festival this month at Severance Music Center and around town, a richly-programmed look into the concept of what James Truslow Adams dubbed “The American Dream” in his 1931 Great Depression Era book, The Epic of America.

For the Cleveland production, which opened on May 13, the Orchestra is front and center. The principal singers perform from a raised platform connected to the organ chamber whose front pipes have been removed for entrances and exits. Secondary characters sing from another platform on stage right, and the male chorus is located on the other side. [Read on…]

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