Samuel Levine Archives - Cleveland Classical

Franz Welser-Möst leads powerful performance of Leoš Janáček’s Jenůfa (May 17)

May 21, 2025 by Daniel Hathaway

by Daniel Hathaway

This article was originally published on Cleveland.com

CLEVELAND, Ohio – How can an opera be so profoundly disturbing, yet so achingly beautiful?

That was the conundrum after hearing Leoš Janáček’s Jenůfa at Severance Music Center on Saturday, in a performance by Franz Welser-Möst, the Cleveland Orchestra and Chorus and 11 first-rank soloists.

Welser-Möst chose the Czech composer’s 1904 opera as the centerpiece of this season’s Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Opera & Humanities Festival because of its resonance with the theme of reconciliation. That’s a complex process that “transcends mere forgiveness and forgetfulness,” festival curator Elena Dubinets writes in the elaborate program book. “It entails recollection and progression.”

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ChamberFest takes its audience on a journey in “Songs, Signs, and Souvenirs” (June 28)

by Stephanie Manning

During this year’s ChamberFest, the “Lost and Found” theme showed up in all kinds of ways. Sometimes that meant performing recently-unearthed works from historic composers like Mozart and Chopin. Sometimes it referred to an emotional resonance, as when Judith Markovich’s music told the story of the grief and loss of a son.

But the listener has a role to play in this as well. As ChamberFest’s past Board chair Rebecca Carmi reminded the audience on June 28, getting “lost” in the music is also an experience to strive for. Thankfully, the engrossing final concert of ChamberFest’s 2025 season — held in Severance Music Center’s Reinberger Chamber Hall — provided plenty of opportunities.

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Blossom Festival Band spotlights new and old favorites in “Salute to America” (July 3)

by Stephanie Manning

This article was originally published on Cleveland.com

CUYAHOGA FALLS, Ohio — For an outdoor concert on July 3, you could hardly have asked for a nicer summer evening — or a more expert conductor.

“How about this weather!” Michelle Rakers cheerfully boomed from the podium, greeting the audience who had packed the lawn and pavilion at Blossom Music Center.

Under Rakers’ direction, the Blossom Festival Band presented “Salute to America,” a memorable take on the annual Fourth of July program that favored some lesser-known selections without ignoring the classics.

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Kent/Blossom Music Festival: WindSync with Jon Kimura Parker (June 25)

by Peter Feher

What do you call a concerto for six soloists? There’s no punchline here — just a delightful question posed by the first faculty concert of this year’s Kent Blossom Music Festival.

On Wednesday, June 25, in Ludwig Recital Hall, pianist Jon Kimura Parker and the five members of WindSync came together in a dynamic performance of George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue that somewhat confounded categories.

“Piano sextet” is the usual name for this combination of instruments, and Gershwin’s composition could easily be subtitled “a concerto in one movement.” Yet neither designation would do justice to the spirit of this collaboration, in which every musician shone.

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Errollyn Wallen braves the storm to share her Songbook at ChamberFest (June 18)

by Stephanie Manning

Errollyn Wallen is many things — composer, vocalist, and published author, just to name a few. But you could also say she’s a little bit of a psychic.

As the sky outside the floor-to-ceiling windows in Mixon Hall rapidly darkened with storm clouds on June 18, she launched into her song “Tree.” “I’m perplexed by rooted trees,” she crooned over pizzicattos from her accompanying string quartet, as lightning flashed and the real-life trees bent and twisted in the fierce wind.

Shortly after, ChamberFest co-artistic director Diana Cohen stopped the concert to make a rare request: that everyone in the room make their way down to the Cleveland Institute of Music basement to shelter from the storm. This unusual little detour was just one way the Wednesday evening program lived up to its name, “Mood Swings.”

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ChamberFest Cleveland: “Sing Hallelujah!” (June 26)

by Daniel Hathaway

Sometimes the only thing that connects works in a concert is that they all appear on the same program page. That certainly characterized the mix of two Brahms songs, the premiere of a violin and piano work, a “repetitive music” classic for duo pianists, and a well-known piano trio that were featured in ChamberFest Cleveland’s sold out program “Sing Hallelujah!” on June 26 in Mixon Hall.

Johannes Brahms was partial to works that explore the lower, more mellow range of voices and instruments, as represented here by a pair of songs. Throughout both Gestillet Sehnsucht and Geistliches Wiegenlied, mezzo-soprano Fleur Barron, violist Kim Kashkashian, and pianist Amy Yang produced rich, expressive musical lines that projected beautifully into the hall. The “Sacred Crib Song” was especially endearing for quoting the well-known 14th-century Christmas song “Joseph lieber, Joseph mein,” a little joke referring to the work’s dedicatee, Joseph Joachim.

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