ClevelandClassical.com Header
Ad
Ad

CityMusic Cleveland:
clarinet quintets old & new,
traditional & non-traditional

by

by Jarrett Hoffman

A clarinet and a string quartet are the traditional components of a clarinet quintet, an instrumentation that has spawned widely performed works by composers such as Mozart, Brahms, and Coleridge-Taylor.

But after CityMusic Cleveland clarinetist Ellen Breakfield-Glick reached out to Margaret Brouwer about the possibility of writing a new clarinet quintet, the composer considered the possibilities, noting to herself that she had already written one in 2005.

“I’m all about sounds and colors,” Brouwer said during a recent interview. “That’s one reason I wanted to have percussion — I thought it would give me a lot of new colors.”

Commissioned by CityMusic and inspired by the theme for the ensemble’s 2021-22 season — “Justice, Equality, Hope” — Brouwer’s Justice March for the unconventional combination of clarinet, violin, viola, cello, and percussion will receive its premiere on Saturday, April 23 at 7:00 pm at Shrine Church of St. Stanislaus.

[Read more…]

CityMusic Cleveland with Groundworks at St. Stan’s (Feb. 27)

by

by Peter Feher

Olivier Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time is already a production in itself. The music alone, not to mention the circumstances of its composition, is a lot to untangle.

CityMusic Cleveland brought out the complexities of the piece in a multimedia performance on February 27 that incorporated dance, cinematography, and even the atmosphere of the venue.

A long white sheet hung from the vault to the floor and obscured the altar at the Shrine Church of St. Stanislaus on Sunday. The setting was sacred, and Messiaen’s inspiration was pointedly religious (his work quotes from the Book of Revelation), but there was something secular to the setup. [Read more…]

CityMusic Cleveland: “Tales and Scenes” (Jan. 21)

by

by Stephanie Manning

The Christmas season appeared to still be in full swing at the Shrine Church of St. Stanislaus on January 21. Merry wreaths, festive trees, and twinkling lights filled the cavernous space three weeks into the new year. The evening was a chilly one, and most audience members chose to keep their coats on as they settled into their seats for CityMusic Cleveland’s captivating chamber program, “Tales and Scenes.”

The Pantheon Ensemble kicked off the concert with J.S. Bach’s Concerto in f, where pianist Elizabeth DeMio was joined by violinists Masha Andreini and Mari Sato, violist Yaël Senamaud-Cohen, cellist Nataliya Pschenychna, and bassist Tracy Rowell. The group approached the Bach with a rich, dramatic style fitting for both the piece and the venue. But although the architecture of St. Stanislaus is visually impressive, its extremely resonant space was not always beneficial to the ensemble’s blend and balance.

[Read more…]

CityMusic Cleveland: Identity and “Syncretism”

by

by Jarrett Hoffman

syn·cre·tism — the amalgamation or attempted amalgamation of different religions, cultures, or schools of thought (Oxford English Dictionary).

CityMusic Cleveland will explore that concept with an in-person concert of chamber music on Sunday, April 11 at 3:00 pm at Shrine Church of St. Stanislaus. (The audience will be limited to 250 people, and masks and social distancing are required. Click here to RSVP.)

The program begins with a quartet: Jungyoon Wie’s 2019 Han, played by violinists Miho Hashizume and Catherine Cosbey, violist Eric Wong, and cellist Sophie Benn. Then clarinetist Dan Gilbert will join the ensemble for Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s 1895 Clarinet Quintet in f-sharp.

On a purely musical level, it’s hard to pick two pieces that deserve a wider audience — one of them a fresh and riveting contemporary piece, the other a beautiful and unjustly neglected gem of the past. But these two composers also represent an intriguing pairing through the lens of syncretism.

[Read more…]

CityMusic Cleveland:
a conversation with the
new music director, Amit Peled

by

by Jarrett Hoffman 

All it took was one visit.

“Last time I was in Cleveland, what was really special for me was the deep connection I had with the orchestra right away,” cellist and conductor Amit Peled said during a telephone interview.

On that trip this past May, he joined CityMusic Cleveland as soloist in Saint-Saëns’ Cello Concerto No. 1, and the relationship he felt wasn’t that of soloist and accompanists. “It was really music-making in an equal way,” he said. “That’s what I liked about the orchestra from the time we spent together, and that’s what I want to preserve. I think we both felt a connection, and that’s why it resulted in this relationship.”

In July, it was announced that Peled would be the next music director of CityMusic, while his predecessor Avner Dorman has stepped into the role of music director emeritus. Peled will begin his first season — the ensemble’s 16th — by leading the orchestra in free performances October 17-20 in Beachwood, Willoughby Hills, Slavic Village, and Lakewood (details below).

[Read more…]

CityMusic: cellist Amit Peled, Saint-Saëns, and basketball

by

by Jarrett Hoffman

Israeli cellist Amit Peled is a warm person, a deep thinker, and a big Cavaliers fan — all equally important aspects of any great artist’s personality.

Next week, from May 15-19, Peled and guest conductor Mélisse Brunet will make their debuts with CityMusic Cleveland in five free concerts around the area to conclude the ensemble’s 15th season.

The title “Hidden Gems” certainly describes three of the four works on the program: Fanny Mendelssohn’s Overture in C, Saint-Saëns’s Symphony No. 2, and Kodály’s Dances of Galánta.

Not so for Saint-Saëns’s First Cello Concerto. “It’s a piece that we all play as teenagers — one of the first we encounter as quote-unquote serious cellists,” Peled told me during a trip to Europe, where he was to perform in Romania and Austria. For him, the Saint-Saëns was also one of the first concertos he performed with orchestra. “I will never forget the feeling of that first chord, and after that the explosion of emotion and the mastery of cello writing,” he said.

[Read more…]

CityMusic plays Dorman premiere at St. Stanislaus (Mar. 16)

by

by David Kulma

CityMusic Cleveland celebrated its 15th season with a powerful new piece by its music director Avner Dorman. His Third Violin Concerto was debuted in free concerts with soloist Sayaka Shoji in five different venues across the Cleveland area. I attended the fourth performance on Saturday, March 16 at the Shrine Church of St. Stanislaus in Slavic Village. [Read more…]

CityMusic Cleveland to feature Frank Rosenwein in Strauss’ Oboe Concerto

by

by Jarrett Hoffman

Having served in the U.S. army during World War II, oboist John de Lancie had the opportunity to meet Richard Strauss at his home in a Bavarian resort town following the war. He asked the composer if he had ever thought about writing an oboe concerto — Strauss said that he hadn’t.

And then, suddenly, the composer had. His Oboe Concerto would be premiered just months later in Zürich. And what a concerto it was — and is. As Cleveland Orchestra principal oboe Frank Rosenwein (above) told me during a recent phone call, “it stands at the pinnacle of oboe writing in terms of its beauty, but also its difficulty.”

Rosenwein will play the Strauss Concerto with CityMusic Cleveland and principal guest conductor Stefan Willich in five free performances this week. As is the orchestra’s custom, the concerts will jump from venue to venue each day from Wednesday, December 12 through Sunday, December 16 (details below).

[Read more…]

Nicole Keller & friends inaugurate restored organ at Shrine Church of St. Stanislaus (Oct. 22)

by

by Daniel Hathaway

Keller-SchulkeTwo days after welcoming CityMusic Cleveland and John Corigliano for a concert in its nave, the Shrine Church of St. Stanislaus inaugurated its recently-restored William Schuelke Organ with a concert by organist Nicole Keller, assisted by two of her Baldwin Wallace Conservatory colleagues — flutist Sean Gabriel and violinist Julian Ross. Keller’s well-planned, beautifully executed program put the 1910 organ through an engaging shakedown cruise that showed its basic character and its range of capabilities. [Read more…]

CityMusic Cleveland with Tessa Lark at Shrine Church of St. Stanislaus (Oct. 20)

by

by Daniel Hathaway

Corigliano-Lark-StIn an unusual example of regifting, Avner Dorman and CityMusic Cleveland bestowed an early 80th-birthday present on John Corigliano on Friday evening, October 20 at the Shrine Church of St. Stanislaus: a performance of his own ‘Red Violin’ Concerto, the solo part commandingly played by Tessa Lark. The composer flew in from New York for the occasion and gave some introductory notes from the church’s ornate pulpit. [Read more…]

Follow ClevelandClassical.com

Contact us