by Guytano Parks

Conductor Stefan Willich, President of the Hanns Eisler Music Conservatory in Berlin and the Founder and Conductor of the World Doctors Orchestra, led CityMusic Cleveland in an entertaining program entitled Music from the Viennese Waltz Kings at Fairmount Presbyterian Church on Wednesday, December 4.

The first of five consecutive concerts performed in Cleveland area churches, it opened the second series of the orchestra’s 10th anniversary season, and featured soloists Stacey Mastrian, soprano and Jack Sutte, trumpet. Mastrian is the 2013 winner of the Resphi prize and is a versatile artist whose repertoire spans from the Renaissance to the present. Sutte joined The Cleveland Orchestra as second trumpet in 1999, having previously played principal trumpet in the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra, Norway.

The Overture to Die Fledermaus (The Bat) by Johann Strauss, II is one of the most familiar and beloved of curtain-openers. [Read more…]