by Daniel Hathaway

The celebrated British tenor Ian Bostridge will bring the Cleveland Chamber Music Society’s 65th subscription series to a conclusion on Tuesday, April 21 at 7:30 pm at Plymouth Church in Shaker Heights, when he joins pianist Wenwen Du in a program entitled “Music of the Great War.”

Despite its title, Bostridge’s musical agenda moves well beyond a commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the beginning of World War I. That conflict was called “the war to end all wars,” but we know now that it was nothing of the sort. While Tuesday evening’s program includes songs by two composers who perished early in The Great War — Rudi Stephan of Germany (who died on the Ukrainian Front in 1915) and George Butterworth of England (who was killed in the Battle of the Somme in 1916) — Bostridge will also visit poetry set to music by Gustav Mahler, Kurt Weill and Benjamin Britten that deals with war and its ravages in several generations. [Read more…]