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by Brittany Brahn
Brittany Brahn is an Oberlin student who participated in the Winter Term course in Digital Musical Journalism co-sponsored by ClevelandClassical.
The tradition of the Cleveland Orchestra performing at Oberlin College is a long and well-loved one, which began in 1919 only six months after the orchestra was first formed. Since that initial concert, the Cleveland Orchestra has performed at Oberlin 209 times through the college’s Artist Recital Series, which is incidentally one of the oldest continuing concert series in the United States. In addition to the Cleveland Orchestra, the Artist Recital Series has also brought musicians such as Joshua Bell, Yo-Yo Ma, Denyce Graves and Juan Diego Flóres to the campus, much to the delight of the students and residents of Oberlin.
The Cleveland Orchestra’s latest return to Oberlin was on the evening of Friday, February 25th in Finney Chapel under the direction of Russian conductor Andrey Boreyko. The program, Boreyko’s debut with the Cleveland Orchestra, showcased a refreshing array of Eastern European works that complemented each other well, including Stravinsky’s Divertimento from the ballet Le Baiser de la fée, Peteris Vasks’s English horn Concerto, and Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 5 in B-flat Major. The sweetness of the Divertimento provided an enjoyable juxtaposition to the full-bodied, fiery drama of the Symphony.
Vasks is a Latvian composer who is less familiar to Western audiences than Stravinsky or Prokofiev, yet his English horn concerto proved to be an ambitious and highly successful addition to the repertoire. By the time Vasks had written the piece in 1989, he had spent the majority of his compositional life overshadowed by the rigid policies of the Soviet Union. Two years prior to Latvia’s independence, the English horn concerto was commissioned by the American musician Thomas Stacy and the Stamford Chamber Orchestra. Read the rest of this entry »
Cleveland, OH, August 2, 2010
Dean David Stull of the Oberlin Conservatory and donor Thomas Cooper present 1st, 2nd and 3rd prizes to George Li, John Chen and Kate Liu (photo: Roger Mastroianni)
by Daniel Hathaway & Nicholas Jones
In the debut of the Thomas and Evon Cooper International Piano Competition at the Oberlin Conservatory last week, first there were forty-three contestants, then after the first round, twenty-three. Eleven were chosen for the concerto with piano round, then six for the solo finals. On Friday evening, three young pianists, one 14 and two 16 years old, competed in the final round in Severance Hall with Jahja Ling and The Cleveland Orchestra for several thousand dollars in prize money (they already had won four-year, full tuition scholarships to the Oberlin Conservatory). The top winner would go on to play engagements with professional orchestras in Beijing and Shanghai.
It must have been a heady week for the more than forty contestants, who ranged in age from 13 to 18, and who were as finely tuned up as young tennis players for this demanding week of elimination rounds, in this case in front of an international jury of distinguished judges.
Out of deference to the age and comparative inexperience of some of the younger competitors, we began our coverage of the Cooper Competition with the Tuesday concerto round, when eleven pianists made their first appearances on the Warner Hall stage at Oberlin as interactive soloists.
by Daniel Hathaway
Michael Praetorius
Jeannette Sorrell brought the alternately dazzling and charming music of Michael Praetorius to life once again at Trinity Cathedral on Thursday evening, in her compilation program, “Christmas Vespers” — with a little help from Apollo’s Fire’s 20 instrumentalists, 27 adult singers and the 15 young vocalists who make up Apollo’s Musettes. And a near-capacity crowd of happy listeners.
Her sidespeople comprised six string players, including viola da gamba, a wind band of ten (recorders, cornetti, Trumpets, three sackbuts and percussionist) a continuo group of four (count them: three long-necked lutes or theorbos! — in addition to organ and harpsichord (Sorrell herself) and seven soloists who moved in and out of the choir during the complicated choreography that brought the right people to the right place for each variously scored piece.
Mostly drawn from the collection called Polyhymnia caduceatrix, compiled in 1619, two years before the composer’s death at the age of 50, but also using material from his Musica Sionae, Puericinium and the dance collection Terpsichore, the program ranged from the simple (chant and liturgical snippets, stark, early Lutheran chorales sung in unison and M.P.’s greatest hit, Lo, how a rose) to the fascinating polychoral complexity of works in the Venetian ceremonial style (Gloria sei Gott, and In Dulci Jubilo). Read the rest of this entry »
by Daniel Hathaway
Joel Smirnoff, CIM president, makes his Ohio conducting debut with CityMusic Cleveland
On a dark and windy night, with dire predictions of a major winter storm on its way (didn’t quite happen), what better refuge than a warm, brightly lit church and a free concert of some of Mozart’s most charming small orchestra music? Several hundred people thought so, packing Fairmount Presbyterian Church from narthex to chancel for Joel Smirnoff’s Ohio conducting debut with CityMusic Cleveland.
After a greeting from Fairmount pastor Louise Westfall, who led a charming, color coded tour through the deciduous program booklet’s coupons, surveys, concert handbills and donation forms, soloists Nathan Olson and Jessica Oudin came on with Maestro Smirnoff to give us the Sinfonia Concertante for violin, viola and orchestra, K.364.
Photograph by Roger Mastroianni
by Mike Telin
On Sunday, November 29, the Cleveland Orchestra presented the first of three events in its new ‘Musically Speaking’ series, an initiative designed to bring Severance Hall audiences closer to the music and the musicians.
The afternoons begin with a 40-minute chamber music concert in Reinberger Hall, followed by a 3:00 multimedia exploration of the orchestral work of the day (this afternoon, Dvorak’s ‘New World’ Symphony) using a narrator, actors, projected visuals and live excerpts played by the orchestra. After intermission, the work is played in its entirety, followed by a question and answer period.
The central format of the first two ‘Musically Speaking’ events derives from the Chicago Symphony’s ‘Beyond the Score’ series, which, as in this case, is franchised to other orchestral organizations. I experienced the CSO’s version of the Dvorak afternoon at the League of American Orchestras conference in Chicago last summer, so it was interesting to be able to compare the two throughout the afternoon.
by Laura Genemans
This past Saturday, the Akron Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Maestro Christopher Wilkins and the Akron Symphony Chorus under the direction of Maestro Hugh Ferguson Floyd in no uncertain terms established its excellence and value in this area as an exceptional musical force.
Verdi’s La forza del destino: Overture opened the program and established the tonal three notes representing the forces of destiny. Thanks to the excellent pre-concert talk by Maestro Wilkins you knew what to listen for. Without words, the orchestra created pictures with the entrance of the strings followed by the lyrical “gypsy-like” melody from the clarinet and flute. The continual movement between the strings (celli and viola) and winds wove the story taking you to your inevitable destiny – concluding with the low brass. The music carried you due to the way the ensemble followed each other letting the Maestro lead – never releasing that thread of interest and tension.
The Harlem String Quartet
After reading Daniel Hathaway’s concert report, you’ll kick yourself for missing Sphinx Chamber Orchestra, Harlem Quartet & Elena Urioste on the Tuesday Musical Series last Tuesday in Akron. Never fear Northeast Ohioans! The tour returns to Oberlin College this Sunday, September 20 at 3:00 pm.
