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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 »
by Mike Telin
CityMusic Cleveland opens its 2010-2011 season next Tuesday the 28th of September with six concerts devoted to the music of Beethoven under the direction of director James Gaffigan, who returns after a year’s absence.
These concerts also mark the CityMusic debut of the exuberant violinist Chee-Yun, who told us in a phone interview, “I think I have an ‘I am a student forever’ attitude”. Her love for learning and experiencing new things in life came across as we discussed her initial reluctance to perform Beethoven’s monumental concerto, as well as how teaching has made her a better performer. We also chatted about her guest appearance on the hit sit-com, “Curb Your Enthusiasm”, a video of Piazzolla’s Oblivion that some viewers found to be a bit provocative for their tastes, and her upcoming debut with Chris Botti at New York’s legendary Jazz Club, The Blue Note.
Mike Telin: Have you worked with James Gaffigan before?
CY: No, this is my first time, but he is the main reason that my manager and I jumped at the opportunity to play with CityMusic. And the Beethoven is a piece that I want to play more, so this is a really good opportunity for me.
MT: I found an interview that you did for “All Things Strings” 10 years ago, and in it you said that you were not all that crazy about the concerto. What has changed in the past ten years?
We invited our readers to submit outstanding performances of the 2009-2010 season (September through June). Here are the submissions we received.
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I’d like to nominate Akron Baroque for Cleveland Classical’s Best of the Season highlights. I’m so proud of the growth of this little orchestra in such a short period of time. Not only has our audience quadrupled since Akron Baroque’s birth in 2006, but this May’s concert introduced our new Akron Baroque Chamber Chorus to an overwhelmingly warm community response. It’s truly the realization of a dream.
Amy Barlowe – June 2
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Akron Symphony: Mahler 9 at Severance Hall.
Akron Symphony: Opera Exerpts November 2009 at E.J. Thomas Hall
Richard A. Dee – June 2 Read the rest of this entry »
With over 1,500 concerts to choose from, it’s not easy to make a short list of performances that really stood out head and shoulders above the others — most of which were of very high quality themselves. So here’s a medium-short list: twenty-five outstanding performances I covered for ClevelandClassical.com with a few quotes from concert reports about each event. I’ll put them in chronological order. If you have a highlight to nominate that’s not on this list, please leave a comment below!
Chanticleer’s High School Choral Festival in Akron (October 7). In conjunction with the male chorus’ appearance on the Tuesday Musical Series, the singers coached six local choirs all day and joined them for an evening concert culminatng in a 250-voice massed choir. “This was an impressively organized day that must have made a lasting impression on all participants. It left us feeling quite happy about the future of choral music. It’s in good hands in the Akron area!”
Organist Olivier Latry (Notre-Dame, Paris) at Holy Trinity, Akron (October 9). “This was everything an organ concert should be – astonishing yet completely tasteful playing, great repertory and sometimes just plain fun”.
The Rose Ensemble at St. Stanislaus in ‘Il Poverello: the life and deeds of St. Francis of Assisi’ (October 11). “In an era accustomed to sensory overload, when stage productions are hard put to compete with the technological wizardry available to film makers, it’s refreshing to spend a couple of hours in a vivid world created simply through the interaction of words and music.”
Jennifer Koh on the Oberlin Artist Recital Series (October 29): “…as close to perfect violin playing as one is likely to hear. Jennifer Koh drew a capacity audience into the special world of solo violin music on Thursday evening with her gracious stage presence, gorgeous tone, flawless intonation, right on interpretations and virtuosity deployed only in service to the music. One left Finney Chapel knowing that this had not been an everyday experience”. Read the rest of this entry »
I think my favorite for the season is a very recent Cleveland Orchestra concert, May 23, that had the Beethoven “Eroica” Symphony and ‘Coriolan Overture’, and the Berg ‘Lulu’ suite. They sounded better and more cohesive than I’ve heard them in ages (which is saying a lot considering the kind of precision that the Cleveland Orchestra has even on less-than-great nights), and Franz had something inspiring to communicate in both of the major pieces on the program.
The other, totally different, program that I don’t recall ClevelandClassical covering was the performance of Stainer’s ‘Crucifixion’ on Good Friday evening at Trinity Cathedral. That old warhorse would not seem to have the makings of something memorable, but it was a tasteful, loving and ultimately quite touching performance. (I don’t necessarily want to hear it again soon, but it was good to hear Stainer’s work treated respectfully.)
When we at ClevelandClassical.com first discussed writing about our “standouts” of the 2009-2010 concert season, I thought it was a great idea. What could possibly be difficult about this task? However when I really began to think about the 65 concerts that I attended between September 2009 and the first week of June 2010, the simple task quickly became daunting. For me, there are so many reasons for one to enjoy, or not to enjoy a concert. These reasons accompanied by the fact that each organization and or ensemble have their own missions guiding how they choose to fill a role in Northeast Ohio’s vibrant classical music scene, too often led me to feel that I was comparing apples to oranges. Therefore I have chosen to write about my own “standouts” in two distinct sections. First, is an overview of concerts that I feel deserve a big hand of applause, and second, my own picks of complete performances by an artist or ensemble that for one reason or another are still engraved in my musical memory.
I begin by giving hearty congratulations to James Feddek and the Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra, Liza Grossman and the Contemporary Youth Orchestra, Christopher James Lees and the Akron Youth Symphony, and Joanne Erwin and the Northern Ohio Youth Orchestras. I thoroughly enjoyed hearing the performances of these young musicians. They are our future performers and more importantly our future audiences. These ensembles also have a lot to say musically. Read the rest of this entry »
Tom Welsh is assistant director for music at the Cleveland Museum of Art. Here are his highlights from the series at the Museum last season.
Thanks for letting me indulge in some delightful recollections of our last season, it was another exciting and diverse year of music. Here are a handful of personal highlights, in chronological order:
Garth Knox performing solo and duo (with cellist Lauren Radnofsky) on viola and viola d’amore, blending very old with very new – from Marin Marais to Salvatore Sciarrino. [8 November 2009 @ Plymouth Church of Shaker Square]
NYC-based composer/sound artist Marina Rosenfeld led her Sheer Frost Orchestra, an ensemble of 15 floor-bound electric guitars, as part of the CIA student exhibition in the museum and the special event called “After Hours” (and the electro-duo Eats Tapes were great, too.) [13 November 2009 @ CMA]
On the heels of the successful debut of his opera “A House in Bali,” about Colin McPhee, composer/performer Evan Ziporyn brought his Gamelan Galak Tika to town for a fascinating east-meets-west program. [8 January 2010 @ Cleveland Museum of Natural History] Read the rest of this entry »
by Mike Telin
On Tuesday evening February 2, the Tuesday Musical Association of Akron will present violinist Joshua Bell and pianist Jeremy Denk at the University of Akron’s E.J. Thomas Hall. This performance marks the beginning of a five-week, 20-concert tour of the US. A second performance at Oberlin on Wednesday, February 3 is sold out.
We were curious to know how two musicians handle the rigors of being on the road for extended periods of time, as well as the musical decisions that go into programming and performing an intense series of recitals, which is different from being the guest soloist with an orchestra. We reached each artist separately by phone.
Joshua Bell
Mike Telin: We are looking forward to your two performances in Northeast Ohio next week
Joshua Bell: Yes, I’m really looking forward to starting my tour there. That will be the beginning of a five-week recital tour around the country so. We’ll be starting out in Akron and then in Oberlin the next night.
MT: Yes, I was looking at your schedule, and although this tour in the States is only five weeks, you seem to be very busy until the end of May.
JB: That’s right, but for me, basically it doesn’t stop because the beginning of June I go to Asia, and then the summer tour starts. So basically it never stops. Read the rest of this entry »
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.
