A Week of Variety on the Cleveland Classical Music Scene

Credit: Photo by Roger Mastroianni, Courtesy of The Cleveland Orchestra

This week’s recommendations reveal the depth and breadth of classical music programming in Northeast Ohio. Other metropolitan areas should be so lucky.

– On Friday, No Exit Presents hosts pianist Geoffrey Burleson in music by George Antheil, Rob Paterson, Gerald Strang, Mary Kouyoumdjian, Herbie Nichols, Frank Zappa, BeBop Tango, and Neil Rolnick (7 pm at The Bop Stop, repeated on May 3 at 7 at Heights Arts. Free admission).

– Also on Friday, Britt Cooper will lead Akron’s Summit Choral Society Metropolitan Chorus with soprano Susan Fletcher, and baritone Albert Donze in Gabriel Fauré’s Requiem and Ralph Vaughan Williams’ Dona Nobis Pacem (7 pm at First Congregational Church. Tickets available online.)

– Friday’s agenda continues with Cleveland Pops Orchestra’s Simply Sinatra, led by Carl Topilow and featuring vocalist Steve Lippia (7:30 in Mandel Concert Hall at Severance Music Center. Tickets available online) and concludes with The Resonance Project’s In the Face of Silence, with violinist Ann Yu, cellist Sarah Tindall, and pianist Irwin Shung performing Sergei Prokofiev’s Violin Sonata No. 1, Dmitri Shostakovich’s Piano Trio No. 2, and Florence Price’s Night in an arrangement by the Merz Trio (7:30 at Forest Hills Presbyterian Church. Tickets available online.)

– Saturday at 7:30 pm – Cleveland Philharmonic Orchestra. Victor Liva, conductor, and James Carson, piano. Carl Maria von Weber’s Overture to Der Freischütz, Antonín Dvořák’s Symphony No. 5, and Frédéric Chopin’s Piano Concerto No. 1. Westlake Performing Arts Center, 27830 Hilliard Blvd., Westlake. Repeated on May 4 at 3:00 pm (Waetjen Auditorium, Cleveland State University, 2121 Euclid Ave.) Tickets available online.

– Sunday marks conductor Daniel Reith’s final concert with The Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra, who ends his tenure with Edward Elgar’s Enigma Variations and Sarah Kirkland Snider’s Something for the Dark, plus Edvard Grieg’s Piano Concerto featuring the Orchestra’s principal keyboardist Saya Uejima (3 pm in Mandel Concert Hall at Severance Music Center. Tickets available online.)

– Having called off its midwinter event due to weather conditions, Sounds of St. James thinks it’s now safe to reschedule A Festival of Sacred Music this Sunday afternoon at 3 pm. Performers include the Cathedral Choir of St. John the Evangelist, Thomas Fielding, organ and director, Case Western Reserve Early Music Singers, Elena Bailey, director, the Now Chorale, Matthew Brown, director, and Musica Sacra Chamber Choir, James Flood, director. (St. James Catholic Church, Lakewood. Free.)

– Also on Sunday afternoon, The Cleveland Opera will present Pietro Mascagni’s one-act Zanetto featuring director and soprano Dorota Sobieska, and soprano Christina Carr. Eric Benjamin, conducts the Cleveland Women’s Orchestra. (3:30 in the Tudor Arms Hotel Grand Ballroom. Tickets available online.)

– Sunday’s performances end with the West Shore Chorale & Orchestra, Michael K. Lisi, conductor in Mozart’s “Great” Mass in c and Beethoven’s Choral Fantasy (7:30 at Avon Lake High School Performing Arts Center. Tickets available online.

– Finally, on Monday evening, the Rocky River Chamber Music Society will present Cleveland Orchestra principal horn Nathaniel Silberschlag & Friends (Genevieve Smelser, violin, and Alicja Basinska, piano) in Charles Koechlin’s Quatre Petites Pieces for violin, horn, and piano, and Johannes Brahms’ Three Songs (arr. Smelser and Silberschlag) & Trio in E-flat (7:30 at West Shore Unitarian Universalist Church. Free and live streamed here.)

For details of these and other classical events, visit the ClevelandClassical.com Concert Listings.

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