An Irish-Appalachian Christmas and the Rest of the Classical Music to Catch This Week

Jeannette Sorrell leads Apollo’s Fire Credit: Photo by Tim Harrison

December is the month when we separate our picks of classical music events into “Christmas” and “Non-Christmas”categories, and there’s plenty of both this week.

NON-CHRISTMAS CONCERTS

– On Wednesday, The Cleveland Orchestra’s Piano Series features Kirill Gerstein in a new work by Francisco Coll and venerable pieces by Robert Schumann, Maurice Ravel, and Franz Liszt (7:30 in Mandel Concert Hall at Severance Music Center).

– On Thursday in the same hall, Pablo Heras-Casado conducts The Cleveland Orchestra with piano soloist Emanuel Ax in Wolfgang Amadé Mozart’s 20th concerto, followed by Dmitri Schostakovich’s 10th Symphony (7:30, repeated on Friday at 7:30 and Saturday at 8).

– Two free concert performances of Rhiannon Giddens’ and Michael Abels’ Pulitzer Prize-winning opera Omar are officially “sold out,” but you can catch live streams from Oberlin’s Finney Chapel on Friday at 7:30 (click here for details) and CWRU’s Maltz Performing Arts Center on Sunday at 7 (click here for details).

– More from Oberlin: Kora virtuoso Seckou Keita will perform on the West African stringed instrument on the Oberlin Artist Recital Series on Saturday at 7:30 in Finney Chapel, and conductor John Kennedy will stick around after leading the Omar opera performances to conduct the Oberlin Chamber Orchestra in Gabriella Smith’s f(x)=sin²x-1/x, John Cage’s The Seasons, and Louise Farrenc’s Symphony No. 2 on Tuesday at 7:30 in Finney Chapel.

CHRISTMAS CONCERTS

– Apollo’s Fire will revive its production of WASSAIL! An Irish-Appalachian Christmas, for another run beginning on Wednesday at 7 at the Bath Church (repeated December at 7 in Chagrin Falls and December 8 in Avon).

– On Friday, Alla Boara will present its first-ever Christmas program featuring songs from the Alan Lomax archive of Italian folk songs cataloged in 1954 and brought to life in modern arrangements (free at 7 at Trinity Cathedral), and Cleveland Jazz Orchestra will team up with pianist and vocalist Kate Reed for a Kate Reed Christmas (7:30 at the Maltz).

– On Sunday at 3, Matthew Jenkins Jaroszewicz will preside over the Canton Symphony’s yearly concert of holiday classics, featuring the Canton Symphony Chorus.

– And on Tuesday at 7, Jeannette Sorrell and Apollo’s Fire will present George Frideric Handel’s Messiah at St. Paul’s, Akron (repeated later in the week at St. Raphael in Bay Village. and twice at Trinity Cathedral).

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

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