The BW Bach Festival Returns and the Rest of the Classical Music to Catch This Week

A sure sign of spring Credit: Courtesy BW

This week’s classical music picks range from the large and festive to the up-close and personal — and everything in between.

– The venerable Baldwin Wallace Bach Festival, a sure sign of spring, presents two Festival evening concerts — J.S. Bach Suites and Motets on Friday evening (featuring Cleveland’s Bach Choir in his densely contrapuntal motets interspersed with his solo cello suites), and on Saturday, George Frideric Handel’s complete Messiah (in its first appearance on the annual event). Both take place in Gamble Auditorium. Tickets are available online, and concerts will be live streamed here.

– On Friday at 7 pm, The Singers’ Club of Cleveland’s Spring Concert, “Let Me Tell You a Story,” features tenor Michael Ward and collaborative pianist Ben Malkevitch, in a collection of story songs ranging from sea shanties to poems, folk songs, and storytelling narratives. Admission is by pay-what-you-can at The Church of the Saviour in Cleveland Heights. Reserve tickets online.

– Also on Friday, Cleveland Pops Orchestra vocalists Connor Bogart O’Brien, Natalie Green, and Lauren Berry revisit Cleveland’ Rock ‘n’ roll from the ’50s through the ’00s — including Elvis, Michael Jackson, ABBA, Billy Joel, Tina Turner, Adele, and more — at 7:30 in Mandel Concert Hall at Severance Music Center. Carl Topilow hosts and conducts. Tickets available online.

– On Saturday, while other BW singers are busy at BachFest, the Baldwin Wallace Men’s Chorus will joins\ the University School Glee Club for a 7:30 concert at Federated Church in Chagrin Falls — music by Sibelius, Arneson, Esmail, McCartney, and more. Tickets available online.

Those more intimate events happen on Sunday and Monday.

– On Sunday at 3 pm, Heights Arts’ Close Encounters presents “Music from an Age of Empires” in a Shaker Heights Villa. Violinist Jason Yu, violist William Bender, cellist Dane Johansen, and pianist Daniel Overly, will play Frank Bridge’s Phantasy for Piano Quartet, Ernst von Dohnányi’s Serenade in C, and Johannes Brahms’ Piano Quartet No. 3. Ticket holders will receive the address with their reservation. Tickets available online.

– On Sunday at 4 pm, Cleveland Composers Guild will host Sestina Cleveland with pianists Maggie Johns and Nathan Hill in recent works by its members Geoffrey Peterson, Jeffrey Quick, Eric Charnofsky, Inna Onofrei, Lorenzo Salvagni, and Nick Puin. It’s free at Holy Rosary Church in Little Italy.

– Also on Sunday at 4 pm, Good Company: A Vocal Ensemble presents “Voices of Earth” with music by Ola Gjeilo, Joan Szymko, Johannes Brahms, Ralph Vaughan Williams, and Katerina Gimon, plus works by Good Company members Adam Smith, Jennifer Scolnick, and director Michael Carney, assisted by pianists Katie and Gregory Cross and percussionist Scott Heisel. It’s free at Lakewood Presbyterian.

– More intimate performances of contemporary music are on the menu for violist Celia Hatton on the LCCC Signature Series Monday evening at 7. She’ll play works for solo viola by Anne Leilehua Lanzilotti, Gyorgy Ligeti, Jeffrey Mumford, Reena Esmail, Garth Knox, and Benjamin Britten in the Cirigliano Studio Theatre, at the Stocker Center in Elyria. Free.

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

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