The Cleveland Orchestra Does Bach's Easter Oratorio and the Rest of the Classical Music to Catch This Week

Credit: Courtesy the Cleveland Orchestra

Classical music events taper off in the weeks before and after Passover and Easter, but here are three performances that shouldn’t be missed during these spring holidays.

– On Thursday, guest conductor Bernard Labadie will lead The Cleveland Orchestra and Chorus in Johann Sebastian Bach’s dramatic Easter Oratorio (for which he re-purposed a secular birthday cantata) and his Magnificat, a lovely (and unique for Bach) setting of the song Mary sang after learning she would bear Jesus. The excellent soloists include soprano Joélle Harvey, mezzo-soprano Adèle Charvet, tenor Andrew Haji, and bass-baritone Gordon Bintner. Bach’s festive Sinfonia from Cantata 29 completes the program. (7:30 in Mandel Concert Hall at Severance Music Center, repeated on Friday at 7:30 and Saturday at 8. Tickets available online.)

– To celebrate its 75th anniversary, the Cleveland Chamber Music Society has booked Gartner Auditorium at the Cleveland Museum of Art for five evenings and engaged the Jerusalem Quartet to play all fifteen of Dmitri Shostaktovich’s string quartets in chronological order, creating something of a timeline of the composer’s life in Joseph Stalin’s Russia. Monday’s program includes Quartets 1-3, and Nos. 4-6 are on the docket for Tuesday (7:30 each evening, 6:30 pre-concert lectures by James Wilding. Tickets available online.)

– And to celebrate the 200th Birthday of the City of Akron, Tuesday Musical has organized a Bicentennial Concert featuring the brass and percussion sections of The Cleveland Orchestra in the world premiere of Peter Boyer’s Festive Fanfare, plus works by Giovanni Gabrieli and Modest Mussorgsky. (Tuesday at 7:30 in E.J. Thomas Hall. Tickets available online.

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

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