The Cleveland Orchestra Features Finnish Guest Conductor and the Rest of the Classical Music to Catch This Week

Credit: Courtesy the Cleveland Orchestra

Here’s a short but very interesting list of classical music events in Northeast Ohio to pique your interest this week.

– Finnish musicians will be featured at Severance Music Center this weekend as guest conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen leads The Cleveland Orchestra and soloist Senja Rummukainen in his own cello concerto. Also on the playlist: Maurice Ravel’s orchestrations of his Baroque-inspired piano suite, Le Tombeau de Couperin, and Jean Sibelius’ Fifth Symphony. The 7:30 concert on Thursday will be repeated at 8 on Saturday and 3 on Sunday.

– Baldwin Wallace Voice Performance majors will take part this week in four performances of George Frederic Handel’s Radamisto, the first opera the composer wrote for England’s Royal Academy of Music. The show goes up at the Helen Theatre in Playhouse Square Center on Friday at 7, Saturday at 3 & 7, and Sunday at 3

– On Thursday at 7:30 in Reinberger Chamber Hall at Severance Music Center, Spanish pianist Gregorio Benítez will play excerpts from Olivier Messiaen’s Catalogue d’oiseaux (Catalog of Birds). His performance of this milestone in 20th-century classical music marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of Messiaen’s wife, Yvonne Loriod, who premiered the work 65 years ago.
The Canton Symphony, led by Matthew Jenkins Jaroszewicz, will welcome Braimah Kanneh-Mason as soloist for Samuel Coleridge Taylor’s Violin Concerto in g, followed on this all-British program by Edward Elgar’s Symphony No. 1 in A-Flat. The program begins at Zimmermann Symphony Center on Saturday at 7:30.

– On Sunday at 3:30, Travis Jürgens will be on the podium for a concert by Heights Chamber Orchestra at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Cleveland Hts. The program includes Claude Debussy’s La cathédrale engloutie (The Sunken Cathedral), Muzio Clementi’s Symphony No. 3, Arvo Pärt’s Cantus in Memory of Benjamin Britten, and Alexandre Guilmant’s Symphony No. 1 for Organ & Orchestra with St. Paul’s music director Kevin Jones at the Holtkamp organ.

– And continuing its 75th anniversary season on Tuesday at 7:30, Cleveland Chamber Music Society brings the Imani Winds together with pianist Michelle Cann for Paquito D’Rivera’s A Little Cuban Waltz, Viet Cuong’s Sextet for Wind Quintet and Piano (a CCMS co-commission), Francis Poulenc’s Trio for Oboe, Bassoon, and Piano, Valerie Coleman’s Portraits of Langston for Flute, Clarinet, Piano, and Narrator, and Francis Poulenc’s Sextet for Piano and Winds. Eric Kisch moderates pre-concert interviews at 6:30 at The Cultural Arts Center at Disciples Church in Cleveland Heights.

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

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