Credit: Courtesy Cleveland Orchestra
“Art Song,” poetry set to music and usually performed by a solo singer and a pianist in an intimate setting, is the vocal side of classical chamber music. Cleveland is one of America’s hot spots for the cultivation of that art form, through the biennial Baldwin Wallace Art Song Festival. Ten teams of professional singers and pianists will take up residence on BW’s Berea campus this week to work with some of the world’s most accomplished singers and pianists, polishing their skills for a free recital in Gamble Auditorium on Saturday evening, May 28 at 7:30 pm. You can witness the process in a series of master classes and hear the experts in action in two solo recitals. On Tuesday, May 24 at 8:00 pm, British-born baritone Edwin Crossley-Mercer will sing a night-themed recital with pianist Jason Paul Peterson, and on Thursday, May 26, also at 8:00 pm, mezzo-soprano Susan Graham will perform Robert Schumann’s Frauenliebe und -leben (Women’s Love and Life) with pianist Bradley Moore, inserting other composer’s songs in between Schumann’s. Those two recitals are ticketed. The master classes cost $5 for spectators. Details and full schedule here.

Burning River Baroque, known for their dramatic, in-your-face performances of baroque music, will present “On the Brink of Insanity: Portrayals of Women as Mad, Crazy, and Unhinged” at the Bop Stop on Wednesday, May 25 at 8:00 p.m. Soprano Malina Rauschenfels, cellist Barbara Krumdieck, and harpsichordist Paula Maust will treat the audience to a program of pieces by G. F. Handel, John Eccles, and Henry Purcell, including an original work by Rauschenfels based on texts from the Salem witch trial of Bridget Bishop. $10 at the door, full bar and food available for purchase.

The Cleveland Orchestra and Cleveland Orchestra Chorus bring down the curtain on their 2015-2016 season on Thursday, May 26 at 7:30 pm and Saturday, May 28 at 8:00 pm with Antonín Dvořák’s Stabat Mater, the Czech composer’s setting of an emotional medieval poem summing up the thoughts of Mary standing at the foot of the cross when Jesus is crucified. The piece takes up the entire program (no intermission), and features a fine quartet of vocal soloists: Erin Wall, soprano, Jennifer Johnston, mezzo-soprano, Norbert Ernst, tenor, and Eric Owens, bass. Tickets can be ordered online from the Severance Hall box office.

Contemporary Youth Orchestra tops off its season with its annual “Rock the Orchestra” concert on Friday, May 27 at 8:00 pm in Waetjen Auditorium at CSU, featuring guitarist Tommy Shaw in a program of music from Styx, Damn Yankees, Shaw Blades, and Shaw’s solo and bluegrass career. Liza Grossman conducts. Tickets can be reserved online.

There are competitions for everything, so why not one for snare drummers? When the Atlanta Symphony’s principal percussionist Tom Sherwood took a job with The Cleveland Orchestra, he brought his Modern Snare Drum Competition along with him. Preliminary rounds run from 9:00 am to 6:00 pm on Friday, May 27 in Mixon Hall at the Cleveland Institute of Music, and the finals move to Gartner Auditorium at the Cleveland Museum of Art beginning at 10:00 am on Saturday, May 28. Free admission.

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

This article appears in May 18-24, 2016.