Courtesy Cleveland Orchestra
Three extensive summer concert series continue or begin this week, while two single events bring a very special flavor to our weekly picks.
ChamberFest Cleveland cranks into full gear with world-class performances on several different stages. The theme for Diana and Franklin Cohen’s fifth season is “Tales and Legends,” allowing for a wide-ranging selection of hold-’em-on-the-edge-of-their-seats musical narratives during 14 performances.
The program on Saturday, June 25 at 8:00 pm in Harkness Chapel at CWRU will feature “(Fairy)tales and Tales of the Macabre,” including a fantasy based on Edgar Allen Poe’s The Mask of the Red Death and Maurice Ravel’s four-hand piano suite, Mother Goose.
Wait — there are two more performances before next midweek. On Monday, June 27 at 8:00 pm at Chagrin Falls Methodist Church, a program called “Last Words” interleaves various composers’ settings of the last words of Jesus on the cross. And on Tuesday, June 28 at 8:00 pm in Mixon Hall at CIM, ChamberFest will explore music based on other famous words — Shakespeare’s. Order tickets online here.
ENCORE Chamber Music continues with its master classes and seminars at Gilmour Academy in Gates Mills. On Saturday, June 25 at 8:00 pm, the Calidore String Quartet will play a program called “Forbidden Voices: Censorship and Propaganda of World War II,” with music by Sergei Prokofiev, Dmitri Shostakovich, and Felix Mendelssohn (whose music was banned by the Nazis). And on Sunday, June 26 at 3:00 pm, the Calidore will join violinists Annie Fullard, Mari Sato, and Jinjoo Cho, violists Eric Wong and Yu Jin, and cellist Amit Even-Tov, in another edition of ENCORE’s “Sunday Unplugged” series (electronic devices to be left in the car). Haydn, Debussy, and Mendelssohn are on the musical menu, and you can purchase a picnic lunch beginning at 2:00 pm. Ticket information and other details here.
Before the guitar took over, the lute was the preferred household instrument throughout the Renaissance and Baroque periods in Europe. If you love that gentle, sophisticated instrument and its music, the Lute Society of America has a string of delectable concerts to entice you down to Harkness Chapel this week. Paul O’Dette launches the series on Sunday, June 26 at 7:30 pm, followed by Nigel North on Monday, June 27 at 7:30 pm, and Robert Barto on Tuesday, June 28 at 7:30 pm. Xavier Diáz-Latorre will break up the parade of lutes with a Baroque guitar recital on Monday, June 27 at 1:00 pm. More to come in next week’s picks, but in the meantime, check out our concert listings for details of these events. Tickets will be on sale for $20 general, and $15 for students and seniors, at the door.
Cappella Romana, a professional choir from Portland, Oregon, will visit Cleveland on Friday June 24 at 7:30 pm for a program called “New Worlds in Eastern Orthodox Church Music,” featuring modern settings of Orthodox liturgical pieces. Ivan Moody guest-conducts the ensemble for its performance in St. Francis Chapel in the Lombardo Student Center at John Carroll University. A freewill offering will be received.
The Cleveland Museum of Art just turned 100 years old, and The Cleveland Orchestra will mark that milestone by crossing the street to play an outdoor concert on the Museum’s South Terrace on Sunday, June 26 at 5:30 pm. Associate Conductor Brett Mitchell will wield the baton for a program of art-related music, including some pieces by composers who actually visited the Museum on their trips to Cleveland. The program features music by Paul Hindemith, Ottorino Respighi, Adam Schoenberg, Béla Bartók, and Modest Mussorgsky. Admission is free. It. Will. Not. Rain.
For details of these and many other events, visit the ClevelandClassical.com Concert Listings page.
