Bringing Järvi Closer at Music Hall
Posted: Sep 16, 2006 - 12:00:00 AM in: reviews_2006
Those "Bravo Paavo" billboards that went up all over town when Paavo
Järvi become Cincinnati Symphony music director in 2001 did not speak. During the next five years, CSO audiences learned
that Järvi in the flesh did not speak either - at least not at concerts
(he is quite expansive and charming in other settings). Addressing the audience at concerts breaks his concentration, he
says, which is perfectly understandable and his decision to make as a
performing artist. The CSO unveiled a compromise solution at its
all-Brahms season-opener Friday night at Music Hall. Before the concert
began they were shown a video of Järvi discussing the music to be
performed, projected onto screens mounted on either side of the stage.
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Affectionate Farewell for JMR
Posted: Jul 31, 2006 - 12:00:00 AM in: reviews_2006
The kiss – wet because he was soaked with sweat after conducting
Dvorak’s "New World" Symphony – was for CSO librarian Rebecca Beavers,
who presented Russell with a bouquet of flowers. The wave was for the
crowd, which showed its affection with a lengthy, cheering, ovation. It was a fitting public acknowledgement of Russell’s 11 years with the
CSO. His distinguished record includes creation of the orchestra's"Sound
Discoveries" education program, the summer series "Classical Roots: Spiritual Heights" in African-American churches, pre-concert "Classical
Conversations,"the CSO's tinsel-bright"Home for the Holidays" Christmas show and innumerable CSO
podium dates, from Lollipop Family Concerts and the Fourth of July to New
Year’s Eve.
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Kroumata Launches 2006 Oistrakh Festival
Posted: Jul 2, 2006 - 12:00:00 AM in: reviews_2006
PÄRNU, Estonia. Japanese conductor Kiyotaka Teraoka should have put the
rose between his teeth, but he gallantly gave the floral tribute
presented to him at the end of the 2006 David Oistrakh Festival opener
at Pärnu Kontserdimaja July 2 to the Pärnu City Orchestra concertmaster
instead. Teraoka had just finished conducting Rodion Shchedrin's irreverent,
percussion-rich "Carmen Suite," final work on a classy and thoroughly
enjoyable concert featuring the Kroumata Percussion Ensemble of Sweden.
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Frampton Alive with the Pops
Posted: Jun 26, 2006 - 12:00:00 AM in: reviews_2006
Peter Frampton
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Wachs Closes Mozartfest Brightly
Posted: Jun 26, 2006 - 12:00:00 AM in: reviews_2006
Mozart, 250 years young, has been well served by Mischa Santora and the Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra this month. The CCO’s Mozart Mini-festival, which stepped into the breach left
by the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra when the CSO discontinued its June
"Bach and Beyond" series in 2004, has served the community well, too,
drawing appreciative crowds and offering an alternative to grand opera
and al fresco events.
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"L'Etoile est morceau delicieux
Posted: Jun 23, 2006 - 12:00:00 AM in: reviews_2006
"L’Etoile," the much-anticipated comic opera by Emmanuel Chabrier that
opened the second week of Cincinnati Opera’s summer festival Thursday
night at Music Hall, est morceau delicieux. Who would have guessed from looking at that black scrim that covered the stage, with just the pale outline of a star (etoile)?
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Seeing Red with Mozart and Schnittke
Posted: Jun 19, 2006 - 12:00:00 AM in: reviews_2006
Mozart was full of surprises, like writing the greatest of all bassoon concertos when he was just 18. Sunday afternoon’s Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra concert in the
University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music’s Corbett
Auditorium had a few surprises, too. Like the bright red shirt worn by
principal bassoonist Hugh Michie, soloist in the Mozart Bassoon
Concerto, and the red bassoon spotted in the orchestra during Mozart’s
Symphony No. 36 ("Linz"). However, neither equaled Alfred Schnittke’s 1977 spoof, "Moz-ART a la
Haydn," which had CCO music director Mischa Santora strenuously
conducting the air after the musicians had left the stage.
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Cincinnati Opera's "Tosca" Delivers
Posted: Jun 16, 2006 - 12:00:00 AM in: reviews_2006
Cincinnati Opera gave its audience what they like
best Thursday night at Music Hall: an A-list opera, with spectacular
romantic-realistic sets, great singing and a genuine diva. Starring in Puccini’s popular "Tosca," first production of the
opera’s 2006 Summer Festival was soprano Aprile Millo in her Cincinnati
Opera debut. This "Tosca" was well suited to be "your first opera," as opera billboards
around town have been suggesting. No sooner had the curtain risen on
the spectacular Jean-Pierre Ponnelle production than the audience was
hooked.
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Unstaged "Cosi " All One Could Wish For
Posted: Jun 12, 2006 - 12:00:00 AM in: reviews_2006
"Cosi fan tutte," Mozart’s witty send-up of romantic love, proved that
less is more Sunday afternoon in Patricia Corbett Theater at the
University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music. Curtain raiser for the Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra’s Mozart
Mini-Festival, the performance showed what can be done without sets,
costumes and all the complexities and expense of staged opera. Led by music director Mischa Santora, the 33-piece CCO was seated onstage to
the left with the singers on the right. A pair of chairs, a table and a screen set the
scene, updated from 18th-century Naples to the present, leaving the
rest to the imagination.
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Conlon, May Festival Bring Message to Cincinnati
Posted: Jun 1, 2006 - 12:00:00 AM in: reviews_2006
Ever since Cincinnati's 2001 race
riots, the Cincinnati May Festival and its music director, James
Conlon, have been deeply involved in helping to heal the community’s
wounds. The festival’s home base, historic Music Hall (1877), is situated in Over-the-Rhine, the
neighborhood where the violence began. Diverse, inclusive
programming and casting have been major priorities since 2002,
when Conlon paired Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 with gospel offerings
from the Central State University Chorus (Wilberforce, Ohio).
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Tippett's "Child of Our Time" Timely
Posted: May 22, 2006 - 12:00:00 AM in: reviews_2006
With English composer Michael Tippett’s oratorio "A
Child of Our Time" Saturday night at Music Hall, a goal of the May
Festival since Cincinnati’s 2001 race riots, i.e. to foster community
understanding and reconciliation, received profound expression. There were moments during the 1942 work -- prompted by
Kristallnacht, the Nazi-led pogrom against the Jews, but relevant to
any age -- when words and music seared the consciousness. One came during soprano Cynthia Haymon’s "How can I cherish?" in
which a woman laments her inability to feed or comfort her children in
a world of poverty and destruction.
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Kentucky Symphony All Wet
Posted: May 15, 2006 - 12:00:00 AM in: reviews_2006
As a 27-year member of the renowned Percussion Group Cincinnati,
ensemble-in-residence at the University of Cincinnati
College-Conservatory of Music, percussionist James Culley has struck,
shaken or bowed just about everything. Saturday night in Northern Kentucky University's Greaves Hall, he got wet doing it. Soloist with the Kentucky Symphony in Chinese composer Tan Dun's
1999 "Water Concerto," Culley slapped and patted water in a large
basin, dipped and struck gongs, agogo bells and salad bowls in water,
poured water from plastic cups, and used flip flops to beat the open
end of large plastic tubes sunk into water.
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Linton Music Re-Creates Cozy Tradition
Posted: May 15, 2006 - 12:00:00 AM in: reviews_2006
Before there were public concerts as we know them today, before radio,
TV, CDs and I-pods, there were house concerts, gatherings of small
groups to make music in their homes. Cincinnati's Linton Chamber Music Series re-created this historic tradition Sunday afternoon at First Unitarian Church in Avondale.
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What a Fiddler!
Posted: May 6, 2006 - 12:00:00 AM in: reviews_2006
Sometimes the best things are unplanned. So it was
Friday night at Music Hall. Making his debut with the Cincinnati Symphony on a
week's notice was violinist Henning Kraggerud. To say that Kraggerud made
music in Beethoven's Violin Concerto would be an understatement. The
32-year-old, mop-haired Norwegian, who stepped in for ailing Akiko Suwanai,
performed with rare stylistic command. It is a safe
prediction that he will soon be knocking on the door of stardom.
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Adams' "Souls" a Visceral Experience
Posted: Apr 24, 2006 - 12:00:00 AM in: reviews_2006
Near Ground Zero, New York City, September-October, 2001 (photos by Mary Ellyn Hutton)
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