Leonid Grin being interviewed by Estonian TV July 26, 2010 at Pärnu Concert Hall

For the second year in a row, conductor Leonid Grin shared teaching responsibilities with Neeme Järvi at the Neeme Järvi Conducting Academy in Estonia.  Nineteen students from 12 countries took part in this year's program, which took place July 26-August 7 in Pärnu, Otepää and Leigo, Estonia.  There were master classes, concerts and lectures, including Grin's July 27 lecture "The Conductor's Mind" at Pärnu's historic Town Hall.  Drawing on his 40-year experience on the podium and observations of some of the greatest conductors of the 20th century, Grin offered a virtual primer on conducting.  He began at the beginning: how to introduce oneself to an orchestra.
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Recording producer Philip Traugott

Making classical recordings is an arduous process, especially if you do it the way producer Philip Traugott does.  Traugott's goal is to create an "ideal performance" for an artist's recorded legacy.  To do so requires lots of time, effort and just the right circumstances.  Traugott has been able to achieve that with conductor Paavo Järvi and the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen on their recently completed cycle of Beethoven's nine symphonies.  A Schumann symphony cycle is in progress, with the first CD, Schumann's First and Third Symphonies, set for release in Japan this fall by Sony.
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Front, left to right: Philip Traugott, Paavo Järvi and engineer Dirk Fischer with members of the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen in control room at the Funkhaus Nalepastrasse in Berlin

Recording classical music reached the point of diminishing returns long ago, with classical product a miniscule part of the recording market as a whole. However, the true reason classical artists record remains the same:  to create a legacy of their performances.  Producer Philip Traugott, conductor Paavo Järvi and the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen take this charge seriously, and strive to produce what Traugott calls "ideal performances."
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Robert Spano

Giuseppe Verdi follows Richard Wagner at Cincinnati Opera this season, with Verdi's "Otello," on the boards for July 7 and 10 at Music Hall.  Cincinnati Opera's 90th season opened June June 23 and 26 at Music Hall with Wagner's "Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg."  "Otello" Conductor Robert Spano compares the two composers and addresses vital issues facing American symphony orchestras in this July 1 interview between rehearsals at Music Hall.
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Cincinnati Opera presents Richard Wagner's "Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg" June 23 and 26 at Music Hall for the first time in 28 years.  A panel discussion on "Wagner: The Man and His Art," held May 5 at Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, focused on the continuing controversy over the production and performance of Wagner's music, especially in the state of Israel, in light of the composer's anti-Semitism and the association of his music with Adolph Hitler and the Third Reich.
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Sängerfestfalle, Elm Street, Over-the-Rhine, Cincinnati, circa 1873

Richard Wagner's "Die Meistersinger" is soo Cincinnati.  By heritage, Cincinnati is one of the nation's most German cities, having sprouted German singing societies with the first waves of German immigration in first half of the 19th century. The North American Sängerbund was founded and held its first Sängerfest in Cincinnati in 1849.  This led, in turn, to the founding of the Cincinnati May Festival, a choral orchestral festival still going strong after 137 years, and the building of landmark Music Hall in the historically German neighborhood of Over-the-Rhine.  The Prelude to Wagner's "Meistersinger" was heard at the first May Festival in 1873 and Wagner's music has been a regular feature of the festival ever since. (first published in Express Cincinnati , June, 2010, www.expresscincinnati.com)
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There will be clutches of violas in Cincinnati June 16-20 for the 38th annual International Viola Congress.  Not just the garden variety that resemble miniature pansies, but the big sister of the violin.  There will be recitals, master classes, lectures, lecture demonstrations, exhibits and even a master class conducted over the Internet with the students in Cincinnati and violist Tabea Zimmerman in Berlin.  Scheduled to attend are a "who's who" of the viola world, including Atar Atad, Roberto Diaz, Kim Kashkashian, Lawrence Dutton, Nobuko Imai, Nokuthula Ngwenyama, Samuel Rhodes and Michael Tree.
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Daguerreotype of Robert Schumann

The Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra, led by music director Mischa Santora, has romance on its mind for the 2010-11 season.  Overall focus will be Robert Schumann in observance of the 200th anniversary of his birth.  Also on the schedule is the complete music for "A Midsummer Night's Dream" by Mendelssohn and German composer Christian Jost's chamber opera "Death Knocks," based on the play by Woody Allen.  Both will be semi-staged.  Jost's 2001 work will be a North American premiere.
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Gershwin painting Schoenberg (photographer unknown)

Arnold Schoenberg and George Gershwin might be thought of as an odd couple, but Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra music director Mischa Santora has found a connection in their friendship and their mutual love of painting.  CCO concerts June 6 will include projections of art works by the two composers and others.   Pianist/guest artist Michael Chertock will perform Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue."  Schoenberg weighs in with "Verklärte Nacht" and Five Pieces for Orchestra.
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Cincinnati May Festival in Music Hall

The Cincinnati May Festival is the aristocrat of Cincinnati arts events, having helped define its culture since the 19th century.  The May Festival, oldest continuing choral festival in the Western Hemisphere, is May 14-22 at Music Hall, the Cincinnati landmark built for it in 1878.  Music director James Conlon will conduct three of the four Music Hall concerts.  Robert Porco, who is beginning his 21st season as director of choruses for the May Festival, conducts a program May 21 that will include the world premiere of "Out of the Cradle, Endlessly Rocking" by Ian Krouse, commissioned for Porco by members and alumnae(i) of the May Festival Chorus.  Highlights of this year's festival include Bach's "St. Matthew Passion," Mozart's Mass in C Minor, Walton's "Belshazzar's Feast" and an all-Russian program including the Prologue and Coronation Scene from Mussorgsky's "Boris Godunov" and Rachmaninoff's one-act opera "Aleko."  The Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra performs for all May Festival concerts.
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Lennie and George in "Of Mice and Men" at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music May, 2010

With a nearly all-male cast, Carlisle Floyd's opera "Of Mice and Men," based on the John Steinbeck novel, is performed less often than those more evenly divided between male and female voices.  This is particularly so in university productions where there is a need to cast as many singers as possible.  The opera department of the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, which had to meet the additional demand of casting the difficult role of Lennie, a tenor with a giant frame, presents "Of Mice and Men" May 13-16 in Corbett Auditorium.  
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Estonians are among the most IT-savvy in the world, so it was entirely fitting that Cincinnati Symphony music director Paavo Järvi addressed the CSO's annual subscriber recognition luncheon April 21 via Skype.  Skype was developed in Estonia, Järvi's native country.  Järvi, like thousands of other travelers, has been unable to leave Europe because of the eruption of the Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajökull.
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Paavo Järvi and Philip Traugott

Recording producer Philip Traugott hesitated a long time before agreeing to work with his long-time friend Paavo Järvi.  When BMG Classics assigned its senior producer to record for Paavo's father Neeme Järvi and the London Symphony Orchestra, the wheels were set in motion for what has become a highly successful collaboration by the two friends.  Among their projects is a cycle of the complete Beethoven symphonies with the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen that has earned praise worldwide.
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Philip Traugott

Recording producer Philip Traugott possesses a set of skills that make him uniquely qualified for what he does. As he was following his muse as a violinist and conductor, she was preparing him for a role he hardly knew existed, much less what it consisted of.  By upbringing, education, temperament and being in the right place at the right time, Traugott's niche, he found, was in the recording studio.
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Amy Warner as Alma Mahler (Ted Nelson, cello, Owen Lee, bass, and Yael Nathalie Senamaud on left)

Concert:nova, Cincinnati's ground-breaking chamber ensemble, presents the second of its series of program featuring actors as famous composers Feb. 24 in the Gap retail store in Tower Mall in downtown Cincinnati.  The empty space filled a gap for c:n when their performance home, the garden level of the Metaphor Building on Reading Road in Cincinnati, became unavailable because of fire regulations.  Performing Alma Mahler in "The Heart of Mahler" will be actress Amy Warner.  C:n musicians will perform three movements from Mahler's "Das Lied von der Erde" as arranged for chamber ensemble by Schoenberg (completed by Rainer Riehn in 1994) and the Fourth Symphony in the chamber version by Erwin Stein.  Vocal soloists are tenor Jason Slayden and soprano Audrey Luna.
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