Photo by Roger Mastroianni, Courtesy of The Cleveland Orchestra
One of Shakespeare’s most amusing comedies comes to Oberlin Opera Theater this week magically transformed into a music drama by Benjamin Britten. Jonathon Field’s staging of A Midsummer Night’s Dream opens in Hall Auditorium on Friday and Saturday at 8:00 pm, and Sunday at 2:00 pm. Oberlin graduate and countertenor Andrew Lipian stars as Oberon, while most of the other roles in this romantic reverie — royalty, humans, fairies, and “rude mechanicals” — are double-cast. Tickets here.
Popular Czech guest conductor Jakub Hrůša returns to lead The Cleveland Orchestra in four concerts this weekend, beginning on Thursday, November 7 at 7:30 pm, and continuing on Friday and Saturday at 8:00 pm and Sunday at 3:00 pm. Sergey Khachatryan will be featured in Shostakovich’s Violin Concerto No. 1, and the Orchestra will turn to Beethoven’s always heroic Symphony No. 3. Stay tuned for more: Hrůša is sticking around next week for another set of concerts. Tickets here.
The Cleveland Chamber Choir is dedicating its current season to celebrating women composers and poets. On Friday, November 8 at 7:30 pm at St. John’s Cathedral in Cleveland, and on Sunday, November 10 at 5:00 pm at St. Sebastian Church in Akron, Scott MacPherson will lead his professional singers in “Lus Caelestis: A Prism of Sacred Music,” including works by Timothy Kramer, Gregorio Allegri, Hildegard von Bingen, Cecilia McDowall, and Gwyneth Walker. These concerts are free.
Violinist Mari Sato will be the special guest when the new music ensemble No Exit presents “A Program of Innovative String Sounds” at SPACES on Friday, November 8 at 8:00 pm. The free concert features the premiere of a work by Nabil Abad, and music by Andy Akiho, John Luther Adams, Krzysztof Penderecki, and Alfred Schnittke. (The program repeats on the Vanguard Series in Ludwig Recital Hall at Kent State on Friday, November 15 at 7:30 pm.) Both events are free.
Music at Main — the free concert series that takes place in the third-floor Fine Arts Department lobby of the downtown Cleveland Public Library — welcomes Cleveland Orchestra cellist Brian Thornton on Saturday, November 9 at 2:00 pm.
Also on Saturday and also downtown, Trobár (Allison Monroe, voice, rebec, vielle, and harp, Elena Mullins, voice and percussion, Karin Weston, voice and flute, and Nathan Dougherty, voice) will visit Zygote Press at 4:30 pm, bringing excerpts from important Medieval anthologies by Adam de la Halle, Adam de la Bassée, and Hildegard von Bingen, as well as from the Roman de Fauvel. Tickets are available online.
And on Saturday evening at 7:30 pm, Mexican guitarist Pablo Garibay will visit the Cleveland Classical Guitar Society International Series at Plymouth Church on Saturday at 7:30 pm, performing music by Brouwer, Iannarelli, Ponce, Angulo, and José. Reserve your tickets online.
Gabriela Lena Frank will be the featured guest composer on the CIM New Music Ensemble program on Sunday, November 10 at 4:00 pm in Mixon Hall. Keith Fitch will conduct her Canto de Harawi: “Amadeoso” (2005) and Tres Homenajes: Compadrazgo (2007), as well as George Crumb’s Black Angels and Madrigals, Books I and IV. It’s free.
And on Tuesday, November 12 at 7:30 pm, Mixon Hall will be the venue for the next Cleveland Chamber Music Society event. Austrian pianist Till Fellner will play two of Schubert’s late Sonatas (in A and B-flat), in company with Schoenberg’s Drei Klavierstücke, Op. 11. Tickets are available online (great deals for students!).
For details of these and other classical concerts, see our Concert Listings page.