INTERVIEWS
From Korngold to Sting via “Cinema Paradiso”: in his latest album Daniel Hope shines a new light on Hollywood scores as he takes a widescreen musical journey, seeking out the echoes of exiled European composers. He speaks with Angela Mitchell about researching in the archives of Paramount Pictures, working with Sting, and his connection to the Holocaust.
Photo credit: Harald Hoffmann
This week on Cleveland Ovations, WCLV features three of the winners of the 2014 Oberlin Concerto Competition. Raphael Jiménez, director of orchestras at Oberlin, conducted all three performances and previews the broadcast.
Photo credit: Tanya Rosen
This week on Cleveland Ovations, WCLV takes you to Cleveland State University, where cellist Erica Snowden is on the faculty. Ms. Snowden's recital with pianist Maggie Morrison spanned repertoire of France, Spain, and Germany. She spoke with Angela Mitchell about the pleasures and challenges of performing such a diverse program.
In Bartlett Sher’s effervescent production of Rossini’s Il Barbiere di Siviglia at The Metropolitan Opera, Isabel Leonard is the beautiful and feisty Rosina, who won’t be kept under lock and key. Lawrence Brownlee is her conspiring flame, Almaviva, and Christopher Maltman is the omnipotent barber, Figaro. Michele Mariotti conducts.
Isabel Leonard spoke with WCLV’s Angela Mitchell about how she prepares for a show, performing while six months pregnant, and what’s keeping her most busy these days (hint: it’s NOT opera).
Photo: Ken Howard/The Metropolitan Opera
This week on Cleveland Ovations, WCLV goes live to Severance Hall for a performance by the Cleveland Institute of Music Orchestra. Conductor Kimbo Ishii and violist Leah Ferguson preview the program, which includes Tchaikovsky's Romeo and Juliet Fantasy Overture, Bartók's Viola Concerto, and Strauss' "Also Sprach Zarathustra." Leah is the winner of the Spring 2014 Concerto Competition.
This week's episode of Cleveland Ovations features CityMusic Cleveland, Northeast Ohio's professional chamber orchestra. Music Director and composer Avner Dorman talks about the experience of doing five Mozart violin concertos in five nights with Rachel Barton Pine, the evolution of the clarinet, and why he prefers pencil and paper over the computer when in comes to composing. That's all in this week's edition of Cleveland Ovations Preview.
On this week's episode of Cleveland Ovations, WCLV takes you to Baldwin Wallace University Conservatory of Music, for performances by mezzo-soprano Nancy Maultsby, the Elysian Trio, and the Symphonic Wind Ensemble. Dr. Brendan Caldwell is the Director of Wind Ensembles at BW, and he sat down with Angela Mitchell to preview the concert.
This weekend The Metropolitan Opera’s production of Carmen is broadcast live in HD to 2.5 million people in 2000 movie theaters in 64 countries. This production by Richard Eyre stars Georgian mezzo-soprano Anita Rachvelishvili in the title role. Anita joins Angela Mitchell from a studio in New York.
Photo credit: Catherine Ashmore
WCLV is jazzing things up this week on Cleveland Ovations with a performance by the Cleveland State University Faculty Jazz Combo at Drinko Hall. They present songs by Thelonius Monk, John Coltrane, Charlie Parker, and lots more.
Angela Mitchell speaks with saxophone player John Perrine about loosening up classical audiences, teaching jazz to the next generation, and the difference between be-bop and hard bop.
Photo credit: Mark Satola
After a decade of artistic partnership, German cellist Anja Lechner and French pianist Franҫois Couturier unveil their new duo. The players approach the music from different vantage points: Lechner is a classical soloist, with an uncommon interest in improvisation, Couturier a jazz musician travelling ever further from jazz. On "Moderato cantabile" they present their own arrangements of works by three fascinating outsiders from the margins of music history: G.I. Gurdjieff, Komitas Vardapet, and Federico Mompou. Angela Mitchell speaks to the duo about the recording, a WCLV Choice CD for October.
On this week's Cleveland Ovations, WCLV takes you to Baldwin Wallace University Conservatory of Music, with performances by the Symphony Orchestra, the Fuoco Duo, and members of the BW faculty. In this preview, Angela Mitchell sits down with Octavio Más-Arocas, BW's new Director of Orchestra Studies.
Joseph Calleja, the Maltese Tenor, appears in the role of Macduff in Verdi’s Macbeth, playing now at The Metropolitan Opera. This weekend it’s being broadcast Live in HD to over 2,000 movie theaters in 69 countries around the world. He chats with WCLV's Angela Mitchell about playing the good guy, working with Anna Netrebko, and what his kids think of Macbeth.
Simon Fowler/Decca
Violinist Joshua Bell is one of the most acclaimed classical musicians of today, renowned for his expressive, elegant, intelligent playing and his deep commitment to bringing the classical tradition to wider audiences. Now, Sony Classical is excited to announce that Bell has for the first time recorded the masterpieces of J.S. Bach with the Academy of St Martin in the Fields.
He talks with Angela Mitchell about "Bach" in this exclusive interview.
The latest recording by pianist Alessio Bax couples one of the most popular works in classical music – Beethoven’s “Moonlight” Sonata – with the “Everest” for pianists: the master’s “Hammerklavier” Sonata. Alessio Bax plays Beethoven also includes two of his own transcriptions of pieces from the composer’s The Ruins of Athens, Op. 113. This is his sixth album for Signum Classics. He shares with Angela Mitchell his journey on the Hammerklavier, the first time he heard the Moonlight Sonata, and his latest favorite recipe.
On this week's Cleveland Ovations, the CIM Orchestra performs Mahler's Symphony No. 5 under the direction of Joel Smirnoff. Joel discusses the first time he heard the piece, what it’s like conducting it for the first time, and why Mahler is so special to musicians.
Michael Strauss, Associate Professor of viola and chamber music at Oberlin, gives a preview of this week’s Cleveland Ovations. On the program, members of the Oberlin faculty perform two of the great quintets from chamber music repertoire.
He tells us why Mozart is never “background music,” what it’s like playing for his students, and the experience of playing Brahms’ great Piano Quintet in F Minor.
Tonight at 8:00, WCLV live broadcasts the Cleveland Institute of Music Orchestra’s first concert of the season. The featured soloist of the evening is cellist Wesley Skinner, who won the CIM Concerto Competition this past spring. He’ll perform Camille Saint-Saëns’s Cello Concerto No. 1 in A Minor, op. 33. Rounding out the program are Ottorino Respighi’s “Fountains of Rome” and Antonin Dvořák’s Symphony No. 7 in D minor, Op. 70. Carl Topilow conducts.
WCLV’s Angela Mitchell sits down with Carl and Wesley in between rehearsals at the Cleveland Institute of Music.
Carl Topilow
Mozart's Così fan tutte is broadcast live Saturday, April 26th at 1:00pm on WCLV 104.9; and live in HD at movie theaters around the world. Danielle De Niese plays the cunning maid Despina. She speaks with Angela Mitchell from the Met broadcast studio about what it was like getting famous at such a young age, getting to have the most fun on stage, and working with James Levine.
Romanian soprano Anita Hartig makes her Metropolitan Opera debut this weekend, singing the role of Mimi in La bohème. She joins us from Lincoln Center in an exclusive interview with WCLV's Angela Mitchell.
Royal Opera House photo: Bill Cooper
The Chiara String Quartet (Rebecca Fischer and Hyeyung Julie Yoon, violins; Jonah Sirota, viola; and Gregory Beaver, cello) has just released their latest recording, "Brahms by Heart," on Azica Records. They speak with Angela Mitchell about the challenges--and rewards--of recording Brahms' chamber works completely by memory.
