A review of La Traviata is coming… It’s a gorgeous production and a must see. Unfortunately, there was an incident at Music Hall last night just as we were arriving. Here’s the statement from Chris Milligan, general director and CEO, just released:
As you may be aware, there was a police incident outside Music Hall on Thursday, June 27, just as our opening night performance of La Traviata was about to begin.
Police Chief Teresa Theetge offered a public statement that police officers had been in pursuit of a suspect accused of attacking a woman in a neighborhood west of downtown. The chase ended near Music Hall, where the armed suspect was shot by police. The suspect died at the scene.
Louis Langrée is shown with soloist Inon Barnatan, the May Festival Chorus and Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra in a 2020 performance of Beethoven’s Akademie 1808 concert in Music Hall/AJ Waltz, photo
The Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra has just announced that music director Louis Langrée has withdrawn from CSO subscription and special programs on May 3 & 4 due to an injury.
CSO Associate Conductor Samuel Lee, recent winner of the 2024 Malko Competition, will conduct the May 3 & 4 CSO subscription concert, Beethoven Symphony No. 7 & Dessner Premieres, which includes the U.S. premiere of Bryce Dessner’s Piano Concerto with Alice Sara Ott.
CSO Assistant Conductor Daniel Wiley will conduct the May 3 CSO special program, WIRES, featuring Bryce Dessner and his Concerto for Two Pianos with internationally acclaimed piano duo and sisters Katia and Marielle Labèque. You may recall that Wiley stepped in on about a day’s notice to lead concerts last weekend. Here is the review.
Langrée is concluding his 11-year tenure this month. He is to lead his final concerts as CSO music director on May 10-11 in Music Hall.
The Ariel Quartet with clarinetist Pavel Vinnitsky on Tuesday at the Skirball Museum in Clifton.
Maybe you’ve seen brief mentions of the Jewish Music Festival, with musical performances, lectures and sometimes art exhibitions taking place throughout the area. The festival is brand new, and organized by Aik Khai Pung, associate professor at CCM, where he is music director of the CCM Concert Orchestra. I noticed in an online listing that the Ariel String Quartet was playing last night at Hebrew Union College, and by luck, I was able to go.
The concert, which was co-presented by concert:nova and the Cincinnati Cultural Exchange, was held in Mayerson Auditorium in the Skirball Museum on the HUC campus. Curator Abby Schwartz provided commentary about the art by Jewish artists that surrounded us, and the paintings’ relationships to the music.
The musical artists for this program were sensational. The Ariel Quartet, quartet-in-residence at CCM, opened with Lera Auerbach’s “Frozen Dreams” and “Cetera Desunt” for string quartet. Both works were a revelation. “Frozen Dreams” was haunting and deeply personal. Auerbach’s music is simply astonishing; it is both searing and lyrical. In “Cetera Desunt” Auerbach took her cue from Shostakovich, and the listener could detect the repeating motive signifying Shostakovich’s signature. The superb performers — violinists Alexandra Kazovsky and Gershon Gerchikov, Jan Grüning, viola, and Amit-Even-Tov, cello — soared through this treacherous score with exciting precision and passion. In the frenzied passages, they dug into their strings with bows flying. I plan to try to hear more of Auerbach’s music.
Vinnitsky was serenaded with “happy birthday” after the performance.
They joined with clarinetist Pavel Vinnitsky for Osvaldo Golijov’s “The Dreams and Prayers of Isaac the Blind.” It is named for a blind, mystical rabbi who lived centuries ago, but is also a tribute to Golijov’s great-grandfather. This piece blends liturgical prayers in its outer movements with raucous Klezmer music. There could not have been a better champion for both styles than Vinnitsky, who wailed and almost danced in his seat as he performed Golijov’s riveting music, using three different clarinets.
Vinnitsky joined CCM’s clarinet faculty about two years ago. He and the Ariel Quartet will perform the Brahms Clarinet Quintet on March 26 at CCM, 7:30 p.m. in Werner Recital Hall. It’s not-to-be missed!
The Jewish Foundation is sponsor of the inaugural festival, a total of nine concerts and events. Other participants have included the Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra, composer Anna Vinnitsky, saxophonist Rick VanMatre and others.
Cincinnati Pops is streaming two of their popular holiday shows — 7:30 p.m. Saturday Dec. 9 and 2 p.m. Sunday Dec. 10. You’ll find them here, or on the CSO/Pops YouTube channel.
Led by John Morris Russell, Holiday Pops is always an entertaining potpourri of festive music performed by a host of choruses, vocalists, dancers and handbell ringers. This year, vocalists Capathia Jenkins and Rafael Moras are headliners. They’re joined by the May Festival Chorus, SCPA Chorale, Sycamore High School Select Ensemble, Winton Woods High School Varsity Ensemble, Q-Kidz Dance Team, Studio for Dance, and handbell ringers from the Cincinnati Collaborative Ringing Project.
‘Tis the season for lots of music. I hope you are all taking advantage of the wealth of holiday concerts and shows happening right now. Here are a few of my picks.
The CCM Brass Choir is planning a tribute to Betty Glover (1923-2022), who was the first female bass trombonist of a major orchestra in America. The concert will take place at 3 p.m. Sunday Nov. 12, at St. Mary’s Cathedral Basilica of the Assumption in Covington.
She died Sept. 27, 2022 at the age of 99.
Quoting from the CCM tribute of her life, “Betty Glover’s 40 years of service to CCM helped shape the school’s widely acclaimed Brass Choir and inspired generations of young artists — especially women who sought to follow her example in shattering the glass ceiling to find success in the orchestral industry.”
Glover earned two degrees at CCM and taught at the college for 40 years from 1952-92. She served as principal bass trombone at the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra from 1952-1985. During her time at CCM, Glover led the CCM Brass Choir and inspired generations of young artists.
Due to illness, Audra McDonald is unable to perform with the Cincinnati Pops on Sunday, October 8, as previously scheduled. All tickets will be automatically transferred to the new concert date: Sunday, February 4, 2024, 7:30pm at Music Hall. For alternative ticket options, we request that ticket holders contact the CSO Box Office at 513.381.3300 beginning Monday, October 9 at 10am for assistance.
Ramn Tebar last April with CSO. Photo by Tyler Secor/CSO
The Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra has just announced a last-minute addition to the 2023-24 season. Guest conductor Ramón Tebar will be leading a full program on Oct. 18 in Music Hall. Tebar’s program includes John Adams’ Short Ride in a Fast Machine; Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4 with the superb pianist Jonathan Biss; and Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 4.
It’s an interesting addition, considering that the CSO is in the middle of a search for its next music director.
Tebar is currently principal conductor with the Orquesta de Valencia and artistic director of Opera Naples. He was previously artistic director of the Florida Grand Opera and principal guest conductor of Valencia’s Palau de les Arts Reina Sofia. He has conducted in the pit of Cincinnati Opera a number of times, most recently for “Carmen” outdoors at Summit Park in 2021 during the pandemic.
Here’s my impression of the concert he led last April in Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition” in the Ravel orchestration. Tebar’s style is elegant and confident. He knew how to inspire energy in the dramatic moments, but this was also a performance that breathed, sometimes with lingering pauses between numbers, as if allowing the observer to ponder that picture in the gallery before moving on.
The concert is at 7:30 p.m. Oct. 13. Tickets: 513-381-3300, cincinnatisymphony.org
The Indiana University Jacobs School of Music announced yesterday the death of renowned pianist André Watts on July 12. The artist was 77. Mr. Watts, a frequent guest artist in Cincinnati, was distinguished professor of piano and the Jack I. and Dora B. Hamlin Endowed Chair in Music at the university. He joined the faculty there in 2004.
Mr. Watts was a brilliant statesman of the art form and a piano superstar, celebrated across the globe as a musical genius. At age 16 in 1962, Mr. Watts won a competition to play in Leonard Bernstein’s televised “Young People’s Concerts” series with the New York Philharmonic. A year later, he stepped in to play for Glenn Gould with the New York Philharmonic, launching a performance career that would span more than 60 years.
“André was first and foremost a gentleman who had a profound understanding of the human experience,” said Eugene Pridonoff, emeritus professor of piano at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music. “His humility was genuine and he never let his fame define him. This was reflected in his music making that was always in service to the music and never about him. He will be greatly missed!”
Mr. Watts was beloved by Cincinnati audiences. He appeared in 17 subscription weekends with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, beginning in March of 1970, when he performed Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3 in D Minor. He also appeared with the Cincinnati Symphony at Carnegie Hall in 1977, performing Brahms’ Piano Concerto No. 2 under the baton of Leonard Bernstein.Read More »
Dick Waller with Peter Wiley at a 40th anniversary concert of the Linton Music Series
Cincinnati has lost a musician who contributed much to the cultural life of our city. Richard “Dick” Waller passed away yesterday. His daughter, Margy Waller, said that he died while listening to a recording of Dvorak’s “Romance” in F Minor. It was days after celebrating his 93rd birthday with cake and Graeter’s Ice Cream.
“I’m grateful. And told him many times over the past few days that he has an incredible legacy of music, art, and community, and a beautiful family,” she said. “He showed us how to see the miracles, to be thankful and optimistic, and always to see the best in everything and everyone. That’s a high bar—and he inspires us to aim for it.”
Waller, former principal clarinetist of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, was the founder of the Linton Music Series. From its start in 1978, his mantra was “music making among friends.” It began with a small chamber music concert of “friends” in the historic church, First Unitarian Church on Linton Street in Avondale, and continued to grow. The gem of a sanctuary, with stained glass windows, turned out to have wonderful acoustics.
That first concert evolved into a second. Then Mr. Waller had an epiphany. World-renowned soloists appeared each week with the Cincinnati Symphony, where he worked. Why not ask the orchestra’s then-general manager, Judith Arron, whether the artists could stay in town for an extra day to play chamber music? Arron agreed.
His first artists in the new arrangement were concert pianist Andre-Michel Schub and Peter Wiley, then principal cellist of the CSO.
“In the old days, there was a pay phone at Music Hall and during intermission, I’d run to the pay phone to make calls about Linton,” he told me a few years ago.
It was a formula that continues with the CSO to this day. Mr. Waller paid his soloists little — but was a wonderful host and they loved coming to Cincinnati. There are legendary stories of dinners at the Maisonette, followed by poker games.
Born in Philadelphia in 1929, Mr. Waller grew up in Long Beach, CA, and attended the Marlboro Music Festival and the Juilliard School. However, his Juilliard education was cut short when his brother joined the armed forces and Mr. Waller had to return home to California to run his brother’s business. In the 1950s, the clarinetist became concertmaster of the United States Navy Band, a stint he said he undertook in order to avoid the draft.
During that time, a job opening was posted for the clarinet section of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, and he decided to apply. Then-music director Max Rudolf hired him on the spot. He served as co-principal clarinet starting in 1960. From 1961 until his retirement in 1994, he was the orchestra’s principal clarinetist.
During his later years, Mr. Waller took up painting, and had a gallery downtown.
Many of you will have stories to tell. Here’s mine: When I was classical music critic for the Cincinnati Enquirer, Mr. Waller would do anything to get an article in the newspaper about his beloved Linton Series. He called me frequently. I told him that I needed to discuss it with my editor. But he beat me to it. He called my editor and serenaded her on his clarinet over the phone. I believe he got that story…
Mr. Waller’s family and Linton Music Series leaders are planning a celebration of his contributions and community to take place next year.
