Benjamin Chodroff

I went to the CIM opera (alone :() on Friday to see “Mozart vs. Salieri” - two one-act librettos from Mozart’s “The Impresario” and Antonio Salieri’s “Prima la Musica, Poi Le Parole”. Each was set in modern times and some liberties were taken that were absolutely hilarious. As well, each featured a conflict of dueling prima donna divas that relished in showing off their high D’s, similiar to the infamous (though not quite factual) conflict of ‘rivals’ Salieri and Mozart.
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At our dress rehearsal in Thwing last Tuesday, things weren’t where they were supposed to be. Somewhat miraculously, our concert went off very well last night. Oh, sure, there were the occasional missed entrances (heh, many of the 1st violins in the second movement of Schubert’s Unfinished nearly forgot to come back in for a measure) and some funky sounds here and there….but nothing too bad. We really sounded great on the opening piece, La Gazza Ladra (The thieving Magpie) by G. Rossini [trust me, you've heard this piece a thousand times before in cartoons and commercials - it's a fun piece]. The soloists, Kevin Blum on Clarinet performing the Von-Weber concerto and Chunrui Tan performing the Vieuxtemps violin concerto, both did exceptionally well.
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Nate, Ian and I went to see Sigur Ros perform downtown last night. The concert blew me away. I got lost in the music and my mind completely wandered to a different world. Their synthesizer rattled the hall to the foundation - it was a pretty loud concert. I also liked the band who opened from them, but I couldn’t figure out their name. Their music was like a mix of Kraftwerk and Radiohead. They have inspired me to start learning how to play the saw (with a bow). We weren’t sitting to close to the front, but I managed to get a couple decent shots from the evening. You can check out the pictures in the gallery.

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I woke up on the futon on Sunday realizing I must have passed out while watching…hmmm…what was I watching? Not even sure. It was in black and white. I do remember Victoria saying goodbye.

I went and saw the Cleveland School of the Arts put on their fifteenth annual Black Heritage Concert at CIM. The choir was freaking amazing. They sang a beautiful unaccompanied rendition of “Nobody knows the troubles I’ve seen” in perfect four part harmony. I’m serious - I’ve never heard a high school group sing as well as they did. They had great intonation, dynamics, and some serious soul.

On Saturday, Victoria and I went to see Howard Shore direct his work, “The Lord of the Rings”, as performed by the Cleveland Orchestra in Severance hall. In a nutshell, it was a sub-par performance that had it’s moments. The balance was completely off - the strings were overplaying while the choir sounded underpowered. There were some serious tonality problems in the choir (people were cringing in the audience) and there were a number of missed entrances from nearly every section in the orchestra. I was very surprised. I honestly have never been to a Cleveland Orchestra concert that didn’t blow me away, but I suppose there is a first for everything.
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