THE START OF THE SEASON 2019-2020

ALL ABOUT THE ARTS

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If April is “the cruellest month” because it signaled some bad stuff to T. S. Eliot then September of 2019 turns out to be the kindest month to music lovers in Cincinnati, highlighted by the start of the seasons of the CSO, CCM, Matinee Musicale Cincinnati, Chamber Music Cincinnati, and the Immaculata Chamber Music Concerts.

Half a dozen concerts in just two weeks will keep music lovers on the go in September. Canadian pianist Stewart Goodyear will take on all 32 of Beethoven’s sonatas for the piano in a day-long Sonatathon. Chamber Music Cincinnati (http://cincychamber.org)  on Saturday 7 at Memorial Hall.

The following day we will surely be reminded how youth and musical maturity can sometimes go magically together as we sit in Mt. Adams’s Immaculata Church for the first FREE concert of its 2019 Chamber Music Series, listening to Mozart’s “Dissonance” Quintet and Dvořák’s “Bass” Quintet played by Christina Nam, Kanako Shimasaki, Mariko Shimasaki, Martin Hintz, Jonathan Lee, and Ian Saunders.

Barely a week later a member’s only lunch-time concert will feature the chronologically young and musically mature cellist Miriam K. Smith playing music of Manuel de Falla, and the few-years older but still young and utterly gifted South African pianist Eben Wagenstroom playing a mix of Mozart and Chopin for the Cincinnati Women’s Club.

At the end of that week and in a marathon weekend of concert-going Cincinnati will hear the brightly talented trumpeter Ashley Hall in recital for Matinee Musicale Cincinnati (Phone: 513-977-8838) and the formidable Labeque Sisters in the first half of the opening concert of the CSO season (www.cincinnatisymphony.org) playing the world premiere of Bryce Dessner’s concerto for two pianos.

And, at the end of the month one must return to Music Hall to hear violinist Anna-Sophie Mutter in the Beethoven violin concerto, with the meteorically successful Korean maestra Eun Sun Kim at the CSO‘s podium.

And that’s just September and that does not even including CCM’s event-packed schedule (www.ccm.uc.edu), highlighted by the professional-level Philharmonia Orchestra, led by Mark Gibson in an opening concert with Giora Schmidt essaying the Dvořák violin concerto.

Rafael de Acha     http://www.RafaelMusicNotes.com

Published by ALL ABOUT THE ARTS

Rafael de Acha has enjoyed a distinguished career in the arts as a performer, stage director, producer, and educator. He was born and grew up in Cuba. At the age of 17 he moved to the United States to study Drama at the University of Minnesota, and later Languages at L.A. City College, Music at the Juilliard School of Music, at the University of Cincinnati’s College Conservatory of Music, and at the New England Conservatory of Music, from which he received the Master's degree. He has taught courses on the History of Music at the University of Miami’s Frost School of Music and at Florida International University, and contributed writings and reviews to Seen and Heard International (www.seenandheard-international.com ) and to this blog. He co-founded the award-winning New Theatre in Coral Gables, Florida, where he produced and staged twenty seasons of classical and contemporary theater, including fifty world premieres of plays that went on to have international and national productions on and off Broadway, including Ana in the Tropics by Nilo Cruz (Pulitzer Prize for Drama 2002 and Tony Nomination 2003.) In 2006 he was presented with a citation from The Dade County Cultural Affairs Council for “trailblazing contributions to the arts in South Florida.”