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Archives for August 2015

Cleveland Orchestra at Blossom with Nicholas McGegan & Mark Kosower (August 22)

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by Robert Rollin

McGegan-Nicholas-kbdOn Saturday evening August 22, the Blossom Music Festival played host to British early music specialist Nicholas McGegan, returning to conduct the Cleveland Orchestra in an interesting program of Baroque and Classical masterpieces. A 29-year veteran director of the San Francisco-based Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, conductor for many recordings, and frequent guest conductor, the British-born MeGegan, stocky and diminutive in stature, projected an infectious vitality and enthusiasm that moved the audience to break out in applause after nearly every individual movement on the concert.     [Read more…]

Cleveland Orchestra Summers@Severance: music for a late summer evening (August 21)

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by Nicholas Jones

McGegan-KosowerThe summer spirit prevailed at the last Cleveland Orchestra concert in the popular Friday evening Summers@Severance series. Outside, before and after the concert, a happy crowd enjoyed drinks on the terrace overlooking the lagoon and the art museum. Inside, the concert itself seemed to radiate the crisp, clear, and warm light of these late August Ohio days. [Read more…]

Iron Composer returns to Baldwin Wallace: a conversation with director Joe Drew

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by Mike Telin

Joe-Drew-2On Friday, September 4 at Baldwin Wallace Conservatory, the creativity of five composers will be tested when they have five hours to write a brand new piece of music in order to win the coveted titled of Iron Composer. Competition director Joe Drew said that this years contestants are all accomplished composers and college-level teachers whose musical styles are quite varied. “We try to select as diverse a group as possible. We are putting on a show, and it wouldn’t work if we had a group of composers who all write in similar styles, or who would all have a similar response to the stimulus of the challenge.”

What is that challenge? On Friday at 9:00 am in the Chamber Hall, the five finalists will be assigned an instrumentation and a secret musical ingredient that must be incorporated into their work. Past challenges have paired piano trio with a Monet painting, pipe organ with 19th-century music boxes, and brass trio with audience participation. After five hours, the composers must submit a score and parts for their finished piece. Their work will be performed and judged during a free public concert at 8 pm in Gamble Auditorium. Following the performance, prizes will be awarded, and the title of Iron Composer will be bestowed.

[Read more…]

Cleveland Orchestra at Blossom with James Feddeck & Simone Lamsma (August 15)

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by Daniel Hathaway

James_Feddeck-credit-Peter-FigenIn the company of the superb Dutch violinist Simone Lamsma and an enthusiastic late-summer chorus of crickets, former assistant conductor James Feddeck returned to lead The Cleveland Orchestra on August 15 at Blossom in stellar performances of music by Carl Maria von Weber, Pyotr Tchaikovsky, and Jan Sibelius. The time-honored combination of overture, concerto, and symphony never seemed quite so right and so fresh as it did on Saturday evening. [Read more…]

Cleveland Orchestra: conductor Nicholas McGegan talks about his two concerts this weekend

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by Mike Telin

McGegan-Nicholas-kbd“It’s always a great treat for me to come to Cleveland,” conductor Nicholas McGegan said enthusiastically by telephone from San Francisco. “I love Blossom and Severance Hall, and The Cleveland Orchestra is one of the great orchestras in the world. Plus, I’m conducting repertoire that I love.” On Friday, August 21 at 7:00 pm as part of the Summers@Severance series, McGegan will lead the Orchestra in works by Haydn, Handel, and Schubert. Then on Saturday, August 22 at 8:00 pm at Blossom Music Center, he will return to the podium for a concert featuring music by J.S. Bach, Haydn, J.C. Bach, and Mozart.

One piece is common to both programs: Haydn’s C-Major Cello Concerto, and McGegan looks forward to renewing his friendship with the soloist, TCO principal cello Mark Kosower. “I’ve known him since he was a teenager, so it will all be great fun.”

The Haydn concerto is both old and new: it was presumed lost until the score was discovered by Oldřich Pulkert in the Prague National Museum in 1961. “People knew it existed, because the first couple of bars are in one of Haydn’s own catalogues,” McGegan said, “and that’s all we knew until the 1960s. It’s one of the great musical discoveries of our time, and a masterpiece at that. It’s a wonderful foil for the D-Major concerto. The C- Major is a really outgoing piece, whereas the D-Major is more intimate.” [Read more…]

Cleveland Orchestra settles in for August Concerts at Severance and Blossom

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by Daniel Hathaway

TCO@BlossomTen concerts of varied repertoire are in store for Cleveland Orchestra audiences both at Blossom and at Severance Hall during the rest of the summer season, which extends through the weekend of September 5 & 6, thanks to the late date of Labor Day this year.

Stanislaw Skrowaczewski will revisit the site of his American debut in 1958 when he returns to conduct the Orchestra in Dmitri Shostakovich’s fifth symphony on the Summers@Severance series on Friday, August 7 at 7:00 pm. Skrowaczewski knew the composer personally, and led the Paris premiere of the fifth. He talked about his career and his history with The Cleveland Orchestra in an interview last summer.

Pianist Garrick Ohlsson will team up with guest conductor Gustavo Gimeno at Blossom on Saturday, August 8 at 8:00 pm for Beethoven’s noble fifth piano concerto, nicknamed “The Emperor,” prefaced by the Leonore Overture No. 3, the third of Beethoven’s four attempts to write an overture for his only opera, later revised and renamed Fidelio. A third noble work, Antonín Dvorak’s Symphony No. 8, will round out the evening. [Read more…]

Cleveland Orchestra Summers@Severance with Stanislaw Skrowaczewski (Aug. 7)

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by Robert Rollin

Skrowaczeswki

On August 7th, the second concert in this season’s Summers@Severance series marked guest conductor Stanislaw Skrowaczewski’s return to Cleveland. Drinks on Severance Hall’s lovely Front Terrace in the waning afternoon sun provided an excellent prelude to a fine musical event, of which Dmitri Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 5 was the centerpiece. Skrowaczewski, now 91 years old, knew the composer personally, and on Friday evening he shepherded the Orchestra through a stunning performance of the work.

[Read more…]

Cleveland Orchestra at Blossom with Gustavo Gimeno & Garrick Ohlsson (Aug. 8)

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by Timothy Robson

smaller Gustavo Gimeno 36, Photo by Marco BorggreveSpanish conductor Gustavo Gimeno made his American debut on Saturday evening at Blossom, but he is far from an orchestral neophyte. Gimeno has come under the tutelage of Mariss Jansons and Claudio Abbado, and in the 2015-16 season he will become chief conductor of the Luxembourg Philharmonic Orchestra.

He seems to be working his way up the ladder through engagements with European regional orchestras, so this “one-off” debut concert with The Cleveland Orchestra — undoubtedly with very limited rehearsal time — put him under a laser light in three masterworks: Beethoven’s Leonore Overture No. 2 and Piano Concerto No. 5, “Emperor,” with the esteemed Garrick Ohlsson as soloist, and Dvořák’s Symphony No. 8. [Read more…]

James Feddeck returns to conduct The Cleveland Orchestra at Blossom on August 15

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by Mike Telin

smaller - 027 (v2) final - credit Benjamin Ealovega

“It feels like a long time, but it’s only been just under two years since I left The Cleveland Orchestra in September of 2013,” former assistant conductor James Feddeck said in a recent telephone conversation. “While it’s been a whirlwind, I’ve had so many wonderful experiences to make music. I think I’ve worked with about forty orchestras during that time, and it’s been inspiring for me to be able to conduct repertoire in all of those different places. But it’s equally exciting to be able to come back to The Cleveland Orchestra. I have to say that I’m really looking forward to this program at Blossom.”

On Saturday, August 15 at 8:00 pm, Dutch violinist Simone Lamsma will join Feddeck and the Orchestra for the Tchaikovsky concerto in a program that begins with Carl Maria von Weber’s Euryanthe Overture and concludes with Jan Sibelius’s Symphony No. 5.

[Read more…]

Cleveland Orchestra at Blossom with Brett Mitchell, James Ehnes & Kent/Blossom Festival students (Aug. 1)

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by Nicholas Jones

Ehnes

Saturday’s Cleveland Orchestra concert at Blossom graced the kind of crystalline evening for which summer festivals were created. As I drove to the concert through the Cuyahoga Valley National Park, its lush meadows already half in shadow and half in sun, I could hear in my head the idyllic opening of Samuel Barber’s Violin Concerto, almost as summer-drenched as one could imagine a piece of music to be.

[Read more…]

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