by Peter Feher
The Cleveland Orchestra worked overtime last weekend, making every note count. The season at Severance Music Center came to a close with final performances of Verdi’s Otello, plus two additional programs that showed just how much repertoire the players can master. These special, one-off concerts, presented under the banner “Breaking Convention,” fit the experimental model the ensemble has established in recent years, trying out tricky music in unconventional formats around the schedule of an opera.
The singers had the night off, but the full orchestra was onstage May 27, at ease with compositions calculated to unsettle. Music director Franz Welser-Möst led a trio of contemporary symphonic works where challenges abound for performers and listeners alike. [Read more…]
Franz Welser-Möst led the final bows on Saturday night at Severance, like the star of any show should. The Cleveland Orchestra’s music director is in his element presiding over the ensemble’s annual opera production, which this season packs the drama. Verdi’s Otello — in a concert staging that opened May 21 and runs for two more performances (May 26 and 29) — demands big voices, instrumental forces to match, and a conductor who can give it all shape and direction. 
Tuesday Musical has been straying from its usual formula in a way that seems to be working. The Akron concert series brought its season to a close last Wednesday with a performance that exemplified the “classical with a twist” style the presenter has hit upon lately.
Many conductors are happy to travel from orchestra to orchestra with the same set of pieces. Not Michael Tilson Thomas, who brought a unique but instantly recognizable program to Severance Music Center over the weekend.
Lawrence Brownlee was still in master-class mode when he visited the Cleveland Chamber Music Society on April 26. The star tenor, born and raised in Youngstown, brought an educational element to his recital at the Maltz Performing Arts Center.
A recital by Evgeny Kissin isn’t over when it ends. Anyone who’s kept up with the Russian pianist’s career — he was last in Cleveland 25 years ago — knew what to expect on Sunday, April 24 at Severance Music Center. After the final billed piece, Kissin returned to the stage four more times, playing a set of encores that made for a third act to the evening.
The Cleveland Orchestra could have partnered with the Cleveland Museum of Art for last weekend’s concerts. The give-and-take between composers and visual artists — and the historical movements that emerged in the process — inspired the program on Thursday, April 7 at Severance Music Center.
The Akron Symphony set last weekend’s program moving — spinning, scurrying, and leaping across the stage, even if the musicians stayed in their seats. The April 2 concert at E.J. Thomas Hall brought out the dance element in a range of orchestral works, sometimes literally. Choreography, from ballet to flamenco to traditional Korean dance, accompanied two of the evening’s pieces.
The Cleveland Museum of Art showed off a new piece last week, though one that didn’t hang on a wall. The musical work in question — Stacy Garrop’s In a House Besieged — had its world premiere at Gartner Auditorium on Friday, March 25.
If you were assembling an all-star chamber group, you couldn’t do much better than the Rosamunde String Quartet. The ensemble — a passion project for its members, who play in the string sections of some of the world’s top orchestras most of the year — visited the Cleveland Chamber Music Society on March 15.