by Daniel Hathaway
Michael Tilson Thomas succeeded Herbert Blomstedt as music director of the San Francisco Symphony in 1995. In a nice coincidence, Blomstedt turned the tables last month, following Tilson Thomas on the Severance Hall podium during adjacent weeks in February. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Music is said to be a universal language, but it does speak with different accents. When you’re playing music by Jean Sibelius, it’s helpful to have a Finnish conductor on the podium, which is what made Susanna Mälkki’s pair of Cleveland Orchestra concerts so lucid and communicative earlier this month. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
One of the iterations of Music for Food, a musician-led initiative to fight hunger in local communities, is an annual concert to benefit the Greater Cleveland Food Bank. This year’s event will take place at First Baptist Church in Shaker Heights on Tuesday, February 18 at 8:00 pm. Sponsored by the Student Government Association of the Cleveland Institute of Music, the performance will bring CIM faculty and students together for music by Camille Saint-Saëns, Charles Gounod, and Felix Mendelssohn.
Faculty musicians include Jeanelle Brierley, Olga Dubossarskaya Kaler, and Jaime Laredo, violins, Sharon Robinson, cello, Mary Kay Fink, flute, Frank Rosenwein, oboe, Afendi Yusuf, clarinet, Barrick Stees, bassoon, and Richard King, horn. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
The large, Thanksgiving weekend audience in Severance Hall on Saturday, November 30 got full value for their money. The program, crafted by guest conductor Lorenzo Viotti and featuring pianist Yuja Wang, slightly overflowed the two-hour mark, and nearly surfeited the ear with extravagantly colorful music. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
In what’s become a reliably annual visit to The Cleveland Orchestra, Nicholas McGegan brought his British-born charm and wit to the Severance Hall podium on Thursday, November 21 for an alluring program of music by Schubert and Haydn, separated by a brilliant performance of Hummel’s Trumpet Concerto by Michael Sachs. [Read more…]
by Nicholas Stevens
Tell a classical fan that you recently heard an ensemble play a piece from the 1920s that features a solo snare drum, and their mind might snap to any of a number of dubious ultramodern experiments of that era. A late October program by The Cleveland Orchestra at Severance Hall, at once offbeat and logical in its selection of delights, short-circuited stereotypical associations of the idiosyncratic with the avant-garde. Ovations for percussionist Marc Damoulakis and clarinetist Afendi Yusuf capped a concert devoted to Romanticism in all its strangeness. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
A compact Schubert symphony, the first half of a Prokofiev ballet score, and both neoclassical and full-out-Romantic works by Richard Strauss were on the docket as Franz Welser-Möst and The Cleveland Orchestra returned to Severance Hall last weekend to begin the ensemble’s 102nd season. Thursday evening’s subscription concert on September 19 began with a stylish reading of Schubert’s Third Symphony, a spirited work festooned with amiable melodic fragments you probably couldn’t go away whistling, but that gave the 18-year-old composer an abundance of cheerful material to play with.
by Nicholas Stevens
Literal and metaphorical miles from the cool luxury of the concert hall, outdoor concerts can imply a looseness that extends beyond attire, seating options, and environmental sound. With crickets singing and picnic blankets unrolling, it seems only natural that musicians might relax as well, either in repertoire or level of performance. Not so for The Cleveland Orchestra, who were spot-on as ever in a recent Blossom program that avoided fizz and fanfare in favor of sober, engrossing American classics. [Read more…]
by Rory O’Donoghue
When Thierry Fischer stepped onto Blossom Music Center’s stage on July 21, he began conducting so quickly, it was almost like the music started before he got to the podium. The concerts that weekend marked the Cleveland Orchestra debut of the Swiss conductor, who was announced only days before as a last-minute substitute for an unwell Pablo Heras-Casado. He led the Orchestra adeptly through a program of popular pieces. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
As Scandinavians, Finnish conductor Klaus Mäkelä and Swedish violinist Daniel Lozakovich should be well-accustomed to the intentional high temperatures and humidity of saunas, though they probably don’t expect to encounter those while plying their craft on the concert stage. On Saturday, July 20, they rose above miserable weather conditions to make impressive joint debuts with The Cleveland Orchestra at Blossom. [Read more…]
