by Daniel Hathaway
A tone poem and a symphony by Antonín Dvořák framed Samuel Barber’s dauntingly virtuosic Cello Concerto at Severance Hall on Thursday evening, March 15, when Alan Gilbert and Alisa Weilerstein returned for guest appearances with The Cleveland Orchestra. Weilerstein’s performance of the rarely-heard concerto was as breathtaking for its virtuosity as her encore of a Bach sarabande was for its simple poignancy. [Read more…]
by Mike Telin
“I look forward to being back in town,” cellist Alisa Weilerstein said by telephone from Berlin. On Thursday, March 15 at 7:30 pm the Cleveland native will return to the Severance Hall stage for a performance of Barber’s Cello Concerto. Guest conductor Alan Gilbert will also lead The Cleveland Orchestra in Dvořák’s The Watersprite and the Symphony No. 8. The program will be repeated on Friday at 11:00 am, minus Watersprite, Saturday at 8:00 pm, and Sunday at 3:00 pm. Tickets are available online.
The concerts are not only a homecoming for Weilerstein, they are also the rekindling of a partnership with Gilbert that dates back to 1995. “I was thirteen and he was the assistant conductor of The Cleveland Orchestra. I played Tchaikovsky’s Rococo Variations and it was my debut with a professional orchestra,” the cellist said.
Although the Tchaikovsky is a staple of the cello concerto repertoire, Weilerstein noted that Barber is underrepresented on the concert stage.
by Mike Telin
Youth orchestras have long provided the inspiration for young musicians to decide whether to make music their career goal. Sometimes they’ve had an important impact on conductors, as well. Such is the case with Jahja Ling, who founded two notable youth orchestras during his career: those of The Cleveland Orchestra and the San Francisco Symphony.
On Sunday, May 8 at 3:00 pm at Severance Hall, the Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra will present the concluding concert of its 30th-anniversary season under the direction of current music director Brett Mitchell. The program will include Adam Schoenberg’s Finding Rothko, Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Symphonic Dances, and Erich Korngold’s Violin Concerto, featuring COYO concerto competition winner Jieming Tang. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
The Elgar concerto was on the agenda for Cleveland native and international cello heroine Alisa Weilerstein’s most recent homecoming. On Thursday evening at Severance Hall, Weilerstein put her individual stamp on that iconic work in a penetrating and daring performance with The Cleveland Orchestra and Giancarlo Guerrero. [Read more…]
by Mike Telin
“I’m so happy to be coming back to my hometown. I’m quite excited about it,” cellist Alisa Weilerstein said during a telephone call from Belfast, Northern Ireland. On Thursday, November 6 at 7:30 pm in Severance Hall, Weilerstein will join The Cleveland Orchestra and conductor Giancarlo Guerrero in a performance of Edward Elgar’s Cello Concerto.
The program, which also includes Arvo Pärt’s Cantus in Memory of Benjamin Britten and John Adams’s Harmonielehre, will be repeated on Saturday evening and Sunday afternoon. On Friday at 4:00 pm in Reinberger Chamber Hall, Alisa Weilerstein will lead a special public masterclass with students from Northeast Ohio colleges. Admission is free but a ticket is required.
Since making her debut with The Cleveland Orchestra at age 13, Weilerstein has gone on to establish a career of international renown. She has received a number of honors, including an Avery Fisher Career Grant, and in 2011 was named a MacArthur Foundation Fellow. [Read more…]
by Mike Telin
In this day and age it’s not unusual for classically-trained musicians to experiment with and perform music of seemingly unrelated genres. And it’s always interesting to hear how they go about incorporating their classical sensibilities into the works of bands like the Beatles or into bluegrass tunes like “Orange Blossom Special”. [Read more…]
by Mike Telin
Although they may bill themselves as “the world’s first classically trained garage band,” anyone who has had the good fortune to hear Time for Three, knows they are one of the finest and most innovative ensembles touring today. On Wednesday, October 8 beginning at 7:30 pm in Akron’s E.J. Thomas Hall, violinist Zachary De Pue, violinist Nicolas Kendall and bassist Ranaan Meyer return to Northeast Ohio to open Tuesday Musical’s 2014-15 season. [Read more…]
by Mike Telin
Jamey Haddad is in charge of programming world music for the second half of the Cleveland Orchestra’s new five-concert series ‘Fridays @ 7.’ We caught up with Jamey in New York while playing gigs for the Rock Hall Festivities, and asked him about his thoughts on why audience building initiatives such as the Fridays @ 7 are needed.
by Mike Telin
We spoke to Alisa Weilerstein about many things, including the dual role she will have this week when she performs the Dvorak Cello Concerto and later joins Jamey Haddad, Dylan Moffitt, Keita Ogawa and Michael Ward-Bergeman in the World Music portion of the evening on the Fridays @ 7 series on November 20. We also talked about her passion for Russian literature, her upcoming live television performance of the Elgar Concerto with Daniel Barenboim, and her work as spokesperson for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation.
We began by asking her about her participation in Classical Music Day at the White House, and her feelings about the significance of the event that had occurred the previous day.