by Mike Telin

This week The Cleveland Orchestra, under the direction of guest conductor Andrew Davis, will feature three of its principal players as soloists — one in Ralph Vaughan Williams’s Oboe Concerto and two in Richard Strauss’s epic tone poem Don Quixote. Concerts at Severance Hall are scheduled for Thursday, April 20 at 7:30 pm, Friday, April 21 at 11:00 am (without the Vaughan Williams), and Saturday, April 22 at 8:00 pm.

The program, which begins with Frederick Delius’s Brigg Fair, An English Rhapsody, will also be presented in Oberlin’s Finney Chapel on Friday, April 21 at 8:00 pm as part of the school’s Artist Recital Series.

TCO principal oboe Frank Rosenwein said that Vaughan Williams’s Concerto for Oboe and Strings, written in 1944, is both pastoral and nostalgic. “He lived through the first world war, and this Concerto was written near the end of the second world war. The piece does cultivate a kinder, gentler world.” [Read more…]