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Cleveland Orchestra plays Dvořák, Mozart, and Deutsch (Jan. 13)

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by Peter Feher

On paper, last week’s Cleveland Orchestra concerts might have lacked a little color: two numbered symphonies and a piece of new music with an abstract title. But Thursday’s performance at Severance Music Center under the direction of Franz Welser-Möst came to vibrant life, thanks in part to the sparkling world premiere at the program’s center.

Intensity, by Bernd Richard Deutsch, made the most instrumental demands of the evening, and with good reason. Deutsch, the Orchestra’s Daniel R. Lewis Young Composer Fellow, wrote the piece expressly for the Cleveland musicians, a follow-up to his first premiere with the ensemble, the powerful organ concerto Okeanos (2019).

[Read more…]

CD Review
The Cleveland Orchestra: A New Century, Vol. 3

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by Jarrett Hoffman

A shared sense of the epic ties together the final two works of A New Century, the three-part live album from Franz Welser-Möst and The Cleveland Orchestra that is also the ensemble’s inaugural release on its own record label.

We begin with the world premiere recording of Okeanos, Bernd Richard Deutsch’s concerto for organ and orchestra, featuring Paul Jacobs as soloist. The title refers not only to the Titan of Greek mythology, but also “to an idea of immense (and sometimes unfathomable) greatness and breadth, which conjures up in my mind the thought of the organ,” as Deutsch writes in his notes. [Read more…]

Cleveland Orchestra with organist Paul Jacobs (Mar. 17)

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by Daniel Hathaway

Haydn and Tchaikovsky symphonies bracketed an  important new organ concerto at Severance Hall from March 14-17, creating a hodgepodge of a program, but demonstrating the stylistic flexibility of Franz Welser-Most and The Cleveland Orchestra, as well as the breathtaking technique and musicality of organist Paul Jacobs. [Read more…]

Paul Jacobs to play U.S. premiere
of Deutsch organ concerto
at Severance Hall

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by Daniel Hathaway

Organist Paul Jacobs will return to Severance Hall this week to play four performances of Viennese composer Bernd Richard Deutsch’s Okeanos with Franz Welser-Möst and The Cleveland Orchestra.

The concerts, which begin on Thursday evening, March 14 and run through Sunday afternoon, March 17, include Haydn’s Symphony No. 34 and Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 5. This week’s programs mark the first United States performances of Deutsch’s organ concerto, which received its debut in November of 2015 by Wolfgang Kogert and Radio-Symphonie-orchester Wien in the Großer Saal of Vienna’s Musikverein.

I caught up with Jacobs on his mobile phone during a break between auditions at the Juilliard School in New York to ask him for some of his impressions of Deutsch and Okeanos.

“I only knew Deutsch by name, but he has quite a successful career and reputation in Europe. It’s my hope that his music becomes better known here in the United States. It’s really excellent writing. We’ve spoken on the phone, and we’re the same age, which is an interesting feature of the collaboration.” [Read more…]

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