by Peter Feher
The August 13 program at Blossom Music Center was a grand finale in all but name. The Cleveland Orchestra played the last classical concert of its summer season there (the group would save a couple of preview performances for Severance later in the month, ahead of setting out on its 2022 European tour), and the repertoire was exceptional and expansive to match the occasion.
Now, both pieces on Saturday might be called one thing, but they really sound like another. “Symphony” is a title that would fit Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2, as well as John Adams’ modern masterpiece for orchestra, Harmonielehre. [Read more…]
Orpheus Chamber Orchestra has an advantage when it comes to commanding a crowd. The ensemble of scarcely more than a dozen string players performed for a packed Blossom Music Center on August 27 and seemed entirely at home in the huge venue. Saturday’s concert brought the summer classical season here to a close in understated yet completely gripping fashion.
It seems like every orchestra will be doing its version of Mozart in the great outdoors this summer, an old-fashioned program that has recently found new life. The combination of open-air venue, fewer musicians on stage, and repertoire at the ready seems to satisfy the pandemic equation.
When The Cleveland Orchestra released the initial information about its forthcoming, in-person summer season at Blossom, only the conductors and main works on the eleven concerts were listed. Now, the all-important side dishes for the Orchestra’s al fresco musical picnic have been added to the menu.
The Cleveland Orchestra continued its crowd-pleasing summer season at Blossom Music Center on Sunday, July 15 with a fabulous concert featuring Finnish guest conductor John Storgårds and Norwegian violinist Vilde Frang.
Cleveland, January 25, 2015 — The Cleveland Orchestra will play fifteen of seventeen Blossom Festival concerts this summer, which begins on July 2 and continues through September 6. Subscription Renewals are currently underway, and premier subscriptions and Create-Your-Own are now available for purchase. Pre-sale single tickets for current Cleveland Orchestra subscribers will go on sale on April 20 and individual tickets for the general public may be purchased beginning on May 12.
As the normally-resident birds gave way to the end-of-summer locusts, The Cleveland Orchestra bade farewell to Blossom on Sunday evening in a season closer that also served as a send-off for the ensemble’s forthcoming European tour. Like Friday evening’s Summers @ Severance performance, the repertoire was a condensed version of what audiences in London, Lucerne, Berlin, Linz, Vienna, Paris and Amsterdam will enjoy in thirteen performances from September 7-22: works by Johannes Brahms and Jörg Widmann, the orchestra’s former Daniel R. Lewis Young Composer Fellow (an entire concert in Berlin’s Philharmonie on September 11 will be devoted to Widmann’s music).