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Osmo Vänskä and Cleveland Orchestra spin the wheel of fortune in ‘Carmina Burana’ (July 12)

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by Stephanie Manning

This article was originally published on Cleveland.com

CUYAHOGA FALLS, Ohio — When the goddess Fortuna spins her wheel, your fate is on the line. That’s the idea behind “O Fortuna,” the famous dramatic tune that has become part of pop culture thanks to its use in commercials and TV shows.

Those crashing waves of sound, lamenting life’s cruel twists of fate, both open and close Carl Orff’s “Carmina Burana,” which headlined The Cleveland Orchestra’s concert on July 12. Conductor Osmo Vänskä led the Orchestra, the Blossom Festival Chorus, and the Cleveland Orchestra Children’s Chorus in a lively performance of the work at Blossom Music Center.

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Conductor Osmo Vänskä returns to Blossom Music Center

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by Mike Telin

“It’s great to come to Cleveland, because the Orchestra is always willing to do their best,” conductor Osmo Vänskä said during a recent interview. “And they expect that if someone is on the podium, that person should have the same attitude and have done their homework.”

On Saturday, July 12 at 7:00 pm, Osmo Vänskä will revisit Blossom Music Center to lead The Cleveland Orchestra in a program that includes Jean Sibelius’ En Saga and Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana. Tickets are available online.

Speaking to him via Zoom from his home in Minneapolis, I began our conversation by asking him if there is a connection between the Sibelius and Orff. “To be honest, I don’t know if they’re connected,” Vänskä said. “There are many ways to come to a final program. Obviously in this case the concert was about Carmina Burana, and we needed another piece to start with.”

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Cleveland Orchestra’s holiday concerts return with plenty of festive cheer (Dec. 11)

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by Stephanie Manning

This article was originally published on Cleveland.com

CLEVELAND, Ohio — If the twinkling lights, leafy green garlands and festive poinsettias didn’t already clue you in, the holidays have arrived at Severance Music Center. ‘Tis the season for annual traditions — including The Cleveland Orchestra’s holiday concerts, which began on Wednesday evening.

Running through December 22, the programs feature plenty of seasonal classics plus some potential new favorites. The first performance proved that this mix is a delightful recipe for festive cheer.

“Look at you all, out on a school night!” conductor Sarah Hicks proclaimed joyfully from the podium. Just as many concertgoers donned red outfits to get into the spirit, Mandel Concert Hall was also decked out with decorations and stage lighting effects.

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Summers@Severance: Mozart’s C-Minor Mass with Matthew Halls (Aug. 2)

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by David Kulma

There is a certain je ne sais quoi about minor-key Mozart. The dark, brooding colors that rarely appear in his more plentiful major-key works give his wonderfully inevitable music a grand power and solemnity few other composers have ever matched. His Symphony No. 40 in g and Requiem in d are only the two most famous examples. Their major-key sections take on a new, heavenly meaning in contrast with the overall somberness. The Cleveland Orchestra’s Summers@Severance concert on Friday, August 2 was a great opportunity to hear another of Mozart’s minor-key marvels: the Great Mass in c, K. 427, with four excellent vocal soloists and the Blossom Festival Chorus, all conducted with flair by Matthew Halls. [Read more…]

Mozart’s “Great” Mass: A conversation with Lisa Wong

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by Rory O’Donoghue

This Friday, August 2 at 7:00 pm in Severance Hall, the Blossom Festival Chorus will join The Cleveland Orchestra for a one-off performance of Mozart’s “Great” Mass in c-minor. Last Sunday, the Chorus and Orchestra brought the house down at Blossom in their Aretha Franklin tribute concert, with vocalists Capathia Jenkins and Ryan Shaw in the spotlight.

“It’s a busy summer in Cleveland,” Director of Choruses Lisa Wong said over the phone last week, “but it’s a fun one.” I got the chance to talk with Wong by telephone about her work with The Cleveland Orchestra Choruses in anticipation of this Friday’s concert, the latest installment of their Summers@Severance Series.

Rory O’Donoghue: How did you get started in choral music?

Lisa Wong: Interestingly, the very first choral and orchestral piece that I ever encountered was this Friday’s selection, Mozart’s Mass in c-minor. I sang it as an undergraduate music student, and we had a guest conductor who came to our university and worked with our choruses for that concert. It was a singularly influential moment in my life — I was so inspired by this wonderful conductor. As it turned out, that was the late Robert Page, who was director of choruses for The Cleveland Orchestra at the time. I didn’t know what that title meant, exactly, but I knew how inspired I was by the way this music bubbles up with emotion.  [Read more…]

Cleveland Orchestra Summers@Severance: a conversation with conductor Matthew Halls

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by Daniel Hathaway

On Friday, August 2 as part of the Summers@Severance Series, guest conductor Matthew Halls will lead The Cleveland Orchestra, soloists, and the Blossom Festival Chorus in Mozart’s “Great” Mass in c-minor. 

In the United States, where the subscription concert format is the norm, single performances of major works are rare. But in a telephone conversation from Toronto, where he lives with his family for part of each season (his wife plays in the Toronto Symphony), Halls said he rather likes one-off events.

“The subscription series is lovely, especially if you’re a young conductor who’s learning a piece for the first time. It gives you the possibility to solidify your ideas over three or four nights. But there’s also a special energy in a one-off, the most common format in Europe, because it means that you only have one chance. All of the intensity of a week-long rehearsal period is focused on that single moment, and there’s no sense that you can always get it right tomorrow night.” [Read more…]

Aretha Franklin: Queen of Soul —
a conversation with vocalist
Capathia Jenkins

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by Mike Telin

With the passing of Aretha Franklin on August 16, 2018, the world lost a musical treasure. One that day, Jon Pareles, chief popular music critic at The New York Times wrote in an obituary: “Aretha Franklin, universally acclaimed as the ‘Queen of Soul’ and one of America’s greatest singers in any style, died on Thursday at her home in Detroit. She was 76.” Pareles also noted that “in a musical career of more than five decades, Aretha Franklin had more than 100 singles on the Billboard charts. But more important, she freed other singers to let their voices fly.”

“That moniker — Queen of Soul — she was literally a Queen,” vocalist Capathia Jenkins said during a telephone interview. “Anyone who has been singing and living on the planet for any length of time has drawn from and perhaps tried to emulate her. She was such an influence on so many.”

Franklin’s musical legacy will be celebrated on Sunday, July 28 at 7:00 pm at Blossom Music Center, when Jenkins and vocalist Ryan Shaw join The Cleveland Orchestra and the Blossom Festival Chorus, under the direction of Lucas Waldin to present Aretha Franklin: Queen of Soul. Tickets are available online. [Read more…]

Cleveland Orchestra in Copland and Orff (Aug. 25)

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by David Kulma

The American political landscape has broadened over the past few years to include socialist and fascist ideas previously unthinkable in the public sphere. Programming works from the 1930s, another time of torrent, The Cleveland Orchestra and guest conductor Adrien Perruchon gave their August 25 concert at Blossom Music Center an unusual political saliency. The performance of Orff’s Carmina Burana occurred fifty years to the date when it was performed during Blossom’s inaugural season (photo above).

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Adrien Perruchon to lead TCO in Carmina Burana at Blossom

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by Jarrett Hoffman

Depending on your point of view, the three Star Wars concerts at the tail end of August and into September either mark a thrilling end of The Cleveland Orchestra’s Blossom season, or serve as fun, galactic encores to the earthly drama unfolding this weekend.

On Saturday, August 25 at 8:00 pm, French conductor Adrien Perruchon will round up all the bodies at his disposal — the Blossom Festival Chorus, Cleveland Orchestra Children’s Chorus, soprano Audrey Luna, tenor Matthew Plenk, baritone Elliot Madore, and of course The Cleveland Orchestra itself. They’ll all be needed for Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana.

A number of firsts are in store for that performance: Perruchon and Luna will make their debuts with the Orchestra, while Plenk and Madore will take the stage at Blossom for the first time. Preceding the Orff will be Copland’s Statements — a work which Perruchon finds fascinating in its own right, as he told me in a recent telephone conversation from Paris.

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Got summer plans, Cleveland Orchestra? Blossom + Summers@Severance + a few extra notables

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by Jarrett Hoffman

Absence makes the heart grow fonder, and Clevelanders haven’t heard their orchestra live since mid-May. In the interim, The Cleveland Orchestra has been on the road, finishing off their centennial-capping Prometheus Project with performances at Vienna’s Musikverein and Tokyo’s Suntory Hall. Oh, how we miss them.

We’ll get reacquainted with TCO soon, thanks to their schedule at this year’s 50th anniversary season of Blossom Music Festival, plus their fourth Summers@Severance series.

The Cleveland Orchestra marks the unofficial beginning of summer when they open their Blossom season on Saturday, July 7 at 8:00 pm. At the helm will be music director Franz Welser-Möst, leading the Orchestra in Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition in its orchestration by Ravel, Reznicek’s Overture to Donna Diana, and Beethoven’s Triple Concerto, featuring TCO’s own soloists –– pianist Joela Jones, violinist Stephen Rose, and cellist Mark Kosower. At this concert and two others, check out the Image Magnification system, which displays live video of the performers on LED screens in the Blossom Pavilion. Fingers crossed for the weather — a firework show is planned for afterwards.

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