by Daniel Hathaway
Jet lag, Egypt, the long gestation of a new musical language, and the Sea — these disparate elements all had something to do with inspiring the four wildly different pieces that guest conductor Matthias Pintscher brought to Severance Hall on Thursday evening, February 23. If there were few connections to be made between those works, each of them inspired brilliant, committed performances from The Cleveland Orchestra. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
The most fascinating paragraph in the program booklet for last Saturday’s Cleveland Orchestra concert at Blossom was in the sidebar summing up salient facts about Camille Saint-Saëns’s second piano concerto: “The Cleveland Orchestra first presented this work in November 1919, with a piano playing from a mechanical roll recorded by Harold Bauer.”
That was a marketing ploy by the Aeolian Piano Company which evidently helped fund a nice chunk of the orchestra’s second season, while nearly driving conductor Nikolai Sokoloff to distraction. Happily, on July 27, 2013 there was nothing whatsoever mechanical about French pianist Cédric Tiberghien’s thrilling progress through the piece in tandem with French conductor Stéphane Devène, which was at times expansive and lyrical, and at others positively seismic.
The first movement became a vast cadenza with dramatic orchestral punctuation that Tiberghien seemed to be creating on the spot — like a ruminative improvisation by an organist (a role Saint-Saëns filled for 19 years at L’église de la Madeleine). [Read more…]
by Mike Telin
It’s always a special occasion when a musician has the opportunity to perform as a soloist with The Cleveland Orchestra, and if it’s your own debut there is even more excitement added to the occasion. This summer three young musicians will be making their Cleveland Orchestra debuts — pianist Cédric Tiberghien (Saint-Saëns’s Concerto #2 in g minor on Saturday, July 27); violinist Ray Chen (Vivaldi’s Four Seasons on Sunday, August 11); and pianist Martin Helmchen (Beethoven’s Piano Concerto #1 in C major on August 24). All three gentleman are lively conversationalists who had plenty to say about being part of the new generation of artists committed to engaging with and attracting new audiences to classical music.
And what does a performance with the Cleveland Orchestra mean to the three? “It’s one of the things that when I look at my calendar it’s a little bit unbelievable,” says Martin Helmchen. For Ray Chen, the opportunity brings on extra excitement: “I remember going to concerts at Blossom and sitting on the lawn when I was a student in 2006 and 2007 at the Encore School for Strings. So this performance has a very personal connection. To have been there as a kid and now to be on the other side, it’s just great!” Cédric Tiberghien calls it “absolutely amazing. It’s an incredible opportunity for me and I’m really looking forward to it.” Today is the first of three features spotlighting the debuting soloists. [Read more…]