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Cleveland Orchestra dazzles with French music, a tribute to Coltrane and Gershwin’s An American in Paris (Jan. 9)

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by Daniel Hathaway
This article was originally posted on Cleveland.com

CLEVELAND, Ohio — You might think that an orchestra that excels in the Austro-German repertoire could prove to be the wrong tool for the special demands of French music. But think again.

On Thursday evening, January 9, at Severance Music Center, guest conductor Stéphane Denève and The Cleveland Orchestra gave elegant, witty, and transparent accounts of works by Darius Milhaud and Francis Poulenc, worked with  soloist Steven Banks in Guillaume Connesson’s wildly virtuosic saxophone concerto honoring John Coltrane, and explored George Gershwin’s ebullient An American in Paris from the point of view of a Frenchman on the podium. [Read more…]

Cleveland Orchestra announces major changes to November’s Beethoven Concerto Cycle

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by Daniel Hathaway

On Monday morning, The Cleveland Orchestra announced that both its music director and the featured soloist for its forthcoming Beethoven Concerto Cycle have withdrawn from the seven-concert series at Severance Music Center, scheduled for November 6-17.

In a press release, the Orchestra wrote that “Franz Welser-Möst will be unable to conduct the upcoming three weeks of performances in Cleveland due to ongoing medical treatment. The Cleveland Orchestra family greatly looks forward to his return to the podium when he is fully recovered.

“Following Franz Welser-Möst’s cancellation, pianist Igor Levit withdrew from his planned performances of the Beethoven piano concertos.”

Five pianists — Sir Stephen Hough, Yunchan Lim, Garrick Ohlsson, Minsoo Sohn, and Orion Weiss — will now be featured in the five concertos and Triple Concerto. Assistant Conductor Daniel Reith will conduct. The previously announced programs will remain the same.

Here is the revised schedule for the Beethoven Concerto Cycle. [Read more…]

Inspired conducting and solos grace Cleveland Orchestra’s performance of Mahler’s Symphony No. 3 (Oct. 17)

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by Daniel Hathaway

This article was originally published on Cleveland.com.

CLEVELAND, Ohio —  On Thursday evening at Severance Music Center, The Cleveland Orchestra launched a trio of performances of Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 3 with Finnish conductor Klaus Mäkëla at the helm and the assistance of mezzo-soprano Jennifer Johnson, the upper voices of the Cleveland Orchestra chorus, and the Cleveland Orchestra Children’s Chorus.

Mahler 3 is a famously long piece — its first movement alone lasts as long as the following five. Paying close attention to the composer’s explicit instructions, and never letting things get too big too soon, Mäkëla expertly paced the work, creating an arch that gathered the 110-minute performance into a glorious whole rather than treating it as a continuous series of unrelated climaxes. [Read more…]

A remarkable night with the Cleveland Orchestra: Salonen conducts Salonen (Oct. 10)

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by Daniel Hathaway

This article was originally published on Cleveland.com.

CLEVELAND, Ohio — There’s a little Finnish invasion happening at Severance Music Center this weekend. On Thursday, October 10, conductor and composer Esa-Pekka Salonen joined cellist Senja Rummukainen for the Cleveland premiere of his Cello Concerto (to be repeated on October 12 and 13).

The concept of terroir, the combination of factors that gives wine grapes their distinctive character, can also be applied to music. Both the Salonen concerto and its companion piece, Jean Sibelius’ Fifth Symphony, breathe a Nordic feeling, expressed more perfectly in notes than in words. And it’s not merely coincidental that both works end with references to birds.

The concerto — beautifully constructed thematically, harmonically, and rhythmically — is an enchanting journey for soloist and orchestra alike. Rummukainen was the perfect match for the sonic and technical intricacies of the piece, and who is better equipped to guide its performance than its composer. [Read more…]

A conversation with Cleveland Orchestra guest conductor Anthony Parnther

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by Mike Telin

Note: this performance was begun but cancelled due to deteriorating weather conditions, and is to be rescheduled.

Anthony Parnther will guest conduct the Cleveland Orchestra for its August 8 concert with John Legend at Blossom Music Center. I recently had the opportunity to speak with the multi-talented musician by telephone about his fascinating career.

Mike Telin: Where am I finding you? 

Anthony Parnther: I’m in Baltimore. I’ve been in the middle of a couple of concerts with the Symphony.

MT: When does the tour with John Legend begin?

AP: I’m not sure it constitutes a tour per se. but it’s an array of dates around the country and in China. He’s on tour, but not all of his dates involve the full orchestra. Sometimes  it’s just John on the piano by himself, sometimes it’s John with the band, and then sometimes he gets to use the entire orchestra. That began a month and a half ago with Wolf Trap. We were in San Francisco last weekend and we’ll be progressing on to Philadelphia and Cleveland next week. [Read more…]

Béla Fleck and Cleveland Orchestra wow Blossom Music Center with Rhapsody in Blue (July 6)

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by Kevin McLaughlin
This article was originally published on Cleveland.com

CUYAHOGA FALLS, Ohio — Appearing with the Cleveland Orchestra on Saturday evening July 6, Béla Fleck surprised the Blossom Music Center crowd not so much by the level of his playing — virtuosic as always — but by how well he adapted the solo piano part for the banjo in his transcription of George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue.

His reworkings succeeded so well that the piece seemed not just suitable for the banjo but actually conceived for it.

With a reputation that preceded him — his 18 Grammys acknowledge his mastery of every genre from bluegrass to classical —the audience warmed to Fleck immediately and continued to lavish their attention on his playing, eager to hear what magic might happen next. [Read more…]

Cleveland Orchestra: Mozart’s Magic Flute (May 16)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

In what has become a welcome springtime tradition at Severance Music Center, Franz Welser-Möst and The Cleveland Orchestra devoted their season finale to opera. Mozart’s The Magic Flute contained many delights — a beautiful score, superb singing, imaginative staging by Nikolaus Habjan, spare but thought-provoking sets — in such quality as to perhaps win over even the most opera-resistant. And maybe to prompt the timeless question: doesn’t Cleveland deserve a full-time, professional opera company? I attended opening night on May 16.

A centerpiece of the second Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Opera & Humanities Festival, Magic Flute shares the festival’s theme of “power.” The characters of Tamino, Papageno, and Pamina eventually vanquish an angry queen, though the allegorical plot is more a parable of growing up and learning to love and trust. There are also initiation rites, a rescue, and a conversion to the high ideals of another powerful figure, Sarastro. [Read more…]

Cleveland Orchestra closes Severance season with glorious performance of Mozart’s Wind Serenade No. 10 (May 23)

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By Daniel Hathaway | Cleveland Classical
This article was originally published on Cleveland.com

CLEVELAND, Ohio — Most orchestras choose to close out their subscription seasons with a blowout piece of epic proportions. Not Cleveland. Trusting its players to produce something grand and memorable with modest resources, The Cleveland Orchestra sent its strings, brass, and percussion players home early (except for principal bass Maximilian Dimoff) on Thursday, May 23.

After a mammoth stage reset during intermission, music director Franz Welser-Möst and thirteen players filed onstage to serenade the large audience in Mandel Concert Hall at Severance Music Center with a glorious performance of Mozart’s Wind Serenade No. 10 (Gran Partita) that wonderfully shared the program with works by Wagner and Berg.

That was no small feat. The evening began with Richard Wagner’s Prelude and Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde and continued with Alban Berg’s Violin Concerto featuring Leila Josephowicz, works that made lasting impressions due to their sonic magnificence or the successful fusing of disparate musical elements. [Read more…]

Susanna Mälkki Returns to lead The Cleveland Orchestra

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 by Mike Telin

“I feel incredibly fortunate to be able to work with The Cleveland Orchestra — I think it’s a crown jewel,” Finnish conductor Susanna Mälkki said during a recent telephone conversation from her hotel in Cleveland. “I’m very happy to be here and I’m really looking forward to these concerts.”

On Thursday, February 29 at 7:30 pm Mälkki will return to Severance Music Center to lead The Orchestra in performances of Paul Hindemith’s Mathis der Maler Symphony and Anton Webern’s arrangement of J.S. Bach’s “Ricercar” from the Musical Offering, along with Clara Schumann’s Piano Concerto with the young British pianist Isata Kanneh-Mason  as soloist. The program will be repeated on Friday, March 1 at 11:00 am (no Webern) and Saturday, March 2 at 8:00 pm. Tickets are available online.

I began our conversation by asking about her previous visits to Cleveland. [Read more…]

Cleveland Orchestra’s pairing of  Mahler’s Fourth Symphony with Betsy Jolas is a perfect match (Nov. 30)

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by Kevin McLaughlin
This article was originally published on Cleveland.com
Photo by Roger Mastroianni

CLEVELAND, Ohio — The Cleveland Orchestra’s pairing of Mahler’s Fourth Symphony with the U.S. premiere of Betsy Jolas’ “Ces belles années…” at Severance Music Center on Thursday night had you scratching your head at first. But the minute soprano Lauren Snouffer began to sing Jolas’ words, it started to make sense.

Snouffer walked onto the stage cautiously — as if unsure she should be there at all — at about the three-quarter mark to deliver a series of musically angular but disarming lines about celebrating the joy of one’s experiences.

A Cleveland Orchestra co-commission, “Ces belles années…” also contains hidden allusions to the classic “Happy Birthday” tune as a nod to Jolas’s beloved Aix-en-Provence Festival, which celebrated its 75th anniversary in 2022. [Read more…]

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