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Cleveland Orchestra Chorus returns with Brahms’ A German Requiem 

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by Mike Telin

Whether it was the passing of his mother in February 1865 or the death of Robert Schumann later that same year, no one is certain what motivated Johannes Brahms to compose his large-scale, non-liturgical Requiem in the German language.

On Thursday, October 28 at 7:00 pm, the Cleveland Orchestra Chorus under the direction of Lisa Wong will return to the Mandel Concert Hall Stage for a performance of Brahms’ Ein deutsches Requiem. The evening will feature soprano Andrea Carroll, baritone Chris Kenney, and pianists Daniel Overly and Carolyn Warner. Tickets are available online. Click here for COVID-19 protocols.

I spoke to Lisa Wong by telephone and began by asking her why she selected the Brahms for the first Chorus concert in over 18 months.

Lisa Wong: Part of it was thinking practically. When we were scheduling the season, the vaccines were just starting to roll out and we weren’t sure what the situation would be this fall. So we looked for a piece that would work with piano or organ — something that wouldn’t involve the full orchestra but would still be substantive for the chorus. So, we came to the two-piano version of the Brahms Requiem. That was the practical thinking behind the choice. [Read more…]

Cleveland Orchestra & Chorus: Mendelssohn & Křenek (Mar. 5)

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by Timothy Robson

Franz Welser-Möst and The Cleveland Orchestra presented a very unlikely pairing of musical works this weekend at Severance Hall, Ernst Křenek’s austere and modernist Static and Ecstatic, Op. 214, sharing the program with Felix Mendelssohn’s joyous, life-affirming Lobgesang (“Song of Praise”), Op. 52. In Mendelssohn’s mashup of symphony and cantata, the Cleveland Orchestra Chorus continued their upward trajectory of excellence, joined by soloists Christina Landshamer and Martina Janková, sopranos, and Julian Prégardien, tenor. [Read more…]

Cleveland Orchestra & Chorus: Martina Janková & Lisa Wong talk about Mendelssohn’s Lobgesang

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by Daniel Hathaway

The artistic planners at Severance Hall have taken profit of soprano Martina Janková’s current visit to Cleveland to create a mini-Mendelssohn festival. Janková appeared with Vinay Parmareswaren and the Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra and Chorus on Sunday evening, March 1 in the motet Hör mein Bitten, and will be featured as a soloist in Lobgesang on March 5, 7, and 8 with The Cleveland Orchestra and Chorus led by Franz Welser-Möst.

“I feel at home in Cleveland with my beloved orchestra. I think they are the best in the world,” the Swiss soprano said in a telephone conversation. She’s had plenty of opportunity to get to know the ensemble, having starred in three Mozart operas, sung the title roles in Janáček’s The Cunning Little Vixen (twice) and Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande, and most recently appeared as soloist in Schubert’s Mass in E-flat.

The opportunity to revisit the Mendelssohn motet was nostalgic for Janková. “It was like coming back to my roots. I began my study at the Basel Academy of Music with Hör mein Bitten twenty years ago.” [Read more…]

Jakub Hrůša guest conducts two November Cleveland Orchestra concerts (Nov. 9 & 14)

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by Daniel Hathaway

You can usually count on Jakub Hrůša to offer up some Czech music during his guest conducting appearances at Severance Hall. Not this time, but in his recent two weekends of concerts, works by Russian, American, and Austrian composers revealed the conductor’s ability to communicate in multiple musical languages. His readings of Shostakovich and John Adams were as probing and masterful as his takes on Beethoven and Mahler were fresh and surprising, and he brought his colleagues along with him all the way. [Read more…]

The Cleveland Orchestra & Chorus: Hrůša, Adams & Mahler this week

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by Mike Telin

After leading The Cleveland Orchestra last week in works by Shostakovich and Beethoven, Jakub Hrůša returns to the Severance Hall podium this week to conduct the Cleveland premiere of John Adams’ On the Transmigration of Souls and Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 4. Performances are on Thursday, November 14 at 7:30 pm, Saturday the 16th at 8:00 pm and Sunday the 17th at 3:00 pm. Tickets are available online.

John Adams’ On the Transmigration of Souls was commissioned by the New York Philharmonic and Lincoln Center to commemorate the first anniversary of the September 11 attacks in 2001. The composer has written that

“Transmigration means ‘the movement from one place to another’ or ‘the transition from one state of being to another.’ But in this case I meant it to imply the movement of the soul from one state to another. And I don’t just mean the transition from living to dead, but also the change that takes place within the souls of those that stay behind, of those who suffer pain and loss and then themselves come away from that experience.”

The single movement, 25-minute work for orchestra, chorus, children’s choir, and pre-recorded tape was awarded the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Music. [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 & Chorus plus Bartók with Uchida (May 16)

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by Daniel Hathaway

The Cleveland Orchestra Chorus and pianist Mitsuko Uchida were featured in Thursday evening’s concert at Severance Hall on May 16, the chorus in Schubert’s great Mass in E-flat, the pianist in Bartók’s Third Piano Concerto — works that came at the very end of each composer’s time on earth. At some 50 minutes in duration, Schubert’s setting is as difficult to imagine performing in a church context as Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis. Even the most imaginative ecclesiastical choreographers would be hard-pressed to match such extended music with liturgical actions. (Is there enough incense in Vienna?) [Read more…]

Cleveland Orchestra & Chorus: Messiah with Jane Glover (Dec. 6)

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by Nicholas Stevens

As ClevelandClassical reported last week, the performances of Handel’s Messiah that Jane Glover led with the Cleveland Orchestra this past weekend marked her hundredth through hundred-and-third times conducting the oratorio. The world can only have a handful of definitive Messiah masters at any given time, and in our moment, she certainly belongs among them. As the Orchestra’s performance under Glover on Thursday, December 6 demonstrated, status as an expert confers a certain privilege: that of taking risks with a perennial favorite. [Read more…]

Cleveland Orchestra: Jane Glover celebrates her 100th Messiah performance

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by Daniel Hathaway

Although she didn’t set out to make her appearance with The Cleveland Orchestra and Chorus this week one for the record books, British conductor Jane Glover will reach her century mark of Messiah performances on Thursday evening, December 6 at Severance Hall, the first of four presentations of Handel’s oratorio through Sunday, December 9.

I reached Glover by telephone in London late last week during her quick trip home between engagements. “I was in Chicago doing the Christmas Oratorio until Tuesday,” she said. “I got back here on Wednesday morning and have had four days to turn around, and I’ll be coming back on Sunday. I’m so looking forward to Messiah in Cleveland. It’s going to be a high point of the year.”

I wanted to chat with the conductor about her personal approach to George Frideric Handel’s most famous oratorio, but I began by asking whether these concerts were to be her third or fourth engagements with the Orchestra.

Jane Glover: It will be my third appearance with The Cleveland Orchestra. I’m thrilled because it’s my favorite orchestra on the planet.

Daniel Hathaway: I believe I read an interview in which you said you’d already led 100 performances of Messiah.

JG: Actually, the first performance with Cleveland will be number 100. Last year I had a couple in the book that I had to cancel because something clashed with them. [Read more…]

Cleveland Orchestra & Chorus: Mahler’s Second Symphony (Oct. 4)

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by Daniel Hathaway

On Thursday, October 4, in a nearly-full Severance Hall and on a stage so packed with musicians that percussionists had to navigate sideways to change instruments, Franz Welser-Möst led The Cleveland Orchestra and Chorus in a strategically- paced performance of Gustav Mahler’s “Resurrection” Symphony as remarkable for its vast dynamic range as for its sonic magnificence. [Read more…]

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