by David Kulma
On Friday, August 31 with a jam-packed lawn and many toy lightsabers, The Cleveland Orchestra’s final Blossom Music Center program with assistant conductor Vinay Parameswaran was a certifiable hit. This first of three screenings of George Lucas’s original Star Wars film with live orchestra showed off the many virtues of both John Williams’s iconic score and the Orchestra’s luxurious playing, most notably the power and grandeur of the brass. [Read more…]
by Robert Rollin
On Sunday evening, August 19 at Blossom, Randall Craig Fleischer led The Cleveland Orchestra in “Frank & Ella: The Music of Ella Fitzgerald and Frank Sinatra,” featuring soprano Capathia Jenkins and singer/pianist Tony DeSare in songs that Ella and Frank made famous. Jenkins has a gorgeous, well-controlled voice. DeSare’s talented rhythm section supported his wonderful piano playing. [Read more…]
by Nicholas Stevens
For all its diversity, Russian music often seems to boil down to a few key figures when it comes to concert programming. Statistics confirm this: in the 2016-2017 season, most of the music written between 1850 and 1969 that American orchestras played was Russian in origin. When Vasily Petrenko appeared with The Cleveland Orchestra last weekend at Blossom, the iconic works on the program by Rachmaninoff and Prokofiev fit that pattern. The power and freshness of the August 11 concert came from its rarity of an opener, its sparkling solo performance, eloquent encore, and shattering symphonic moments. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
At 45 minutes in length, the first of 2018’s three Summers at Severance concerts may have been short, but guest conductor Herbert Blomstedt and The Cleveland Orchestra used their three quarters of an hour onstage to make a powerful experience out of a single work — Brahms’ Fourth Symphony. Conducting without a stick and never cracking open the small score on the podium, Blomstedt sculpted every detail of the piece, melding expressive, colorful lines into a pulsing musical organism. [Read more…]
Following the publication of a July 26 online article in the Washington Post by Anne Midgette and Peggy McGlone detailing previously unreported allegations of sexual harassment by Cleveland Orchestra concertmaster William Preucil, the Orchestra has suspended him with pay while an independent investigation is underway. According to another source, Preucil has resigned from his position as professor of violin at the Cleveland Institute of Music. Read an updated report here.
by Nicholas Stevens
The film-with-live-orchestra format has swept the U.S. of late because of its broad appeal. It boasts advantages over both the traditional open-air concert and the movie theater experience, uniting the vivid sound and fresh setting of the one with the narrative cohesion and thrilling visuals of the other. When a distinguished conductor leads one of the world’s greatest orchestras in one of history’s greatest film musical scores, what could go wrong? [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Are you a big George Szell fan? Do you have 88 hours you’d like to devote to binge listening? Do you have room on your shelf for over a hundred CDs weighing 12.4 pounds? Are you interested in exploring monophonic recordings that have never appeared in digital form? If so, you’ll be delighted to know that a boxed set of the complete recordings George Szell made for Columbia Masterworks will be released by Sony Classical on August 10.
The 106 discs preserve 92 recordings remastered from original analogue tapes, including Szell’s performances with The Cleveland Orchestra from 1946 through 1969, as well as his collaborations with the New York Philharmonic and the Columbia Symphony Orchestra. Among the featured soloists are Robert Casadesus, Rudolf Firkušný, Leon Fleisher, Gary Graffman, Vladimir Horowitz, Rudolf Serkin, Zino Francescatti, Isaac Stern, Joseph Szigeti, Pierre Fournier, Leonard Rose and Judith Raskin. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Because contestants’ repertoire is selected well before the finalists get chosen, it’s always a cliff-hanger to see not only who makes it to the final round in the Thomas and Evon Cooper Competition, but what pieces they’ll be playing. As it turned out this year in Oberlin’s biennial piano competition, three separate works were on the docket for Friday evening’s finals with Jahja Ling and The Cleveland Orchestra at Severance Hall on July 20 — both of the Chopin concertos and Tchaikovsky’s first. [Read more…]
by Mike Telin
This weekend The Cleveland Orchestra turns its attention to young musicians. On Friday, July 20 at 7:30 pm at Severance Hall, the three finalists from the Cooper International Piano Competition will perform complete concertos with The Cleveland Orchestra under the direction of Jahja Ling. Tickets available online.
The following evening, July 21 at Blossom Music Center, Ling and The Orchestra will focus on the participants in the 50th annual Kent Blossom Music Festival. The concert will begin at 7:00 pm, when Vinay Parameswaran will lead the Kent Blossom Chamber Orchestra in Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 1 (Classical) and de Falla’s Suite No. 1 from The Three-Cornered Hat.
At 8:00 pm that student ensemble will join The Cleveland Orchestra and Jahja Ling in a side-by-side performance of Berlioz’s Overture to Benvenuto Cellini, and Vaughan Williams’ Serenade to Music featuring the Blossom Festival Chorus. The marathon event will continue around 9:00 pm when Ling and TCO return to the stage for Mahler’s Symphony No. 1 (“Titan”). [Read more…]
by Timothy Robson
On Sunday evening, July 8, Roger Daltrey, legendary lead singer of The Who, joined members of the current incarnation of the band and the Cleveland Orchestra in a concert performance of Tommy in front of a sold-out Blossom Music Festival audience. This was the last show on an 11-city, 13–performance tour. [Read more…]