by Daniel Hathaway
Early and late Mozart piano concertos were featured on the program when pianist Mitsuko Uchida paid her annual visit to The Cleveland Orchestra at Severance Hall last Thursday, February 8. In between, concertmaster William Preucil captained the Orchestra on a virtual musical barge trip down the Thames via festive selections from Handel’s Water Music. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Blossom Music Center will celebrate its 50th anniversary in the summer of 2018 with concerts by The Cleveland Orchestra, Blossom Festival Band, and Kent/Blossom Chamber Orchestra; special guests including cellist Yo Yo Ma, Broadway legend Audra McDonald, and Roger Daltrey of The Who; and screenings of Singing in the Rain, The Little Mermaid, and Star Wars: A New Hope with live scores performed by the Orchestra.
For selected events, Image Magnification (IMAG) on LED screens in the Pavilion will display live footage from concerts, giving audience members throughout the Pavilion the opportunity to clearly see the musicians onstage. IMAG is provided in partnership with ideastream.
Since its opening in 1968, Blossom has drawn over 400,000 visitors each summer, a total of over 20 million guests during its first half-century. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Joseph Haydn’s two great oratorios, The Creation and The Seasons, came along late in his life after the composer had visited London and was impressed by Handel’s large dramatic works for chorus and orchestra. After bravely performing a stripped-down version of The Seasons on Thursday — two of the soloists were ailing — Franz Welser-Möst led The Cleveland Orchestra and Chorus in an enthralling performance of the complete oratorio on Saturday evening. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
The Cleveland Orchestra has been tweaking the format for its Fridays@7 concerts. They were originally conceived as hour-long, straight-through performances preceded and followed by non-classical genres of music performed in the lobbies in a party ambiance with food and drink. On January 19, the concert — all-Beethoven — was nearly full-length and included an intermission, but as an innovation, it introduced informal conversations between orchestra musicians and Franz Welser-Möst. Severance Hall was packed with a multigenerational audience whose energy helped make the evening a celebration. [Read more…]
The Cleveland Orchestra has announced that Christian Van Horn will replace Thomas Hampson as baritone soloist in its performances of Haydn’s oratorio The Seasons on Thursday, January 18 and Saturday, January 20 at Severance Hall and on Wednesday, January 24 at Carnegie Hall in New York. [Read more…]
At its sold-out concert honoring the life and legacy of the late civil rights leader on Sunday evening, January 14 in Severance Hall, The Cleveland Orchestra announced the 2018 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Community Service Awards, which were divided into three categories. [Read more…]
by Mike Telin
The Cleveland Orchestra will present its annual Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration Concert under the direction of Franz Welser-Möst on Sunday, January 14 at 7:00 pm in Severance Hall. All of the free tickets to the event have been distributed, but the program will be broadcast live on WCLV, 104.9 FM and WCPN, 90.3 FM. The concert will also be broadcast on Cleveland Public Television WVIZ on January 26.
Sunday’s concert will feature bass-baritone Ryan Speedo Green, actor James Pickens Jr., and the Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration Chorus under the direction of William Henry Caldwell. The program includes Beethoven’s Overture to Egmont, Mendelssohn’s “Lord God of Abraham” from Elijah, George Walker’s Lyric for Strings, Verdi’s “Va pensiero” from Nabucco, Respighi’s “Pines of the Appian Way,” the fourth movement of Mendelssohn’s “Reformation” Symphony, Julia Ward Howe’s Battle Hymn of the Republic, and James Weldon Johnson’s and John Rosamond Johnson’s Lift Every Voice and Sing.
“There are a lot of new things happening at the concert this year,” Chorus Director William Henry Caldwell said during a recent telephone conversation. “I’m especially excited about commissioned arrangements by Charles Floyd of Down by the Riverside and Precious Lord. To have the opportunity to present those to the Cleveland community for this celebration speaks volumes about how much The Cleveland Orchestra thinks of this choir.” [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
This weekend, music director Franz Welser-Möst and The Cleveland Orchestra will precede their Thursday and Saturday performances of Mahler’s Symphony No. 9 with the Cleveland premieres of Austrian composer Johannes Maria Staud’s Stromab. The 15-minute work was co-commissioned by The Cleveland Orchestra, who will take it to New York’s Stern Auditorium at Carnegie Hall on January 23. Staud was named by Welser-Möst as the Orchestra’s Daniel R. Lewis Young Composer Fellow for the 2007-08 and 2008-09 seasons.
Thanks to the resources of the internet, it’s possible to do a bit of prepping to hear such a new work before taking your seat in Severance Hall — when many patrons will have their first opportunity to read the notes in the program book. Here’s your opportunity to do a little homework before the downbeat.
Staud’s work, which translates as “Downstream,” is based on The Willows, a 1907 horror tale by the British author Algernon Blackwood. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Classical music begins stirring from its long holiday nap during the first two weeks of January, revving up from adagio to allegro by mid-month.
The Westminster Choir — the flagship ensemble of Westminster Choir College, now part of New Jersey’s Rider University, will make a stop at the Church of the Covenant in University Circle on Saturday, January 6 at 7:30 pm during its winter tour. Joe Miller will conduct the ensemble in Frank Martin’s Mass for Double Choir (1926), György Ligeti’s Lux Aeterna (1966), and music by Joel Phillips, Tim Brent, Edward C. Bairstow, Ailo Alcala and Randall Thompson.
Franz Welser-Möst and The Cleveland Orchestra will make a big splash the weekend of January 11 with Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 9 and a new work by Austrian composer Johannes Maria Staud. Stromab (“Downstream”) is inspired by what Staud calls “one of the finest horror stories of all time,” Algernon Blackwood’s The Willows, a tale of two young people who canoe down the Danube and discover a lonely island where weird things swirl around them. Mahler 9, the composer’s last symphony, has been described by Herbert von Karajan as “music coming from another world, from eternity.” There are performances on Thursday the 11th at 7:30 pm and on Friday and Saturday the 12th and 13th at 8:00 pm.
Another major work will be featured the following week when soprano Golda Schultz, tenor Maximilian Schmidt, and baritone Thomas Hampson join Welser-Möst, The Cleveland Orchestra, and the Cleveland Orchestra Chorus in Haydn’s The Seasons. Performances are scheduled for Thursday, January 18 at 7:30 and Saturday, January 20 at 8:00 pm. In between, Welser-Möst and the Orchestra will play all-Beethoven on Friday, January 19 at 8:00 pm — Symphonies 1 and 3 and the Overture to The Creatures of Prometheus. [Read more…]
by Robert Rollin
Last Tuesday evening the Cleveland Orchestra under new Assistant Conductor Vinay Parameswaran performed Danny Elfman’s imaginative score to Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas live with visuals and sound track. Paramesaran’s coordination was impeccable and the orchestra sparkled with beautiful timbres and ensemble. Burton wrote the original poem that inspired the movie in 1982. Disney began considering its development as a horror short or 30-minute television special, and ultimately released the full-length movie in 1993. [Read more…]