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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…]

Cleveland Orchestra offers up Tchaikovsky, Dvořák as it continues holiday concert tradition

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by Daniel Hathaway
Originally published on Cleveland.com. Photo by Roger Mastroianni from an earlier Cleveland Orchestra concert

While other organizations are taking time off, The Cleveland Orchestra has continued its admirable tradition of playing concerts on the Friday and Saturday evenings and Sunday afternoon of Thanksgiving weekend at Severance Music Center.

Those Fridays in particular have seen some memorable performances, and the concert on November 24 was no exception. Played to a capacity, multi-generational crowd enlivened by an enthusiastic influx of families and young listeners, led by the insightful Finnish conductor Pietari Inkinen making his debut with the orchestra, and featuring a defining performance of a beloved concerto by one of the most thrilling violin soloists on the international circuit, the experience was simply overwhelming.

From the ovation they gave when Augustin Hadelich merely appeared onstage, Friday’s audience suggested that he was a major factor that drew them to Severance Music Center. [Read more…]

Cooper Piano Competition: Final Round with The Cleveland Orchestra (Aug. 4)

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by Daniel Hathaway

The winners with the Coopers and Oberlin Conservatory Dean William Quillen

Thanks to our not-so-friendly coronavirus, the Thomas and Evon Cooper International Piano Competition has been on hiatus for five years. It returned, fresh and energized, last week in Oberlin and Cleveland, fielding what many considered the most impressive group of young pianists in the history of the contest — which was inaugurated in 2010.

The week began with nineteen competitors who had made it to the semifinals in Oberlin. Three remained after the piano-with-piano concerto round on Wednesday and would go on to play concertos with David Robertson and The Cleveland Orchestra at Severance Music Center on Friday evening.

Although the Friday event was a competition round, it could have stood alone as a memorable concert experience. [Read more…]

Cooper International Competition Invites 19 Pianists to Oberlin

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by Mike Telin

Next week the Cooper International Competition turns its attention to the piano for the first time since 2018. “It’s been five years, so it’s good to be back,” Oberlin Conservatory professor and Competition director Robert Shannon said during a recent telephone conversation.

This year, 19 pianists between the ages of 13 and 18 who have advanced through the preliminaries of submitted videos will participate in live rounds in Oberlin’s Warner Concert Hall from July 31 to August 2. Click here to view their biographies and repertoire lists.

The 19, who represent 7 countries and 4 U.S. states, are vying for the opportunity to play full concertos in a final round with The Cleveland Orchestra under the direction of David Robertson at Severance Music Center on Friday, August 4 at 7:30 pm — and the $20,000 first prize. Tickets are available online.

[Read more…]

Storms at Severance Music Center conjured by Sibelius & Adès (Mar. 31)

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by Daniel Hathaway

With apologies to Sir Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, it was a dark and stormy morning at Severance Music Center on March 31, when guest conductor Thomas Adès led The Cleveland Orchestra in a pair of striking atmospheric disturbances, one of his own composition (in The Tempest Symphony), and one by Jean Sibelius (from The Tempest, Op. 109), both originally imagined by William Shakespeare in his play of the same name.

Listed in the First Folio as the first of his comedies, Shakespeare’s magical allegory has recently spurred the invention of a new critical category: romances, although no attempt to file the work under a single heading — or to simplify its plot — has been successful.

Sibelius wrote his incidental music to The Tempest in 1925 on commission from the Royal Theatre in Copenhagen for a lavish production that required 34 separate musical cues. Adès extracted the movements of his symphony from the opera he wrote for the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, that debuted in 2004. [Read more…]

Cleveland Orchestra: vivid Pictures & more under Welser-Möst (March 3)

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by Daniel Hathaway

If these fingers were crafting a marketing piece for The Cleveland Orchestra’s concerts on the weekend of March 2 rather than a review, they might be tempted to entice readers to attend with such alliterative flights of prose as “Sizzling Sonic Spectacular — and more.” But in retrospect, the Orchestra’s performance of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition was just that.

The huge orchestra that filled the Mandel stage after intermission on Sunday played the closing pages of Maurice Ravel’s brilliant orchestration of the original solo piano score with spacious grandeur, the kind of treatment “The Great Gate of Kiev” deserves in these perilous times.

Franz Welser-Möst led the audience through the gallery of Victor Hartmann’s idiosyncratic art like a skilled docent, pointing up interesting details and drawing precise playing from his orchestral colleagues. [Read more…]

Klaus Mäkelä returns to The Cleveland Orchestra podium

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by Mike Telin

Since making his Cleveland Orchestra debut in July of 2019, visits by Finnish conductor Klaus Mäkelä have become highly anticipated events. Tonight at 8:00 pm Mäkelä returns to Severance Music Center to lead the Orchestra in Andrew Norman’s Sustain (replacing Truls Mørk’s Cello Concerto), Debussy’s Images and Ravel’s Boléro. The program will be repeated on Friday at 7:30, Saturday at 8, and Sunday at 3. Tickets are available online

I caught up with the friendly conductor by phone backstage at Severance for a brief chat.

Mike Telin: You just finished a rehearsal — I trust it went well.

Klaus Mäkelä: It did. I can say that I am absolutely delighted to be here. The way they play all of these pieces, especially Images, which is one of the most complicated. There’s so much detail, but that should never be the point, it needs to become part of the piece. But this orchestra is so wonderful, that is not a problem. [Read more…]

The Cleveland Orchestra: Berg and Schubert intertwined (Jan. 13)

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by Stephanie Manning

Perhaps Franz Schubert’s Symphony No. 8 is more complete than its “Unfinished” moniker implies. After all, the composer wrote and orchestrated two full movements, creating a kind of standalone half-symphony. But Severance Music Center audiences heard this work in a new way on January 13, when The Cleveland Orchestra and Franz Welser-Möst interlaced Schubert’s two memorable movements with an unexpected partner: Alban Berg’s Three Pieces from Lyric Suite.

The strings-only work by Berg has made relatively frequent appearances on the Orchestra’s programs. In 2021, the musicians recorded it for the In Focus series, and it appeared again on last year’s European tour. Friday’s rendition maintained the group’s characteristic light and effortless playing, each section blending as much as possible to echo the work’s original form as a string quartet. At fifteen minutes total, the piece is quite short, but the dense encoded musical meanings require some extra-attentive listening. Splitting up the three movements ensured that each one could be appreciated on its own. [Read more…]

Cleveland Orchestra with Gilbert & Yancich: Oliverio, Haydn & Nielsen pack a program (Jan. 5)

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by Daniel Hathaway

Rebounding with vigor on January 5 from its loaded holiday schedule while other ensembles were still in recovery mode, The Cleveland Orchestra gave a thoroughly enjoyable concert of completely unrelated works, including a new concerto by James Oliverio featuring principal timpani Paul Yancich, and not-so-often performed symphonies by Joseph Haydn and Carl Nielsen.

Presiding over this interesting stew like an adventurous chef, guest conductor Alan Gilbert threw in a surprising ingredient or two that the smallish audience of 800 lapped up as if hungry for something both piquant and nourishing after a diet of Noëls.

The Mandel Hall stage was full of drums — the normal number at the back of the orchestra, plus seven more set in a tight circle where the first violins usually hold forth — for the opening work, Oliverio’s Legacy Ascendant, Concerto for Timpani and Strings, commissioned by The Cleveland Orchestra. [Read more…]

And then there were three: James Oliverio discusses his new Timpani Concerto

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by Mike Telin

Timpani concertos are few and far between. Even the most knowledgeable would be hard pressed to name the composers of one or two. How remarkable is it that Cleveland Orchestra principal Paul Yancich has two that were written for him with a third on the way, all by the same composer, James Oliverio.

“My relationship with Paul goes back to when we were students at the Cleveland Institute of Music in the’70s and he asked me to write a piece for his senior recital,” Oliverio said said during a telephone conversation from his home in Florida where he serves as Executive Director of the Digital Worlds Institute at the University of Florida. “That was my first major work for the instrument. And since that time we’ve stayed in touch.”

On Thursday, January 5 at 7:30 pm at Severance Music Center, Yancich will give the World Premiere of Oliverio’s Legacy Ascendant with The Cleveland Orchestra under the direction of Alan Gilbert. [Read more…]

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