by Daniel Hathaway
Like a commuter ferry, The Cleveland Orchestra took on more passengers as it went along through the Thursday, April 6 concert featuring pianist Mitsuko Uchida. First, twenty-four string players and four winds came onboard for Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 12, then the winds disembarked and more string players appeared on deck for a Mendelssohn string symphony. Finally, nine winds joined that larger body of strings for Mozart’s 20th Piano Concerto. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
When you’re programming English Baroque music by Handel and Purcell for an American orchestra, it’s helpful to have a native Englishman in charge, especially someone who has produced music in some of the same halls as those storied composers. Having served early in his career as sub-organist at Westminster Abbey, Harry Bicket knows how to recreate British pomp and ceremony on this side of the pond, as he demonstrated in a scintillating concert with The Cleveland Orchestra on Saturday evening, April 1 in Severance Hall. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
This week’s Cleveland Orchestra concerts will feature Baroque music by Handel, Rameau, and Purcell, led by British guest conductor Harry Bicket, who has established a distinguished operatic career at Glyndebourne, Covent Garden, The Met, and Santa Fe. Since 2007, he has served as artistic director of The English Concert, an early music ensemble founded by Trevor Pinnock, who led the group for 30 years.
Bicket’s career trajectory might have gone in quite a different direction. After posts as organ scholar of St. George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle and Christ Church Oxford, he was appointed sub-organist at Westminster Abbey at the age of 23. Well on his way to becoming organist at a major English cathedral, Bicket had doubts. “I thought, OK, I could stay at the Abbey for the next 40 years, considering it’s just about the best job ever,” Bicket said by telephone from his home in London, “but is that really what I want to do?”
He left Westminster Abbey without any real plan in mind. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Some 1,200 patrons gathered at Severance Hall on Friday evening, March 17 to hear details of The Cleveland Orchestra’s 100th-anniversary season in 2017-2018. The evening began with a sumptuous reception in the lobbies accompanied by string music from members of the Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra playing alongside Cleveland Orchestra musicians.
Moving to the main auditorium, the crowd heard remarks from executive director André Gremillet and newly-elected Musical Arts Association president Richard K. Smucker, and reflections from Orchestra musicians Massimo La Rosa, Martha Baldwin, and Joshua Smith on their experiences. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
This week’s pair of Cleveland Orchestra concerts led by music director Franz Welser-Möst will be devoted to works in a variety of styles by Igor Stravinsky. One of the most challenging is Threni: Lamentations of the Prophet Jeremiah, a piece the composer premiered at the Venice Biennale in September 1958. Threni will be performed on Thursday, March 16 and Saturday, March 18 by The Cleveland Orchestra and Chorus and the Miami-based chamber chorus Seraphic Fire, now in its fifteenth season.
We spoke by telephone last week with Seraphic Fire’s founder and artistic director Patrick Dupré Quigley, who was already in Cleveland on another assignment with the Cleveland Orchestra. [Read more…]
by Robert Rollin
The Cleveland Orchestra Family Concert on Sunday afternoon, March 5 was a delight. The program, titled “The Magic Firebird,” was a collaboration between the Orchestra and the Enchantment Theatre Company. Guest conductor Ruth Reinhardt led Stravinsky’s The Firebird with precision, commenting briefly on each piece and drawing in the young audience. The concert was a terrific success despite limited space onstage. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Under the direction of Franz Welser-Möst on Thursday evening, members of The Cleveland Orchestra and Chorus and an excellent team of soloists made a strong case for a not-so-historically informed approach to Bach’s sacred vocal works. The quality of Welser-Möst’s interpretation and the excellence of its execution got right to the heart of the composer’s Passion According to St. John and left a powerful emotional impression. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Of Johann Sebastian Bach’s two extant Passion settings, the St. John is the more dramatic, an excursion in a speedboat compared to the ocean liner-like progress of the St. Matthew.
This weekend, music director Franz Welser-Möst will lead The Cleveland Orchestra and Chamber Chorus in three performances of Bach’s St. John Passion, with tenor Maximilian Schmitt as the Evangelist, bass-baritone Andrew Foster-Williams as Christus, and soprano Lauren Snouffer, countertenor Iestyn Davies, tenor Nicholas Phan, and bass-baritone Michael Sumuel as soloists.
As part of Bach’s plan to establish a “well-regulated church music” after his arrival in Leipzig in 1723, he initiated a five-year cycle of weekly cantatas, and planned an elaborate setting of the Passion according to the Gospel of John for performance on Good Friday afternoon of 1724. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
For his next-to-last appearance with The Cleveland Orchestra before taking up his new duties with the Colorado Symphony, associate conductor Brett Mitchell presided over a program of American music on Friday evening at Severance Hall. Two “Third” works were on the program: Aaron Copland’s stirring Third Symphony, and Augusta Read Thomas’s elusive Third Violin Concerto with concertmaster William Preucil as soloist. [Read more…]
Patrons can enjoy summer concerts by The Cleveland Orchestra in University Circle for the fourth season this July and August. Music Director Franz Welser-Möst, and guest conductors Susanna Mälkki and Patrick Dupré Quigley will lead Friday evening concerts on July 14 and 28 and August 18 in Severance Hall.
The performances begin at 7:00 pm, but a Happy Hour with special drink prices will begin on the front terrace at 6:00 pm, and beverage service will be offered there following each performance. Tickets are now on sale for the three-concert package, with individual tickets available beginning May 1.
Here are the program details: [Read more…]