by Daniel Hathaway
While half of The Cleveland Orchestra was busy downtown providing incidental music for The Good Peaches at the Cleveland Play House on Thursday evening, April 14, the rest of the ensemble played a scintillating concert of music by Haydn and Mozart uptown at Severance Hall under guest conductor Jane Glover, featuring principal flute Joshua Smith and harpist Yolanda Kondonassis. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
If planning an orchestral season is like assembling a vast jigsaw puzzle, The Cleveland Orchestra’s program on Saturday, April 2 felt as though it might have been put together from the leftover pieces after everything else had fallen neatly into place. [Read more…]
by Mike Telin
Music from the Classical era will be on tap when guest conductor Jane Glover makes a return visit to Severance Hall. On Thursday, April 14 at 7:30 pm, she will lead The Cleveland Orchestra in performances of Joseph Haydn’s Symphony No. 6 (“Le Matin”) and Wolfgang Amadè Mozart’s Concerto for Flute and Harp and Symphony No. 39.
Mozart’s pieces will be featured during the Orchestra’s Fridays@7 Series on April 15, and the full program will be repeated on Saturday, April 16 at 8:00 pm. On Sunday, April 17 the Orchestra will travel to Finney Chapel for a 4:00 performance on the Oberlin Artist Recital Series. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
This summer, Cleveland Orchestra principal viola Robert Vernon will retire after serving in that position since 1976. Before he steps down from his illustrious career in the ensemble, The Cleveland Orchestra Women’s Committee will honor him with a luncheon at Westwood Country Club in Rocky River on Friday, April 15 at 12 Noon.
On that occasion, a conversation with Vernon, the longest-tenured string principal in the history of The Cleveland Orchestra, will be moderated by one of the newest members of its staff. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
The Cleveland Orchestra’s newest collaboration with Chicago’s Joffrey Ballet brought a pair of dark, suspenseful stage works by Béla Bartók to Severance Hall on April 7 (with repeat performances through April 10). Nine Joffrey dancers and two fine singers shared the crowded stage with music director Franz Welser-Möst and the orchestra for performances of the ballet The Miraculous Mandarin and the one-act opera Bluebeard’s Castle that were riveting and chilling and made imaginative use of minimal stage gear and props. Read the review at Classical Voice North America
by Nicholas Jones
It’s not that rare that poems are used on recitals to complement the music, but it’s unusual to find a concert that features poetry and music on a relatively equal basis, and to find the poems written by one of the lead performers. That was the case this weekend, however, at the Heights Arts concert, “The Sung Path,” featuring Oberlin Conservatory Professor and Cleveland Orchestra English hornist Robert Walters. The combination inspired our reviewer, an occasional poet, to some verses of his own; as an academic, he thought it best to add some footnotes as well. —ed.
[Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
When Severance Hall audiences experience the thrills and chills of Béla Bartók’s The Miraculous Mandarin and Bluebeard’s Castle this weekend with The Cleveland Orchestra and Chicago’s Joffrey Ballet, they’ll see the culmination of weeks of preparation by a whole staff of behind-the-scenes personnel. Among those who will be witnessing the fruits of their labors but not taking a bow at the end is the répétiteur for the two productions, Miloš Repický.
Repický, who serves on the music staff of New York’s Metropolitan Opera, has been hard at work on his third Severance Hall project, having previously served as pianist and vocal coach for Leoš Janáček’s The Cunning Little Vixen in 2014, and for Richard Strauss’s Daphne in 2015. [Read more…]
by Mike Telin
In his program notes for Lyra (2013), composer Anthony Cheung writes, “The strumming or plucking of a lyre: if Western music has an origin myth, the lyre is inextricably linked to it. Apollo with his lyre, truth emanating from its well-proportioned vibrations. Orpheus soothing all manner of flora and fauna, as well as the keepers of the underworld…. And with Beethoven, modern and ancient mythology are conjoined. When the composer supposedly channels the Orpheus narrative in his fourth piano concerto, he puts the soloist in the heroic role, pitting it against an orchestra of Furies, and makes a lyre of the piano.”
On Thursday, March 31 at 7:30 pm and Saturday, April 2 at 8:00 pm at Severance Hall, Franz Welser-Möst will lead The Cleveland Orchestra in performances of Cheung’s Lyra. The program will also include Thomas Adès’s Concentric Paths (for violin and orchestra) with soloist Leila Josefowicz, as well as orchestral excerpts from Wagner’s Götterdämmerung. On Wednesday, March 30 at 6:30 pm, Anthony Cheung will present a lecture in Bibbins 224 at the Oberlin Conservatory. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Here’s your opportunity to meet the new executive director of The Cleveland Orchestra. On Tuesday, April 5 at 6:00 pm, the Hudson Chapter of Blossom Friends of The Cleveland Orchestra will sponsor an evening of conversation with André Gremillet, who assumed his new post as executive director of the Orchestra in January following the retirement of Gary Hanson.
Gremillet most recently served as managing director of Australia’s Melbourne Symphony, and before that was president and CEO of the New Jersey Symphony. A native of Quebec, Gremillet is a conservatory-trained pianist who also served for four years as president of Canada’s premier organ-building firm, Casavant Frères. [Read more…]
by Timothy Robson
The death of French composer and conductor Pierre Boulez on January 5, 2016, at the age of 90, has prompted a series of remembrances from The Cleveland Orchestra and its members. Boulez was honored by the orchestra just over a year ago at the time of his birthday, and on March 24 at Severance Hall, Franz Welser-Möst led the United States premiere of György Kurtág’s Petite musique solennelle: Homage to Pierre Boulez at 90. [Read more…]