by Daniel Hathaway
To honor the memory of composer and conductor Pierre Boulez, Franz Welser-Möst will lead The Cleveland Orchestra in the U.S. premiere of György Kurtág’s Petite musique solennelle – En hommage à Pierre Boulez 90 on Thursday and Saturday evenings, March 24 and 26 at Severance Hall. The performances will also feature Norwegian cellist Truls Mørk in the Schumann concerto, and Anton Bruckner’s Symphony No. 6.
Kurtág (pictured above in 2007), who worked with Boulez and the Ensemble InterContemporain in Paris from 1999-2001, wrote Petite musique solennelle to honor Boulez on his 90th birthday, a landmark that was also observed by The Cleveland Orchestra in a special concert in January of 2015. (Boulez died almost exactly one year later.)
In an interview for a preview of that event on ClevelandClassical.com, TCO principal keyboardist Joela Jones said, “To me it’s amazing that somebody who was so great, so brilliant, and so gifted, could also be so humble and modest. He just made you feel comfortable, like you were his equal, which of course you were not. And, if you had enough intelligence you knew that.” [Read more…]
British pianist Stephen Hough succeeds at everything he sets out to do. Named as one of 20 Living Polymaths by The Economist, he was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 2001. He’s also an accomplished painter and a published author and composer. This week at Severance Hall, Stephen Hough will join The Cleveland Orchestra for three performances of Antonín Dvořák’s challenging Piano Concerto. The concerts, under the direction of Alan Gilbert, will also include Robert Schumann’s Overture to Manfred and Carl Nielsen’s Symphony No. 4 (“The Inextinguishable”). Check our Concert Listings
