French composer and conductor Pierre Boulez, who served as musical advisor and frequent guest conductor of The Cleveland Orchestra over a span of 50 years, died on Tuesday, January 5 at his home in Baden-Baden, Germany. Read the NY Times Obituary here.
Musical life after the holidays:
a cornucopia of January concerts
by Daniel Hathaway
Now that winter has finally arrived and the excitement of the holidays has subsided, it’s tempting to burrow in and hibernate for a few weeks. But there’s plenty to do during January. Let’s have a look at some of what the month has to offer, beginning with orchestra concerts.
Franz Welser-Möst and The Cleveland Orchestra are back at work early in the month with a round of all-Beethoven concerts from January 7-9 featuring pianist Yefim Bronfman (left) in the third piano concerto, and Bronfman and the Cleveland Orchestra Chorus in the Choral Fantasy. Soprano Barbara Hannigan will be featured in the U.S. premiere of Hans Abrahamsen’s let me tell you on January 14 and 15, sharing a program with Dmitri Shostakovich’s fourth symphony. On Saturday the 16th, Robert Porco will lead the annual Martin Luther King Jr Celebration, followed by a Severance Hall Open House on Monday the 17th from 12 Noon to 5 pm. Community ensemble performances will be bracketed by the Cleveland Orchestra Youth Chorus (12:30) and Youth Orchestra (4:15). The Cleveland Philharmonic will host its own MLK Observance at Tri-C Metro Auditorium on Sunday, January 17. [Read more…]
Cleveland Orchestra & Cleveland Orchestra Chorus: Holiday Festival Concert at Severance Hall (Dec. 19)
by Daniel Hathaway
The eighth of ten concerts featuring The Cleveland Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra Chorus, and Youth Chorus on Saturday evening, December 19 showed no apparent signs of holiday fatigue or repetitive music syndrome. To the obvious delight of a full house, Robert Porco led a wide variety of holiday selections in arrangements by such practiced hands as William Walton, Robert Shaw, Robert Russell Bennett, and John Rutter. The two-hour concert also featured original pieces by Eric Whitacre, Pyotr Tchaikovsky, George Frideric Handel, and Leroy Anderson — and a visit from the Man in the Red Suit. [Read more…]
At the Movies: Cleveland Orchestra in Back to the Future (December 10)
by Robert Rollin
Back to the Future (1985) took center-stage at Severance Hall last Thursday evening, December 10, on The Cleveland Orchestra’s “At the Movies” series. Deftly conducted by associate conductor Brett Mitchell, the Orchestra played the score live as the film was shown on a huge screen over the stage. Other than a slight bobble at the outset, the performance sparkled with excellent ensemble and balanced beautifully with the lively soundtrack. [Read more…]
Cleveland Orchestra & Chamber Chorus: Handel’s Messiah (December 3)
by Daniel Hathaway
Performing Handel’s most famous oratorio poses a challenge for modern conductors, choruses and orchestras. Even in 1742 when it was being created prior to its debut in Dublin, its composer found himself steering a perilous course between the values of puritans, who wanted it to be religious, and thespians, who saw it as a piece of theater. Nowadays, conductors, orchestras and choruses also find themselves navigating between the values of the historically informed performance movement and the desire to make this hugely popular work accessible to a wide public. Decisions, decisions! [Read more…]
Cleveland Orchestra Violins of Hope Educational Concert (December 3)
by Daniel Hathaway
Among the more important activities during the four-month Violins of Hope Cleveland project are the extensive educational activities being offered to schools and students by a number of area institutions. On Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday (December 2 – 4) at 10:10 am and 12:10 noon, associate conductor Brett Mitchell and The Cleveland Orchestra — in conjunction with graduate students from the Case Western Reserve University / Cleveland Play House MFA Program in Acting — presented six engaging, hour-long concerts that unflinchingly presented the events of the Holocaust in music, mime, and words. [Read more…]
Fantastique! The Cleveland Orchestra with Lionel Bringuier & Robert Walters (November 28)
by Nicholas Jones
In the closing movements of Hector Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique, the full brass section makes a spectacular entrance. In 1830, it must have seemed a sound that had never been heard before. Even in the jaded 21st century, it has a startling sonic complexity — at times as metallic as a locomotive’s firebox, and at others as smooth as the oiled bearings that drive the machine. [Read more…]
Linking art to music: a tour of CMA’s “Monet to Matisse” exhibit with Lionel Bringuier
by Mike Telin
Impressionism provides a unique intersection between visual art and music. You can draw parallels between what composers were writing and artists were painting in other periods — baroque, romantic, modernist — but “aha” moments come with remarkable spontaneity when you put Debussy and Monet side by side. It’s like art you can hear, and music you can see.
In a happy coincidence, the Cleveland Museum of Art is glowing with the exhibition “Painting the Modern Garden: Monet to Matisse” the same week that The Cleveland Orchestra is presenting a program of works by Claude Debussy and Hector Berlioz led by French conductor Lionel Bringuier, including the premiere of Bernard Rands’ Concerto for English horn, commissioned by the Oberlin Conservatory for the Orchestra’s solo English horn, Robert Walters. Rands has been heavily influenced by the music of the Impressionist composers. [Read more…]
Horn of Plenty: a new concerto
for English hornist Robert Walters
by Daniel Hautzinger
reprinted with permission from the Oberlin Conservatory
There was no Cleveland Orchestra when the Oberlin Conservatory of Music opened 150 years ago.
By the time the orchestra was founded in 1918 — with pivotal support from Oberlin’s John Long Severance ’85 — the conservatory was 53 years old and well into a phase of monumental growth. In 1919, the year-old orchestra performed for the first time in Oberlin’s Finney Chapel. It has returned to campus every year since — well over 200 performances and counting.
Ninety-six seasons later, as the conservatory celebrates its 150th anniversary, it honors these extensive ties to the Cleveland Orchestra with the commission of a work for English horn by composer Bernard Rands. [Read more…]
Cleveland Orchestra: conversations with English hornist Robert Walters and composer Bernard Rands
by Mike Telin
When Robert Walters performs the world premiere of Bernard Rands’ Concerto for English Horn with The Cleveland Orchestra on Friday, November 27 in Severance Hall, it will bring to fruition a composer-performer collaboration whose roots go back more than two decades.
The 8:00 pm concert, under the direction of Lionel Bringuier, will also feature Claude Debussy’s Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun, and Hector Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique. The program will be repeated on Saturday, November 28 at 8:00 pm, and Sunday, November 29 at 3:00 pm. [Read more…]