by Daniel Hathaway
Images of water linked the three works on Thursday evening’s Cleveland Orchestra program at Severance Hall: destructive water in Toshio Hosokawa’s Meditation (To the Victims of Tsunami 3.11); the water of memory and lament in the central song in Hector Berlioz’s Les Nuits d’été; and the magical waters of the Rhine River in Robert Schumann’s third symphony. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Scottish mezzo-soprano Karen Cargill will be featured in Hector Berlioz’s song cycle Les nuits d’été this weekend at Severance Hall with guest conductor Robin Ticciati and The Cleveland Orchestra. Cargill and Ticciati have recorded the Berlioz with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, an album that received critical acclaim when it was released in April 2013. We spoke with the affable mezzo by telephone in her dressing room at Severance Hall on Tuesday morning, where she was listening in on a rehearsal of Schumann’s Rhenish Symphony.
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by Daniel Hathaway
Pietism and fatalism inspired the disquieting poetic images that soprano Yulia Van Doren and the Cleveland Orchestra and Chorus presented in works by Johann Sebastian Bach and Johannes Brahms last Thursday night in Severance Hall. Those depressing thoughts might have put a damper on the proceedings, had not the music in both cases been so appealing. [Read more…]
by J.D. Goddard
On Friday evening, October 17, a standing-room only crowd gathered in the sanctuary of Saint John’s Cathedral to hear the magnificent Cleveland Orchestra and Chorus under the direction of Franz Welser-Möst in a free concert that featured Bach’s Missa Brevis, BWV 232. [Read more…]
On the advice of her physician, violinist Hilary Hahn has withdrawn from this weekend’s Cleveland Orchestra concerts with guest conductor James Gaffigan. She will be replaced by soprano Yulia van Doren, and Johann Sebastian Bach’s solo cantata, Mein Herze schwimmt im Blut, BWV 199 will be substituted for the previously-scheduled Bach violin concertos. The program also includes Johannes Brahms’s Schicksalslied with the Cleveland Orchestra Chorus, and Felix Mendelssohn’s Symphony No. 5, “Reformation.”
Jung-Min Amy Lee, associate concertmaster of The Cleveland Orchestra, will replace Hahn for the masterclass with students from area colleges and universities in Reinberger Chamber Hall on Tuesday, October 21 at 4:00 pm. The event is free and open to music teachers, students and parents, but tickets are required.
by Daniel Hathaway
As Johann Sebastian Bach neared the end of his career, he took care to put his musical legacy in order, making archival-quality copies of Passions and completing what his son, C.P.E. Bach, called his “grosse catholische Messe.” [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
The Cleveland Orchestra built its second subscription weekend around the phenomenal Chinese pianist, Lang Lang, who treated Severance Hall audiences to Richard Strauss’s Burleske on Thursday and Friday evenings and Sunday afternoon, Chopin’s Andante spianato & Grand Polonaise brillante on Thursday and Sunday, and no doubt blew the patrons of the Orchestra’s annual benefit evening away with the first Tchaikovsky concerto on Saturday. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
In conjunction with performances of J.S. Bach’s Mass in B Minor (October 16 and 18) and one of his solo cantatas by soprano Yulia van Doren (October 23, 24 & 24), The Cleveland Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra Chorus and Youth Chorus will offer a free concert of the Kyrie and Gloria from the Mass at St. John’s Cathedral in downtown Cleveland on Friday, October 17 at 8:00 pm, and a “Make Music! Marathon” at Severance Hall on Saturday afternoon, October 18. [Read more…]
The Cleveland Orchestra announced on October 2 that its music director, Franz Welser-Most, has extended his contract until 2022, reaching beyond the Orchestra’s centennial season (2017-2018) and, at the end of 20 years, becoming its second longest-serving music director after George Szell.
The Orchestra noted that Welser-Möst is looking forward to increasing the institution’s emphasis on education and community engagement.
Describing the special qualities of the region, Welser-Möst said, “We have a highly sophisticated audience in Northeast Ohio…whose enthusiasm for their hometown orchestra is matched by their understanding of the work and support needed to maintain such an ensemble.”
Of the orchestra itself, Welser-Möst said, “I love the spirit of The Cleveland Orchestra, and there is no greater joy for me than collaborating with these musicians. Their collective dedication to excellence at every performance is inspiring and humbling.”
by Daniel Hathaway
As the normally-resident birds gave way to the end-of-summer locusts, The Cleveland Orchestra bade farewell to Blossom on Sunday evening in a season closer that also served as a send-off for the ensemble’s forthcoming European tour. Like Friday evening’s Summers @ Severance performance, the repertoire was a condensed version of what audiences in London, Lucerne, Berlin, Linz, Vienna, Paris and Amsterdam will enjoy in thirteen performances from September 7-22: works by Johannes Brahms and Jörg Widmann, the orchestra’s former Daniel R. Lewis Young Composer Fellow (an entire concert in Berlin’s Philharmonie on September 11 will be devoted to Widmann’s music).
Widmann’s Con brio: Concert Overture began Sunday evening’s concert on many witty notes. Commissioned by conductor Mariss Jansons to headline a concert of Beethoven’s seventh and eighth symphonies and scored for those orchestral forces, the overture was first performed by The Cleveland Orchestra at Severance Hall performances led by Christoph von Dohnányi in January of 2011. [Read more…]