by Daniel Hathaway
The burning question after The Cleveland Orchestra’s concert on Thursday April 24 was why it took so long to bring conductor Jane Glover and pianist Imogen Cooper — either singly or together — to Severance Hall. The two British artists collaborated to produce a spectacular performance of Beethoven’s first concerto, and Glover led pristine and loveable readings of sinfonias by C.P.E. Bach and Johann Baptist Waṅhal* as well as a finely shaped account of Haydn’s “Drum Roll” symphony.
Glover set up a bright, sprightly introduction for Cooper in the Beethoven (the pared-down string section allowed the orchestra to play with amazing transparency). Responding with verve and an effortless elegance, Cooper breezed through her passagework, made perfect joins with Glover and the orchestra and pointed up exquisite moments like the sudden shift into E-flat. The recapitulation of the first movement was announced by a surprising blaze of horns and Cooper’s initially calm, orderly cadenza suddenly jolted the ear with wild chord juxtapositions. “She’s fantastic!” cried a woman in the row behind me. No shushing and no argument there. [Read more…]
Composed in Vienna in 1791, Mozart’s Requiem Mass in D minor, K. 626 was left unfinished by the composer at the time of his death. Although mystery surrounds the work (who was the mysterious messenger who ordered Mozart to compose a requiem?), the Mass has become one of Mozart’s most beloved works.
“As a child, I loved classic fairy tales as collected and told by the Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Andersen, and others,” American composer Gabriela Lena Frank writes about her new work, Will-o’-the-Wisp: Tone Poem for Piccolo and Orchestra. “As a composer, I’ve often enjoyed using some my childish and fancifully personalized re-interpretations of myths to inspire pieces, with varying degrees of overt Latin American musical (especially indigenous Indian) influences. [And this] is one such piece.” On Thursday, May 1 beginning at 7:30 pm in Severance Hall, Cleveland Orchestra Principal Piccolo Mary Kay Fink performs the world premiere of Frank’s new concerto under the direction of David Robertson.
Last Thursday evening, April 17, The Cleveland Orchestra under guest conductor Herbert Blomstedt’s masterful hand performed a stunningly beautiful concert of romantic music. The program featured two wonderful Slavic works.
Mitsuko Uchida is in the course of revisiting selected Mozart concertos after completing a whole cycle of those ravishing pieces with The Cleveland Orchestra at Severance Hall from 2002-2007. On Thursday, April 3 she reprised No. 18 in B-flat and No. 19 in F. Between the two, the Orchestra offered Mozart’s early “Symphony” No. 23. The entire concert, including intermission, lasted about 90 minutes.
British pianist Imogen Cooper and British conductor Jane Glover will both be making their Severance Hall and Cleveland Orchestra debuts this weekend. I reached Imogen Cooper in London to talk about Beethoven’s first piano concerto, a piece that I tell her still gives me goose bumps and puts me in a good mood every time I hear it.
Brazilian vocal sensation Kenia wants to remind audiences of one thing about Friday’s Cleveland Orchestra Friday’s @ 7 post-concert: “Remember to bring your dancing shoes,” she exclaimed. “People should expect to take a little trip to Brazil and I’d love it if they would close their eyes and find themselves transported to Rio in the midst of Carnival.”
The latest Saturday night snow massacre did little to keep patrons away from music director laureate Christoph von Dohnányi’s return to Severance Hall on March 29 and his looked-strange-on-paper program of two Schumann symphonies with The Cleveland Orchestra. As it turned out, the pairing of the two symphonies was an insightful idea and Dohnányi drew playing of both sweeping grandeur and arresting detail from the ensemble he led with such distinction from 1984-2002.